معرفی
Karen Tani is Seaman Family University Professor of Law and History at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research examines 20th-century U.S. legal history with emphasis on social welfare policy, disability rights, and the administrative state.
Tani's award-winning book 'States of Dependency' (2016) analyzed welfare rights conflicts from the New Deal to the 1970s. Current research investigates the legal and political significance of disability concepts in social welfare, civil rights, and civil liberties contexts.
Publications explore federalism in social programs, administrative interpretations of equality guarantees, and the historical interplay between rights discourse and statebuilding. Recent work analyzes disability-based social programs through poverty law frameworks.
Tani received the Cromwell Book Prize and holds a Penn Integrates Knowledge professorship. She previously taught at UC Berkeley and holds J.D./Ph.D. degrees from Penn.
