UNEQUAL BRAINS: DISABILITY DISCRIMINATION LAWS AND CHILDREN WITH CHALLENGING BEHAVIOUR.
At a time when brain-based explanations of behaviour are proliferating, how will law respond to the badly behaved child? In Australia, children and youth with challenging behaviours such as aggression, swearing, or impulsivity are increasingly understood as having a behavioural disability and so may be afforded the protections of discrimination law. A brain-based approach to challenging behaviour also offers a seemingly neutral framework that de-stigmatises a child's 'bad' behaviour, making it a biological or medical issue rather than a failure of discipline or temperament. Yet this 'brain-based' framework is not as neutral as it appears. How law regulates the brain-based subject in the form of the badly behaved child depends on how law conceptualises the brain. This article examines two competing approaches to the brain in law: a structural, deterministic model and a 'plastic', flexible model. Each of these impacts differently on disabled and abled identity and consequently on discrimination law and equality rights. Using examples from Australian discrimination law, this article argues that as new brain-based models of identity develop, existing inequalities based on race, gender, and disability are imported, and new forms of stigma emerge. In the neurological age, not all brains are created equal.
["O'Connell|Karen|K|"]
D000293:Adolescent D020817:Asperger Syndrome D019958:Attention Deficit and Disruptive Behavior Disorders D001315:Australia D002648:Child D002653:Child Behavior Disorders D019988:Disabled Children D005260:Female D006801:Humans D008297:Male D009422:Nervous System Diseases D063508:Social Discrimination D057545:Social Stigma
Disability Discrimination law Children Behaviour Neuroscience