In August 2012, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (“CRPD”), the first human rights convention of the 21st century, was sent to the full Senate for ratification. The CRPD, one of the most far-reaching international documents in history for the protection of marginalized individuals with disabilities, emphasizes the impact that attitudinal and environmental barriers in society have on the enjoyment of human rights. By focusing on these barriers, the CRPD represents a paradigm shift from an accommodation approach for persons with disabilities to a human rights mandate for society. This shift is best understood domestically through the lens of a universal design approach to disability. Universal design ensures that environments are accessible and usable by all people, whether they are disabled or not. The human rights mandate of the CRPD and equitable holistic approach of universal design have appropriate application in the realm of higher education. This article is the first to conceptualize and envision a human rights approach to United States higher education and disability law through the holistic application of universal design in learning and instruction.

Providing and ensuring postsecondary education to persons with disabilities is important in ameliorating the disproportionate treatment that persons with disabilities have endured. United States laws, such as the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act, have attempted to remedy deficiencies in the access provided to persons with disabilities. The CRPD, however, represents a paradigm shift in the area of disabilities by moving from a medical or social approach to persons with disability, to a human rights model. This shift to a holistic, human rights model as embodied in Article 24 of the CRPD demands a right to education for all persons, including persons with disabilities. The holistic approach of the CRPD, as implemented through the principles of universal design, is the most efficient and cost-effective method for benefiting all persons with or without disability in higher education. State courts, through decisions that implement the CRPD’s cultural, social, and political rights, are uniquely positioned to further these holistic goals.

This article recognizes a growing overlap in the literature between international mass claims processes (“IMCPS”) and transitional justice claims processes (“TJCPs”), i.e. domestic reparations programs adopted by successor governments in the wake of mass atrocity. This convergence is reflected in a number of recent publications in both fields that promote the comparative analysis of IMCPs and TJCPs, which in turn, leads to the conclusion that the two processes share a number of analogous characteristics. Commentators tend to view these ostensibly shared traits as a natural source of “best practices” or “lessons” transferable between mass claims procedures in the international and domestic settings. Consequently, it is not uncommon in recent publications to find detailed analyses of individual IMCPs placed alongside TJCPs, often without more, implying that experiences should naturally translate from one process to the other. In this article, Professors Jason Palmer and Arturo Carrillo demonstrate how several of the assumptions underlying the increasing comparisons of IMCPs and TJCPs, as presented in the recent literature on mass claims processing and reparations for gross and systematic human rights violations, are flawed. Building on an in-depth study of seminal IMCP and TJCP experiences, Professor Palmer and Professor Carrillo conduct a comprehensive analysis of the two categories to provide answers to key questions in this regard: To what extent are IMCPs and TJCPs truly comparable? Which IMCP principles and precedents are most relevant to domestic reparations programs? Are there principles and precedents from the TJCP context that might nourish ongoing or future IMCP initiatives? And, of course, to what extent are IMCPs and TJCPs different? What is the nature of these differences, and what do they tell us about the underlying compatibility of the experiences and mechanisms contrasted? In answering these questions, the article exposes a number of inherent limitations to the comparison of IMCPs and TJCPs that to date have remained unaddressed. The article demonstrates that a number of basic IMCP characteristics apparently shared with TJCPs provide a dubious foundation for constructive comparison, including that central component of most mass claims processes: compensation. At the same time, the authors delineate more clearly a narrow but promising path of intriguing synergies, labeled “true parallels,” establishing furthermore that such parallels represent avenues for potential cross-fertilization in both directions.