Character evidence rules regulate the admission of a person’s character or relevant trait solely to prove they acted consistently with that character or trait in a specific instance. Simply put, the rules intend to exclude general, predictive character evidence to prove an individual’s specific behavior. Outside the courtroom, however, law and culture frequently use disability as a form of predictive propensity evidence to regulate access to employment, benefits, and civic life. Although evidence of disability is relevant and admissible in myriad cases central to the adjudication of rights and responsibilities, its strong cultural meaning allows legal actors to fuse concepts like “character” and “fitness,” often unknowingly, causing this practice to evade consistent judicial regulation. Indeed, disability’s profound ties to disqualification make it an extremely effective character chameleon, shifting form to operate as shorthand for a host of undesirable traits and serving as unregulated, circumstantial evidence of non-normativity.

Our current system of dispute resolution presumes that lay fact finders enter the courtroom with a common base of knowledge and experience to adjudicate facts fairly and apply the law as instructed by the court. What happens when this assumption is incorrect or incomplete?

Debates about a “post-truth” society, the nature of expertise, and the malleability of facts that are unfolding in public spaces outside of legal institutions raise two related questions about the administration of justice.

This chapter systematically moves through the key questions of critique as a mode of building and improving knowledge in the humanities. It surveys key works in the conversation in relation to a variety of critical conversations and traditions, relating the questions of critique to major projects and goals in the field.

This Introduction sets out the book’s central aim, and it also provides an overview of the main arguments with summaries of subsequent chapters. The starting point for this book is that there is a need to test a common assumption about the widespread use of techniques and procedures used to prevent the birth of a disabled child: that in a modern liberal state this practice is mainly or solely a matter of individual choice, and that the state itself is neutral. Further, it might be assumed that this neutral stance would allow the modern liberal state to maintain its stated commitment to equality, and that it provides a shield against any charge of eugenics. The Introduction begins to explain how this common assumption will be tested, by reference to interpretations of a neutral state intention. It also emphasises the book’s original contribution: while there is already extensive literature on the ethics of selecting against disability, this book is distinctively centred on an analysis of the state’s position.

This chapter examines how state neutrality can be assessed by reference to the provision of certain information, with a particular focus on information provided through prenatal testing programmes. The information that parents receive about prenatal tests and procedures, and about disability, can be powerfully influential, and can shape the choices that are made. The chapter reviews a number of reasons why the provision of information might not reflect a neutral position: the information might be overly negative about disability, for example, and there is a risk that women will be blamed for any choice that they make. Although it must be acknowledged that it is not possible to have an entirely neutral framework, the chapter compares and evaluates different options that are thought to support autonomy. The chapter also considers nudge theory in order to critically assess both the state’s intention and some limits to individual choice. Although many of these limits are ones that the state cannot entirely avoid, it is important to consider how they put the parents in a particularly vulnerable position, where there is a risk of manipulation.

This Conclusion sums up the main arguments in the book, addresses some final questions, and suggests some future directions of travel. In particular, it returns to the eugenics question, and examines whether current practices in modern liberal states might be in line with a type of eugenics that does not involve state coercion, but that rather involves manipulation, and chiefly the manipulation of women. It also emphasises how an analysis of individual choice should be a secondary concern in our approach to the ethics of selecting against disability, and that the position of the state should be our starting point. The last part of the chapter offers additional reflections on the topic of starting points, and on the importance of thinking further about the nature of pregnancy.

This chapter examines some further difficulties in interpreting the meaning of state neutrality in the context of prenatal selection practices, and that are tied to the state’s approach to disability. A first set of difficulties relates to the challenging or impossible task of identifying a value-neutral definition or concept of disability. If such a definition cannot be found, it is certainly hard to see how the liberal and neutral state can act, although a review of liberal commitments can indicate that certain approaches are more neutral than others. A second set of difficulties is associated with the fact that many parents of disabled children feel that some of their most important values change after their child is born, though they could not have anticipated or understood this change in advance. This common experience, which could be a type of transformative experience, suggests that prospective parents might not be able to make an entirely rational and informed choice, and that the state’s supposed support for autonomy might need some qualification.

