TY - JOUR TI - Legal exclusion of people with disabilities AU - Nowak, Anna TI - Legal exclusion of people with disabilities AB - The article deals with a new issue of legal exclusion (a category introduced at the beginning of the 21st century) in the context of disability and people with disabilities. The undertaken issue has been justified with several arguments, including: the interdisciplinarity of the approach, the number of people with disabilities, the  iscriminatory practices applied to them, the multiplicity of anti-discrimination laws as well as the principle of equal treatment and prevention of exclusion. Attention has been drawn to the views of Andrzej Kojder, who believes that legal exclusion provides a certain legal and social context which allows to interpret a given situation  as exclusion, may consist in inequality of rights depending on particular addressees of the law, but may also result from barriers hindering the exercise of equal and universal rights. The analysis covers features of legal exclusion, such as a diverse range of entities, relativism, diversity of areas/spheres of social life regulated by the law, and others. Based on A. Kojder’s thought, such types of exclusion were listed as: culpable or legally valid as well as quasi-legal and discretionary. The article references legal language as well as P. Bourdieu’s views on the phenomenon of “circular strengthening” and the institution of “legal space” in the context of legal exclusion. Selected contexts of discrimination against people with disabilities and the form they take as well as manifestations of such people’s legal exclusion have also been discussed here. Moreover, the legal acts which guarantee the privileged treatment of persons with disabilities have been listed. International and Polish legal acts that promote the principle of equal treatment and protect people with disabilities against exclusion from various spheres of social life have been reviewed, including the ones that guarantee the disabled access to the law and institutions of the judicial system. In the conclusion, examples of actions proposed and undertaken to counteract legal exclusion of people with disabilities are listed. VL - 2019 IS - Issue 34 (2019) PY - 2019 SN - 2080-9476 C1 - 2544-0519 SP - 84 EP - 98 DO - 10.4467/25439561.NP.19.019.11849 UR - https://ejournals.eu/en/journal/niepelnosprawnosc/article/wykluczenie-prawne-osob-z-niepelnosprawnoscia KW - legal exclusion KW - discrimination KW - equal treatment KW - people with disabilities KW - legal language KW - access to the law