2015 – 2010 Publications

Listed below are books written by our Center members, separated by publication year and alphabetically by author name. 

Institutional Inequality and the Mobilization of the Family and Medical Leave Act, 2010

Authors: Catherine R. Albiston

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Language: English

About: How do Family and Medical Leave Act rights operate in practice in the courts and in the workplace? This empirical study examines how institutions and social practices transform the meaning of these rights to recreate inequality. Workplace rules and norms built around the family wage ideal, the assumption that disability and work are mutually exclusive, and management’s historical control over time all constrain opportunities for social change. Yet workers can also mobilize rights as a cultural discourse to change the social meaning of family and medical leave. Drawing on theoretical frameworks from social constructivism and new institutionalism, this study explains how institutions transform rights to recreate systems of power and inequality but at the same time also provide opportunities for law to change social structure. It provides a fresh look at the perennial debate about law and social change by examining how institutions shape the process of rights mobilization.

Esportare la Libertà Religiosa. Il Modello Americano nell’Arena Globale, 2015

Authors: Pasquale Annicchino

Publisher: Il Mulino

Language: Italian

About: Con l’adozione nel 1998 dell’International Religious Freedom Act gli Stati Uniti hanno posto al centro della loro politica estera la protezione e la promozione del diritto di libertà religiosa. Le istituzioni e le politiche che sono seguite hanno permesso agli Stati Uniti di ergersi a modello di iniziativa per la tutela della libertà religiosa nell’arena globale. Lungi dal rimanere un esperimento isolato, l’iniziativa statunitense ha influenzato anche il Canada e l’Unione Europea. Il volume analizza il modello normativo-istituzionale americano e passa in rassegna i sistemi che ad esso si sono ispirati. Ne risulta una libertà religiosa indebolita nella sua concezione universale ed unitaria e spesso minacciata da specifici interessi politici e nazionali.

Feminist Constitutionalism: Global Perspectives, 2012

Authors: Beverley Baines, Daphne Barak-Erez, Tsvi Kahana

Publisher: New York: Cambridge

Language: English

About: Constitutionalism affirms the idea that democracy should not lead to the violation of human rights or the oppression of minorities. This book aims to explore the relationship between constitutional law and feminism. The contributors offer a spectrum of approaches and the analysis is set across a wide range of topics, including both familiar ones like reproductive rights and marital status, and emerging issues such as a new societal approach to household labor and participation of women in constitutional discussions online. The book is divided into six parts: I) feminism as a challenge to constitutional theory; II) feminism and judging; III) feminism, democracy, and political participation; IV) the constitutionalism of reproductive rights; V) women’s rights, multiculturalism, and diversity; and VI) women between secularism and religion.

Identity and Migration in Europe: Multidisciplinary Perspectives: International Perspectives on Migration, 2014

Authors: Maria Caterina La Barbera

Publisher: Springer

Language: English

About: This book addresses the impact of migration on the formation and transformation of identity and its continuous negotiations. Its ground is the understanding of identity as a complex social phenomenon resulting from constant negotiations between personal conditions, social relationships, and institutional frameworks. Migrations, understood as dynamic processes that do not end when landing in the host country, offer the best conditions to analyze the construction and transformation of social identities in the postcolonial and globalized societies. Searching for novel epistemologies and methodologies, the research questions here addressed are how identity is negotiated in migration processes, and how these negotiations work in contemporary multiethnic Europe. This edited volume brings to the field a novel convergence of theoretical and empirical approaches by gathering together scholars from different countries of Europe and the Mediterranean area, from different disciplines and backgrounds, challenging the traditional discipline division.

Bullying and Behavioural Conflict at Work: The Duality of Individual Rights, 2015

Authors: Lizzie Barmes

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Language: English

About: This is an empirical study of the interaction between law, adjudication and conflicts about behaviour in the workplace. It analyses how labour and equality rights operate in practice in the UK. Arguing that individual employments rights have a Janus-face quality, simultaneously challenging and sustaining existing distributions of power between management and employees, the book calls for legal intervention at work to focus on resolving tensions between collective and individual concerns across the range of workplaces and to stimulate the expression and reconciliation of different viewpoints in the implementation and enforcement of individual legal entitlements.

