Experiences in Disability Rights Law Webinar

Judge Henderson served as a judge for the US District Court for the Northern District of California from 1980 to 2017. He is now a distinguished visiting Professor of Law at UC Berkeley School of Law and the namesake of the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice at Berkeley Law. Judge Henderson has a long history of public service and civil rights advocacy.

Elizabeth Jameson is a disability rights activist and artist. Prior to her diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, Jameson served as a public interest and civil rights lawyer, representing incarcerated children and children with disabilities. Jameson is also a prolific writer; her essays have been published in the New York Times, WIRED Magazine, and the British Medical Journal.

Judith Heumann is an internationally recognized disability rights activist. Her policy work and activism from the 1960s to the present have been key to the creation and enforcement of
significant disability rights laws – including Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Under the Obama administration, Heumann served as a Special
Advisor on International Disability Rights for the US State Department. She is the author of the recently published book, Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activists.

Theresia Degener is a Professor of Law and Disability Studies at the Protestant University of Applied Sciences of the Rheinland-Westfalen-Lippe. Degener is a longtime disability rights
activist and the former Chairperson of the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. She was one of the drafters of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Her contributions towards the disability rights movement earned her the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2014.

Gerard Quinn is Professor Emeritus of Law at the National University of Ireland – Galway, where he directs the Centre for Disability Law and Policy and the the Raoul Wallenberg Chair of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Lund, Sweden. He was one of the drafters of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and a leading authority on international and comparative disability rights law.

Sydney Pickern is a staff attorney at the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund. Pickern has fought to improve access to healthcare, housing, and emergency services for people with disabilities in Alameda County.

David Oppenheimer is a Clinical Professor of Law at Berkeley Law, and the Director of the Berkeley Center on Comparative Equality and Anti-Discrimination Law.