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This is a précis of the forthcoming book, The Disabled Contract: Severe Intellectual Disability, Justice and Morality. It examines how people with severe intellectual disabilities (PSID) fare within the social contract tradition. More specifically, it contends that even recent strategies that attempted to integrate disability within the realm of contractual justice and morality are not entirely successful. These strategies cannot convincingly ground a robust moral status for PSID; or, if they do so, it is at the cost of making this status merely derivative or contingent. The failure of social contract theory to bring severe disabilities within its purview should not be seen as a marginal theoretical defect affecting only a small segment of human populations. At best, it reveals a gap that should impel moral and political theorists to give fiduciary and caring ideals their due weight next to contractual ideals. At worst, the social contract tradition is not only incomplete, but necessarily creates and oppresses the 'disabled subject'.
The goal of this précis is to introduce readers to some of the conclusions I reach in the book in an accessible, short format. The arguments are therefore illustrative rather than exhaustive.

This creative work begins with a poem written to commemorate Professor Judith Mosoff, a colleague who passed away on December 20, 2015. Professor Mosoff's work in disability law influenced both activists and researchers, and this loss has impoverished the Canadian disability community. The poem is followed by an essay that situates it and reflects on the possibility of knowing and relating to someone affectively through poetic imagination, as well as on the role that poetry can play in sharing mourning and fostering community.

Activists advocating for a better treatment of animals have been using various platforms to promote the welfare or the rights of animals. In recent years, some have proposed to extend "legal personhood" to animals. This strategy would allow animals to get direct access to the special category of "persons" which legal systems associate with a plethora of the most robust kinds of protections and rights. By contrast, the sluggish incorporation of ethical concerns about animals within legal frameworks seems to have trouble moving past the recognition that animals are sentient beings that should not be treated cruelly and into a normatively more stringent set of entitlements that would grant proper consideration to animal needs. Legal personhood is, therefore, a much coveted golden ticket to our political community. In this article, I examine the arguments deployed to obtain it through judicial channels by an American animal rights group (the Nonhuman Rights Project). I focus on a 2015 judicial decision rejecting their petition for a writ of habeas corpus, as this case is the most detailed and representative of their assimilationist stance. This kind of animal rights activism aims at showing that animals are "like us" and should therefore be treated "like us". I will explain the philosophical foundations implicit to the position defended by the animal rights group in order to test their internal coherence and reveal their inherent limitations. Most of my arguments will cast doubts on this assimilationist strategy. In doing so, I draw from the disciplines of law and moral philosophy in order to recognize both the importance of legal strategies for animal rights advocacy and the difficulties that arise from capitalizing on moral theories and values cherry-picked because of their rhetorical purchase within legal and political discourses.