Based on extensive primary research, the volume surveys and analyzes experiences and attitudes towards negative behaviour in the workplace and explains relevant employment and equality law as it has developed from 1995 to 2015, covering the major case law and legislative developments over this time. This books provides qualitative evidence of authoritative UK judgments about behavioural conflict at work from 1995 to 2010, as well as of interviews with senior managers and senior lawyers, allowing the reader first-hand insight into the influence of law and legal process on problems and conflicts at work

Freedom of Speech: Importing European and US Constitutional Models in Transitional Democracies, 2013

Authors: Uladzislau Belavusau

Publisher: Routledge

Language: English

About: This book considers the issue of free speech in transitional democracies focusing on the socio-legal developments in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. In showing how these Central and Eastern European countries have engaged with free speech models imported from the Council of Europe / EU and the USA, the book offers valuable insights into the ways States have responded to challenges associated with transformation from communism to Western democracy.

The book first explores freedom of expression in European and American law looking particularly at hate speech, historical revisionism, and pornography. It subsequently enquires into the role and perspectives of those European (mandatory) and US-American (persuasive) models for the constitutional debate in Central and Eastern Europe. The study offers an original interpretation of the “”European”” model of freedom of expression, beyond the mechanisms of the Council of Europe. It encompasses the relevant aspects of EU law (judgments of the Court of Justice and the harmonised EU instruments) as mandatory standards for courts and legislators, including those in transitional countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The book argues for de-criminalisation of historical revisionism and pornography, and illuminates topics such as genocide denial, the rise of Prague and Budapest as Europe’s porno-capitals, anti-Semitism and anti-Gypsyism, religious obscurantism and homophobia, virulent Islamophobia, and the glorification of terrorism.

The research methodology in this study combines a descriptive case law assessment (comparative constitutional, public international, and EU law) with a normative critique stemming from post-structuralist scrutiny, rhetoric, postmodern legal movements, legal history, history of ideas, and art criticism.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of, comparative constitutional law, law and society, human rights and European law as well as political philosophers.

Race, racisme, discriminations: Anthologie de textes fondamentaux, 2015

Authors: Magali Bessone, Daniel Sabbagh

Publisher: Hermann

Language: French

About: La race n’est-elle qu’une chimère — une fiction collective aux effets pernicieux —, ou bien un concept nécessaire à l’analyse et à l’éradication éventuelle du racisme et de ses conséquences ? Cette catégorie ambiguë relève-t-elle de la biologie ou bien renvoie-t-elle à une réalité de nature socio-politique ? Le racisme est-il d’abord un attribut des individus ou des institutions — un état mental fait de croyances et d’affects ou un système social ? Toute discrimination raciale est-elle inévitablement raciste ? Est-elle immorale et injuste même dans les cas où elle ne serait pas entièrement irrationnelle ? Enfin, la discrimination positive est-elle justifiable ? Telles sont quelques-unes des questions abordées dans ce recueil, qui propose une introduction au champ d’investigation que la race, le racisme et les discriminations constituent pour la philosophie — ici envisagée dans son articulation avec les sciences sociales. Il réunit dix textes majeurs, presque tous inédits en français.

L' islam en Italie: Les leaders musulmans entre intégration et séparation, 2014

Authors: Bartolomeo Conti

Publisher: l’Harmattan

Language: French

About: L’Italie est devenue pays d’immigration à la fin des années 1970, ce qui a modifié en profondeur la société, et notamment son panorama religieux. Faible, ignorée ou stigmatisée, la voix des musulmans a souvent été reléguée hors de l’espace public ou utilisée pour renforcer une vision essentialiste de l’islam. Dans ce livre, il s’agit d’écouter ceux qui ont guidé la sortie de l’islam de la sphère privée pour l’affirmer dans l’espace public, afin de comprendre leur regard, les formes de contestation de leur exclusion et les voies que pourrait emprunter leur inclusion.

