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157 U. Pa. L. Rev. PENNumbra 1 (2008-2009)

handle is hein.journals/pennumbra157 and id is 1 raw text is: ACCOMMODATING INTEGRATION MARTHA MINOW In response to Elizabeth F. Emens, Integrating Accommodation, 156 U. PA. L. REv. 839 (2008). In Integrating Accommodation, Elizabeth Emens commendably scru- tinizes what could be called the positive externalities of disability ac- commodation and sharpens the policy choices that their recognition should present.' With useful analytic tools, Emens effectively outlines emerging choices that pertain to 1) how much value should be given to the benefits to others from the accommodations; 2) what relative priority should be given to others compared with the initial disabled claimant; and 3) what specific changes in regulatory regimes can and should be pursued to enhance the positive externalities without rais- ing too many costs, whether in terms of costs or competing values. I look forward to the scholarly and policy debates that Integrating Ac- commodation will launch, as well as empirical research about costs and benefits that it should stimulate. This Response explores how an important source of Emens' analy- sis also gives rise to a potential obstacle to its implementation. For here, as in her other work,2 Emens sheds light on disability law by opening for examination the assumption that the person with a dis- ability is the only one affected by it or by responses to it. The power of her analysis in Integrating Accommodation depends on what may be an obstacle to acting upon it. Emens shows how the typical legal pre- occupation with each individual as distinctive, alone, and unique pro- duces pervasive inattention to relational, iterative, and collective fea- tures of social experience. Increased attention to this conceptual issue may be necessary if the kinds of considerations Emens advocates are to appeal to judges, legislators, administrators, employers, school officials, journalists, and even law professors. 'Jeremiah Srnith,Jr. Professor, Harvard Law School. 1 Elizabeth F. Ernens, InlegmtingAccomodulaion, 156 U. PA. L. REV. 839 (2008). 2 See, e.g., Elizabeth F. Emens, The Sympathetic Disciminrator: Mental Illness, Hedonic Costs, and the ADA. 94 GEO. L.J. 399 (2006) (discussing the hedonic costs created in others by the mentally ill and the subsequent influence those costs have on discrimina- tion).