Linda Steele awarded Legal Academic of the Year

Dr Linda Steele, an Associate Professor in the UTS Faculty of Law, has been awarded one of the highest legal industry accolades by the Women Lawyers Association of New South Wales: Legal Academic of the Year.

The 2023 NSW Women Lawyers Achievement Awards recognised Dr Steele for her sustained and impactful work in research, advocacy and reform in the area of disability, particular women with disability. Her reform work includes commissioned reports and submissions to the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability.

UTS Dean of Law Professor Anita Stuhmcke said: “On behalf of the Faculty I congratulate Linda on this amazing achievement, which recognises her commitment to redress harms in working with the disability community for justice and repair.”

What are your areas of expertise?

I am a disability law and human rights researcher and teacher. I have a particular focus in my research on law’s role in enabling and redressing violence against people with disability. So, I focus on laws that enable violence specifically against people with disability, such as laws that enable women and girls with disability to be sterilised and laws that enable people with disability to be subject to restrictive practices (e.g., locked in a group home, stuck in an immobilised wheelchair, caged in a school, or sedated in an aged care facility). 

I am also increasingly focused on law’s role in responding to harm experienced by people with disability, such as truth commissions, redress schemes and placed-based memory projects (also called ‘sites of conscience’). My research prioritises working with people with disability as researchers, project advisors, and research participants, centring lived experiences of disability and the contributions of disability rights activists.

I also have a strong focus in my research on changing laws and systems that enable harm, so I regularly contribute to law reform inquiries and public debate on disability law. In my research-led teaching in the subject ‘Law and Mental Health’ I teach students about a range of disability-specific laws that enable institutionalisation, incarceration, and violence against people with disability. We take a critical and reflective approach to learning about these laws, including through a balance of conventional legal sources such as legislation and cases and lived experiences of people with disability and guest lectures by people with disability and ally lawyers and advocates. This approach is significant because often experiences and perspectives of people with disability are absent in legal education.

What inspired or prompted you to work in this field?

My first job as a lawyer was at Intellectual Disability Rights Service (IDRS), a community legal centre for people with intellectual disability. There I represented people with intellectual disability in a range of matters such as bail applications, court diversion for minor criminal charges, revocation of guardianship and financial management orders, and parents in child protection matters. I saw firsthand how people with intellectual disability are subjected to disability-specific laws that enable interventions in their bodies and lives beyond what is possible for people without disability, and how people with intellectual disability subject to mainstream laws experience discrimination.

I contributed to law reform advocacy on prohibiting sterilisation, and 15 years I am disturbed that sterilisation continues to be legal (even when Australian society has a stronger focus on women’s rights to reproductive and sexual autonomy)! This prompted me to orient my research towards how law enables discrimination and violence against people with disability and what this means for our ethical and social responsibilities as lawyers who can become complicit in these harms.

I had clients at IDRS who were being paid a couple of dollars per hour in what are now called ‘Australian Disability Enterprises’ (and this wage system still continues with people being paid less than $3 an hour!!, with lots of big disability service providers that brand themselves as empowering and inclusive operating these). At the same time, at IDRS I had the opportunity to work alongside people with intellectual disability who were paid full wages. This has inspired me in my research to challenge the disability subminimum wage and segregated employment settings and advocate for equal wages and work conditions for people with intellectual disability.
 

What research are you working on currently?

I am researching redress and reparations for harm experienced by people with disability, such as harm caused by sterilisation, labour exploitation, and institutionalisation. In a project funded by Dementia Australia Research Foundation I worked with international dementia activist Kate Swaffer, Dementia Alliance International and People with Disability Australia to explore how we redress systemic and structural harms experienced by people living with dementia in residential aged care. We produced a set of 'Dementia Reparations Principles' to support future advocacy and policy development on redress, including specialised redress responses and reform of existing complaints/regulatory and judicial responses. Kate and I are currently meeting with government ministers to share our project findings.

I am working with Dr Phillippa Carnemolla (UTS Design, Architecture and Building) and Council for Intellectual Disability on remembering and learning about disability institutions as a mode of recognition and redress. As part of this Phillippa and I supported CID’s advocacy campaign opposing the tourist rezoning of Peat Island (previously the site of a state-run disability institution for 99 years). 

I am currently collaborating with Women with Disabilities Australia on a project exploring redress for reproductive violence against women and girls with disability, such as non-consensual sterilisation and menstrual suppression. 

In another project I am researching how we redress labour exploitation in Australian Disability Enterprises, looking at different possible judicial and non-judicial approaches. 

I am also contributing to exciting work led by Benedict Ipgrave (University College London) on anti-eugenics justice and truth commissions which is bringing together activists and academics globally.

I have also recently finished co-authoring with Claire Spivakovsky (University of Melbourne) and Dinesh Wadiwel (University of Sydney) two reports commissioned by the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect, and Exploitation of People with Disability - one on complaints systems and the other on restrictive practices.

Why is it important? 

People with disability are subject to profound physical, psychological and ontological harm but rarely is this understood as an injustice, as a crime or civil wrong, and as something that must be righted and repaired and ultimately stopped. Complaint and court processes are often experienced as inaccessible and harmful. While there are redress schemes for specific institutional and systemic harms in other contexts, such as institutional child sexual abuse, harm of similar to greater scale in relation to people with disability continue to be overlooked and even regulated, justified and normalised. Laws continue to allow these harms, often under the guise of protection, therapy, or risk prevention, and members of legal, health, and caring professions continue to be complicit in these harms through their everyday practice.

What have been your key achievements and challenges?

A key achievementis  working in my research and teaching with people with disability and disabled people’s organisations. Another achievement is engaging students in my Law and Mental Health subject with lived experiences of the legal system - an aspect which is often absent in our curriculum. 

A key challenge is trying to get recognition within legal and political systems that disability-specific laws are discriminatory, violent and unjust need to be changed, particularly when these are so entrenched in law and in professional practice. It never ceases to shock me that sterilisation and restrictive practices are not prohibited, that people with disability can still be legally paid subminimum wages, and that institutions such as group homes and aged care facilities are still operating and are funded by the government. Moreover, members of legal, health, and caring professions are complicit in these injustices and university education (if not critical and reflective) can support this professional conduct as ethical and just.

You have been recognised as Academic Lawyer of the Year for 2023. What does that mean to you?

I am grateful and encouraged to have been recognised by NSW Women Lawyers Association for my work. I am hoping my award shines a light on the issues I have been researching and advocating, including those particularly relevant to women with disability such as sterilisation and menstrual suppression.