Affirmative Action: A view from the Global South, 2014

Authors: Ockert Dupper, Kamala Sankaran

Publisher: Africa Sun Media

Language: English

About: Affirmative Action: A View from the Global South provides insight into a range of aspects of the affirmative action policies in seven countries from Africa, Asia, South America and the Middle East. In addition to these national perspectives, important theoretical concepts and international developments on affirmative action are explored.

Geschlechtsbezogene Gewalt und Menschenrechte, 2011

Authors: Sarah Elsuni

Publisher: Nomos

Language: German

About: Dem Thema geschlechtsbezogene Gewalt wurde im internationalen Menschenrechtsdiskurs lange Zeit keine Beachtung geschenkt. Erst seit einigen Jahren ist geschlechtsbezogene Gewalt als Menschenrechtsfrage anerkannt. Größere Bedeutung erhält das Thema allerdings nur, solange es sich um den Bereich der Gewalt gegen Frauen handelt. Andere Formen geschlechtsbezogener Gewalt, die jenseits heteronormativer Grenzen angesiedelt sind, werden bislang weithin ignoriert.

Die Autorin untersucht, ob und wie geschlechtsbezogene Gewalt in all ihren Formen eine Verletzung von internationalen Menschenrechten darstellen kann. Neben der Untersuchung, was im Rahmen der UN-Menschenrechtsverträge unter der Kategorie ‚Geschlecht’ verhandelt wird und inwieweit geschlechtsbezogene Gewalt bereits Eingang in das Menschenrechtssystem gefunden hat, findet eine Analyse der Interpretation der Konzepte ‚Gleichheit’ und ‚Diskriminierung’ durch die jeweiligen Vertragsorgane statt. In einer theoretischen Annäherung an ein Verständnis von Gleichheit als Recht auf Nichtdiskriminierung werden Beispiele geschlechtsbezogener Gewalt als menschenrechtliche Gleichheits- bzw. Diskriminierungsfragen thematisiert.

Religious Pluralism and Islamic Law, 2012

Authors: Anver M. Emon

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Language: English

About: The question of tolerance and Islam is not a new one. Polemicists are certain that Islam is not a tolerant religion. As evidence they point to the rules governing the treatment of non-Muslim permanent residents in Muslim lands, namely the dhimmi rules that are at the center of this study. These rules, when read in isolation, are certainly discriminatory in nature. They legitimate discriminatory treatment on grounds of what could be said to be religious faith and religious difference. The dhimmi rules are often invoked as proof-positive of the inherent intolerance of the Islamic faith (and thereby of any believing Muslim) toward the non-Muslim.

This book addresses the problem of the concept of ‘tolerance’ for understanding the significance of the dhimmi rules that governed and regulated non-Muslim permanent residents in Islamic lands. In doing so, it suggests that the Islamic legal treatment of non-Muslims is symptomatic of the more general challenge of governing a diverse polity. Far from being constitutive of an Islamic ethos, the dhimmi rules raise important thematic questions about Rule of Law, governance, and how the pursuit of pluralism through the institutions of law and governance is a messy business.