This chapter analyses the law in two areas that relate to prenatal selection, with the aim of critically evaluating what ‘messages’ the law might express about disabled lives, and about the state’s position: first, the law on abortion on the grounds of disability under the Abortion Act 1967, and second the law in the United Kingdom on preimplantation genetic testing (PGT). In the first case, it is argued that the disability ground in the law on abortion is not primarily protecting reproductive autonomy, but rather reflects a negative view about the value of disabled lives. In the second case, it is argued that the identification of approved conditions for PGT does not reflect a neutral approach to the definition of disability, and that the legal regime includes elements of state coercion. The chapter also examines a third area which does not relate to prenatal selection, but which might shed light on the state’s position about the latter: court decisions about the treatment of very ill infants. Here, there are reasons to think that interpretations of the best interests of the child do not, in fact, necessarily only take into account the interests of the child.

This chapter examines the central role of Christianity in shaping early modern understandings of deafness. It demonstrates that while the Church was responsible for promoting deaf inclusion, it was also a powerful source of enduring prejudice about deafness. Across England and Europe, clerics routinely enabled deaf people to marry, make confession, and receive the Eucharist using sign language. This acceptance of sign language as a legitimate alternative to speech had significant legal implications, enabling people to demonstrate their rational capacity. Ecclesiastical acceptance promoted the idea that deaf people were legally capable, able to consent, testify, and participate fully in early modern society. Yet the Church also generated some of the most damaging and long-lived ideas about deafness. The association of hearing with spiritual growth meant that deaf people continued to face prejudice throughout the period. The chapter argues that this tension between inclusion and suspicion defined the early modern religious experience of deaf people: it also suggests that encounters with deaf people changed contemporary perceptions about the sensory nature of salvation.

This chapter examines how the records of the poor law, including petitions to magistrates, reveal everyday attitudes towards deafness in early modern England. These records show that deafness was rarely treated as a disabling condition in itself; deaf men and women were generally expected to work, contribute to their households, and support themselves. When deaf people did seek relief, their petitions almost always combined deafness with another factor – old age or illness for example – indicating that deafness alone was not considered sufficient grounds for charitable support. Yet the material also shows how deafness increased vulnerability to life cycle poverty, heightening the risks of unemployment. The language of care, seen in these petitions and in private family trusts for deaf relatives, was sometimes protective but could also function as a mechanism of control, framing deaf petitioners as dependent or incapable. The chapter argues that tensions between expectation of independence and protective oversight shaped the lived experience of many deaf people within early modern systems of welfare or justice

This chapter explores how early modern understandings of deafness were shaped by the interaction of new anatomical knowledge with older medical theories. Advances in the study of the ear helped to establish deafness as a primarily physical condition rather than a marker of impaired intellect. The speechlessness of deaf people was seen as the consequence of deafness, rather than a cognitive disability. Humoural medicine influenced the interpretation of these discoveries, and suggested that all forms of deafness existed along a single continuum. This fluidity may have softened the legal implications traditionally attached to prelingual deafness. At the same time, because age-related deafness was the most common form of deafness, this was the lens through which most people imagined prelingual deafness. The chapter argues that this combination of medical theory and social experience profoundly influenced how deafness was conceptualised in early modern England.

This chapter offers a rare glimpse into the lives of deaf children in their own words, using letters and pedagogical exercises that record their experiences directly. These sources show that deaf children were expected to meet the social and behavioural demands of their class and status much like their hearing peers, even when such expectations conflicted with their deafness. They also reveal evidence of a signing community in London earlier than previously recognised, indicating sustained contact between deaf children and adults who used signed communication. The chapter traces a distinctly British tradition of deaf education, from the experiments of John Wallis and William Holder to the teaching methods of Henry Baker and, later, Thomas Braidwood. Across this period, the strong emphasis on vocal speech reflected wider cultural concerns with bodily discipline, eloquent expression and polite society. Within this framework, signing was cast as ‘savage’, while speech was a mark of civility – a distinction that shaped attitudes towards deaf people well into later centuries.

This chapter sets out the book’s central claim, namely that deafness offers a new perspective on early modern England. It does this by revealing both the diversity of deaf experiences and the cultural weight attached to speech and hearing. Drawing on extensive archival research, it recovers the lives of deaf and deafened people across the social spectrum, showing how prelingually deaf individuals using sign language to work, marry and participate in religious life. Their stories challenge long-standing assumptions that a primarily oral society excluded them. Instead, deaf people were more integrated than printed sources or legal guides suggest, even as prejudice about speech and rationality persisted. The chapter also introduces the methodological challenges of writing deaf history, foregrounding the rarity of first-person accounts and the importance of interpreters, family networks and teachers. By combining insights from medical, theological, legal and cultural models of disability, the chapter reframes deafness as a historically situated experience that illuminates broader questions of knowledge, communication and what it meant to be human in early modern England.