Gender Sexuality And The Law

This innovative and thought-provoking Research Handbook explores not only current debates in the area of gender, sexuality and the law but also points the way for future socio-legal research and scholarship. It presents wide-ranging insights and debates from across the globe, including Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Australia, with contributions from leading scholars and activists alongside exciting emergent voices.

This volume examines the role of law as a tool for advancing women’s rights and gender equity in local, national, and global contexts. Many feminist scholars note a marked failure of law to achieve goals connected to women’s rights and gender equality. Despite its limitations, law provides aspirational norms that can be mobilized to hold institutions accountable and to provide material benefit to those excluded from systems of power. In conversation with each other, the chapters in this volume help to advance understanding of both the limitations and the potential of law as a tool for advancing democratic participation, rights, and justice around issues related to gender and sexuality. Contributors acknowledge, to varying degrees, that law has important symbolism and may be used as a lever to mobilize change. At the same time, some offer cautionary notes about the potential downside risks and unintended consequences of relying upon law in pursuit of women’s rights and gender equity. Collectively, the chapters in this volume explore the disjuncture between the promise and expectation of legal reform and the lived experience of those laws by people intended as the beneficiaries of legal change. This book was originally published as a special issue of Global Discourse.

"In the past decade, people whose bodies, genders or sexualities differ from socially expected norms have become more visible and have been granted greater recognition within the law. Yet despite this, many service providers do not have a strong understanding of the social and legal issues that continue to have a significant impact on these diverse groups of people and their relationships and families. In order to address this knowledge gap, this book brings together research findings from often disparate disciplines into an accessible and useful form for practitioners, as well as for researchers, academics, students, and the general public. Part 1 defines key terms, and addresses the psychosocial and legal issues faced by trans or gender diverse, intersex, and/or non-heterosexual individuals. Part 2 looks at the psychosocial and legal aspects of couple relationships. Part 3 considers parenting and families. Part 4 discusses practical tips for professionals working with this client group, including specific content for lawyers and mediators. As a whole, this book both questions the presumed neutrality of the law, yet insists that it is possible for the law to play a key role in challenging cisgenderism and heterosexism."--Back cover.

This Companion volume provides a comprehensive overview of the major themes and topics pertinent to ancient Greek law. A substantial introduction establishes the recent historiography on this topic and its development over the last 30 years. Many of the 22 essays, written by an international team of experts, deal with procedural and substantive law in classical Athens, but significant attention is also paid to legal practice in the archaic and Hellenistic eras; areas that offer substantial evidence for legal practice, such as Crete and Egypt; the intersection of law with religion, philosophy, political theory, rhetoric, and drama, as well as the unity of Greek law and the role of writing in law. The volume is intended to introduce non-specialists to the field as well as to stimulate new thinking among specialists.

First Published in 1993. Sexuality and the Law: An Encyclopedia of Major Legal Cases is the third volume to appear in the American Law and Society series. Consistent with the philosophy of the series, the more than 100 essay/entries in Sexuality and the Law deal with important legal issues without descending into jargon or lawyer's Latin. This book describes more than one hundred significant court decisions concerning sexual ity.

Sex, Sexuality, Law, and (In)Justice covers a wide range of legal issues associated with sexuality, gender, reproduction, and identity. These are critical and sensitive issues that law enforcement and other criminal justice professionals need to understand. The book synthesizes the literature across a wide breadth of perspectives, exposing students to law, psychology, criminal justice, sociology, philosophy, history, and, where relevant, biology, to critically examine the social control of sex, gender, and sexuality across history. Specific federal and state case law and statutes are integrated throughout the book, but the text moves beyond the intersection between law and sexuality to focus just as much on social science as it does on law. This book will be useful in teaching courses in a range of disciplines—especially criminology and criminal justice, history, political science, sociology, women and gender studies, and law.

One primary concern within the study of law has been to understand the law/society relation. Underlying this concern is the belief that law has a distinctly social basis; it both shapes and is shaped by the society in which it operates. This book explores the law/society relation by locating law within the nexus of race/class/gender/sexuality relations in society. Recognizing that inequalities along these lines exist in society raises important questions: What role has law historically played in generating today's inequalities? Is law part of the problem or part of the solution? Can we use law as a strategy to achieve meaningful change? The essays in this new edition of Locating Law demonstrate law's role in a variety of specific contexts, including perpetuating colonialism in Canada, protecting corporations and holding women responsible for sexual violence against them. These analyses are sure to generate discussion and debate and, in the process, enhance our understanding of this important relation between law and society.

Bringing together an international range of academics, Gender, Sexualities and Law provides a comprehensive interrogation of the range of contemporary issues – both topical and controversial – raised by the gendered character of law, legal discourse and institutions. The gendering of law, persons and the legal profession, along with the gender bias of legal outcomes, has been a fractious, but fertile, focus of reflection. It has, moreover, been an important site of political struggle. This collection of essays offers an unrivalled examination of its various contemporary dimensions, focusing on: issues of theory and representation; violence, both national and international; reproduction and parenting; and partnership, sexuality, marriage and the family. Gender, Sexualities and Law will be invaluable for all those engaged in research and study of the law (and related fields) as a form of gendered power.