It has been some time since I blogged, but as an academic it is obviously important that I write as much as possible. While the focus will be on academic pieces of work such as journal articles, book chapters, a monograph or manuscripts, the general consensus within the academic community is that any writing is good, and this blog is a way for me to: keep writing/putting my thoughts into something more concrete, to disseminate ideas in the hope that I will receive feedback via the comments, and in the process updating visitors to my website on my current research projects and initiatives.
Check back regularly for updates, and if you would like to make any suggestions or work with me, please get in touch on email WilksR2@cardiff.ac.uk, via Twitter (@rwilks), or LinkedIN.
This post is a reminder of the ongoing call for abstracts for the exciting edited volume, Developing Deaf Legal Theory. This timely project aims to expand the burgeoning field of Deaf Legal Theory (DLT) by showcasing diverse perspectives on how legal systems interact with Deaf communities globally.
Why Contribute?
Break new ground: contribute to the development of DLT as a critical approach to analysing legal frameworks through the lens of Deaf lived experiences.
Amplify diverse voices: share your unique expertise and insights, regardless of disciplinary background or geographical location.
Global collaboration: Join a team of esteemed scholars and practitioners in shaping the future of DLT scholarship.
We welcome original proposals exploring any area where DLT can enhance our understanding of the law-Deaf community nexus. Submissions can focus on national, supranational, or intergovernmental legal frameworks.
Abstract Submission
Please submit a 500-word abstract outlining your proposed exposé, along with a 250-word biographical note, to rob@robwilks.com by 1 January 2024.
The editors would like to invite contributions from both legal and non-legal scholars exposing areas of law as they relate to deaf people and Deaf communities on a national, supranational or intergovernmental level.
It is intended that this edited volume will be a global collaboration, and we especially invite contributions by deaf and hearing scholars and activists who work with/in Deaf communities from the global South, Indigenous territories and non-academic contexts.
We value diverse perspectives and inclusivity yet must address language challenges. Regrettably, due to resource constraints, we can only accept contributions in English. We acknowledge the impact of this decision on contributors not proficient in English and would encourage any potential contributors not able to do so to contact us in the first instance.
What is Deaf Legal Theory?
Deaf Legal Theory (DLT), a term coined by Bryan and Emery (2014), is defined as ‘how the law seeks to frame Deaf people’ (p. 37). DLT is a new concept in the field of study known as ‘jurisprudence,’ that is, various critical approaches to law through which a critical examination of legal systems can be made.
Bryan and Emery (2014, p. 56) argue that for ‘Deaf jurisprudence’ to develop, the current underpinnings of law that are based on incomplete assumptions that need to be exposed, for example: dependency, incomplete abilities, language deficiency, homogeneity and unhappiness. In order to do so, DLT needs to be applied to particular aspects of the law. DLT delves into the legal issues associated with the lived experiences of Deaf communities, acknowledging the distinctive cultural, linguistic, and social perspectives that affect their interactions within legal systems.
How to apply DLT
In order to apply DLT to a legal system or area of law of your choosing, the ‘DLT Method’ should be engaged in order to determine the extent of ‘hearing-subjectiveness’ by considering the following elements:
The frame of understanding within society in relation to deaf people (e.g. deaf people, the health and medical profession, charities, hearing people).
What assumptions have been made regarding deaf people in the shaping of the law (e.g. using the medical or social model of disability, or the language minority model)?
The participation of deaf people in the shaping of the law and/or policy (e.g. was there meaningful consultation with the Deaf community on their own terms).
To what extent has society imposed its cultural order on deaf people in relation to the law (e.g. hearing culture, other cultures)?
The application of the law to deaf people (e.g. the relevant legal principles and how they or should be applied to deaf people)?
The impact the law has on deaf people and their allies.
Do deaf people experience further oppression rather than liberation or are they afforded rights (e.g. does the law reinforce the status quo or does it portray deaf people on their own terms)?
What do we learn about how the law can and should bring deaf people within its purview?
Of course, each of these eight points must be considered within the specific context (legal, social and historical) of the deaf communities and legal systems you are writing about. You should avoid making decontextualised assumptions or conclusions and instead focus on rooting your analysis carefully in the specific social conditions you are investigating.
When this process is applied to a legal system or area of law, the result should be that incomplete assumptions are exposed, and ‘Deaf jurisprudence’ is further expanded.
The edited volume aims to bring together a number of exposés with the objective of bringing DLT to the attention of legal and deaf studies scholars world-wide as a theoretical perspective to be applied to any legal study that involves deaf people.
Exposés
This is a brand new area of study and an exciting opportunity to build on the following UK-centric work: human fertilisation and embryology in the UK (Bryan & Emery, 2014), equality law in the UK (Wilks, 2020), deaf education in Scotland and Wales (Wilks & O’Neill, 2022) and the role of sign language interpreters and translators (Wilks, 2022).
Exposés could include:
Criminal justice and prisons – the experiences of deaf people in criminal justice systems and of being incarcerated or rehabilitated.
Deaf education.
Equality and anti-discrimination law – national anti-discrimination law or supranational or intergovernmental law as they apply to specific jurisdictions.
Health and social care, including mental health.
Language law and policy – sign language recognition, the European Charter for Regional and Minority Language and sign languages, etc.
Legal interpreting.
Politics – elections, participation and consultation etc.
Social security and welfare benefits – disability benefits, communication vouchers, access to work schemes, etc.
This list is not exhaustive, and we welcome other ideas as to how DLT can be applied. Chapters can vary in focus from an overview of a particular context (e.g. deaf experiences of prisons generally), to focusing more closely on a specific element (e.g. deaf experiences of parole from prison).
Jurisdictions
There are no limitations on what jurisdictions can be covered by each exposé. As well as national law, contributions focusing on supranational law (such as the European Union or International Labour Organisation) and intergovernmental law (such as the United Nations or Council of Europe) are welcome.
Timeframes
The book Developing Deaf Legal Theory is expected to be submitted to the publisher by the summer of 2025.
A proposed timeline is below:-
Interested scholars and practitioners should send an abstract of 500 words and their short bio (250 words) to rob@robwilks.com by 30 January 2024.
Invitations to contribute to the edited volume will be made by 31 March 2024. Following this, the editors will submit a proposal to the publisher.
The deadline for the submission of chapters will be 30 November 2024.
The editors will review each chapter and contributors will be informed of any changes to be made by 28 February 2025.
Final submission of chapters to be made by 31 May 2025, and the editors will submit the manuscript to the publisher by 31 July 2025.
Bryan, A., & Emery, S. (2014). The Case for Deaf Legal Theory Through the Eyes of Deaf Gain. In H.-D. L. Bauman & J. J. Murray (Eds.), Deaf Gain: Raising the Stakes for Human Diversity (pp. 37–62). University of Minnesota Press. Wilks, R. (2020). Making Equality Law Work for Deaf People. Doctoral Thesis, University of Leicester. Wilks, R. (2022). Developing Deaf jurisprudence: The role of interpreters and translators. In C. Stone, R. Adam, R. M. de Quadros, & C. Rathmann (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Sign Language Translation and Interpreting (pp. 249–266). Routledge. Wilks, R., & O’Neill, R. (2022). Deaf Education in Scotland and Wales: Attitudes to British Sign Language in deaf education compared to Gaelic and Welsh. Retrieved from https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/deafeducation
A BSL Act in Wales giving sign language communities and Deaf people full citizenship in cultural, social and political contexts;
Restructure Deaf education with a national BSL plan;
Ensure hearing people and families of Deaf children can learn BSL;
Put BSL/English interpreting on a statutory footing;
To establish a BSL working group;
Collect statistics relating to the socio-economic situation of BSL users; and
Create a Facebook group to gather evidence from the Deaf community.
The ball is now in the Welsh Government’s court. Progress has already been made with the appointment of a Disability and BSL Policy Manager in Government, who is tasked with implementing the BDA’s recommendations.
In terms of next steps, while the Government has made clear that the Disability Rights Taskforce, particularly its Access to Services Working Group, will consider the BDA’s report, more is required. Following the BDA’s recommendation for a BSL working group to be established, I suggest that a steering group is set up consisting of Welsh Deaf BSL users, with invited representative of the Deaf community across Wales, with representation of the north, south, west and east.
The purpose of the steering group would be to work out a way forward to implement the BDA’s recommendations on behalf of the Welsh Government. At the first meeting, a chair should be appointed. The steering group could produce a plan which could include the establishment of a BSL council or committee (or similar) which will oversee the implementation of the recommendations.
If such a council or committee is set up, a chair would again need to be appointed, which could be a similar arrangement to that of the BSL Advisory Board in England, whereby Craig Crowley is to be co-chair with a senior civil servant. The steering group could transition into the BSL council, or perhaps the Welsh Government would prefer to appoint council members by way of an application process, similar to the BSL Advisory Board recruitment process under the BSL Act 2022.
The remit of the BSL council would be the three main themes of the BDA’s audit report: Full Citizenship, Education and Interpreters and Translators (see Figure 1), and a working group could be set up for each theme. At that level, representatives from the sector could be required to work out an action plan with and on behalf of the BSL council on how to implement the BDA’s recommendations under that particular theme. Members of the BSL council could volunteer to become chair of each working group.
The Welsh Government would need to commit funds for the steering group, BSL council and working groups to cover the cost of BSL/English Interpreters, administrative support and translations into BSL, English and Welsh as needed. A website on the gov.wales website would also be needed to act as a focal point of the BSL council’s work and be a central resource.
The BSL could work out a reporting process for each working group for progress reports etc. which can also be published on the gov.wales website.
It remains to be seen what the Welsh Government decides to do.
It is clear that the provision of deaf education in the United Kingdom is not consistent across the four nations. In Scotland, deaf education is underpinned by the BSL (Scotland) Act 2015 and its associated national and local plans and in Wales, BSL is part of its new curriculum. In Northern Ireland and England, however, no legislation or policy exist with regard to the inclusion of BSL in deaf education, although the BSL Act 2022 does bring the Department of Education within its purview, at least in England.
Despite these marked differences at national policy level, there are a number of consistencies: the shortage of qualified teachers of deaf children and young people, the lack of BSL teachers, language attitudes at national and local level and the limited resources available for the teaching of BSL within school curricula.
The prevailing view is that a deaf child should receive a mainstream education with the expectation that they should learn the monoglot language with the assistance of audiological solutions such as hearing aids, cochlear implants etc. and speech therapy if necessary. A deaf child should only learn a sign language if the main approach does not work for a specific reason; perhaps the deaf child was late diagnosed and their language development delayed, they have additional learning needs, or if they are a child of deaf adults who use sign language. What is less common is the bilingual approach, that is, learning sign language and the monoglot language.
The benefits of a bilingual education are well documented and provide a number of benefits for deaf children:
improved language development;
increased access to information;
improved social skills;
increased cultural awareness; and
enhanced employability.
In short, a bilingual education in the monoglot language and sign language can provide numerous benefits, and is above all essential to support deaf children’s language, academic, and social development.
So, why does such a bilingual education not happen as a matter of course? Our research clearly found that health professionals often have a crucial role in deaf children’s education, and they are often the ones who identify that the children are deaf, and above all, provide support and guidance to families and educators in helping deaf children to succeed. Given that they are, above all, medical practitioners, their primary focus will be on medical intervention, as early as possible, and the provision of hearing aids, cochlear implants, or other assistive technologies. This emphasis can sometimes be at the expense of language acquisition.
Health professionals are not experts in language development, and therefore will not explain to parents of deaf children the benefits of a bilingual education. Instead, they often see sign language as a threat to the acquisition of the monoglot language, not realising that it can actually support it and in fact achieve successful language outcomes for the deaf child. In contrast, the benefits of bilingual education are clearly explained to parents of children in the context of Welsh and Gaelic by health professionals, particularly midwives and health visitors. This has led to an increasing number of children entering Welsh- or Gaelic-medium education.
It is clear, therefore, that in order for parents of deaf children to become aware of the benefits of acquiring a sign language alongside the monoglot language, the health professionals most likely to be involved in deaf children’s welfare should be educated in a similar fashion to that for Welsh and Gaelic.
We are now working with the Welsh and Scottish Governments and key stakeholders with a view to changing the status quo for the benefit of deaf children in Wales and Scotland.
Deaf legal theory is a somewhat new concept in legal jurisprudence. It was coined by Bryan and Emery in a chapter in Deaf Gain: Raising the Stakes for Human Diversity, published in 2014. I first came across this theory when working on my PhD thesis, and although it only had a minor mention in the end, I had the pleasure of teaching legal jurisprudence at the University of South Wales in 2014 and 2016, and was resolved to delve into deaf legal theory in more detail at some point in the future.
Fast forward to 2022, after moving to Cardiff University, the time was ripe to start delving. I created a Developing Deaf Legal Theory blog and started writing blog posts, and lo and behold within two months was invited to give a talk at the University of Birmingham’s Language and Law seminar series about deaf legal theory. I have subsequently been asked to write three entries on deaf legal theory plus case studies for a forthcoming Encyclopaedia of Language and Law. The deaf legal theory project was gaining traction and is certainly considered to be an important area to develop, and is attracting attention from scholars in other parts of the world.
What was interesting was the realisation that all the research I’ve done to date – equality law, sign language interpeters and translators and deaf education – all fit within the parameters of deaf legal theory. Any future research I do will undoubtedly also fall within the deaf legal theory project, provided of course that I focus on deaf people.
Dr Rob Wilks 