As argued throughout this book, an inescapable, and all-too-often painful, bottom line in the pursuit of pluralism is that it requires impositions and limitations on freedoms that are considered central and fundamental to an individual’s well-being, but which must be limited for some people in some circumstances for reasons extending well beyond the claims of a given individual. A comparison to recent cases from the United States, United Kingdom, and the European Court of Human Rights reveals that however different and distant premodern Islamic and modern democratic societies may be in terms of time, space, and values, legal systems face similar challenges when governing a populace in which minority and majority groups diverge on the meaning and implication of values deemed fundamental to a particular polity

Disabled Justice? Access to Justice and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities., 2015

Authors: Elionoir Flynn

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing

Language: English

About: Disability offers a new lens through which to view the effectiveness of access to justice, and the inclusiveness of the justice system as a whole. This book analyses the experience of people with disabilities through the entire justice system, from making a complaint, to investigation, and through the court/tribunal process. It also considers the participation of people with disabilities in a variety of roles in the justice system – as witness, defendant, complainant, plaintiff, lawyer, judge and juror. More broadly, it also critically examines the subtle barriers of access to justice which might exist in a given society – including barriers to grassroots disability advocacy, legal education and training, the right to vote and the right to stand for election which may apply to people with disabilities. The book is international and comparative in scope with a focus primarily on examples of legal practice and justice systems in common law countries. The work will be of interest to scholars working in the areas of human rights, equality and non-discrimination, disability rights activists and legal professionals who work with people with disabilities to achieve access to justice.

From Rhetoric to Action: Implementing the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (Cambridge Disability Law and Policy Series), 2011

Authors: Elionoir Flynn

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Language: English

About: This book contains a global comparative study of implementation and monitoring mechanisms for national disability strategies. It comprises a comparative study that was conducted at international, regional, and comparative country levels and that highlights critical success factors in implementing disability strategies or action plans worldwide. It explores emerging synergies between what is required to implement principles of international law contained in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and what it is possible to achieve through national policy and systems development. A number of critical success factors for implementing and monitoring strategies are identified, including leadership from government and civil society, participation of disabled people in implementation and monitoring, transparency and accountability in reporting on progress, independent monitoring and external review, and the ability to measure progress with indicators of disability equality.

Rights Gone Wrong: How Law Corrupts the Struggle for Equality, 2011

Authors: Richard Thompson Ford

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Language: English

About: Since the 1960s, ideas developed during the civil rights movement have been astonishingly successful in the fight against overt discrimination. But can they combat the whole spectrum of social injustice—including conditions that aren’t directly caused by bigotry? In Rights Gone Wrong, Richard Thompson Ford argues that extremists on both sides of the political divide have hijacked civil rights for personal advantage, diverting our attention from serious social injustices. Is equality really served by endless litigating and legislating against every grievance or slight? Brilliantly argued, shrewd, and lively, Rights Gone Wrong offers “a crisp analysis of the limits of our civil rights laws and a prescription for how to move beyond them” (Kirkus Reviews).

Universal Rights Down to Earth , 2011

Authors: Richard Thompson Ford

Publisher: W.W. Norton

Language: English

About: In Universal Rights Down to Earth, acclaimed author and legal expert Richard Thompson Ford reveals how attempts to apply “universal” human rights principles to specific cultures can hinder humanitarian causes and sometimes even worsen conditions for citizens. In certain regions, human rights ideals clash with the limits of institutional capabilities or civic culture; elsewhere, rights enforcement leads to further human rights violations. And in some countries, offending regimes use human rights commitments to distract attention from or justify their other abuses. Ford explores how our haste to identify every ideal as a universal right devalues rights as a whole, so that even the most important protections—such as that against torture—become negotiable.
In clear, persuasive prose, Ford explores cases ranging from food distribution to the poor in India to sex work in Japan, illustrating how a rights-based approach to these problems often impedes more effective measures—the pragmatic politics of cost weighing, compromise, and collective action. The bad news is that improving lives worldwide isn’t as easy as making a declaration. But the good news, as Universal Rights Down to Earth powerfully demonstrates, is that if we are clear-eyed and culturally aware, it can be done.

Confronting homophobia in Europe: social and legal perspectives, 2011

Authors: Luca Trappolin, Alessandro Gasparini, Robert Wintemute

Publisher: Hart Publishing

Language: English

About: Homophobia exists in many different forms across Europe. Member States offer uneven levels of legal protection for lesbian and gay rights; at the same time the social meanings and practices relating to homosexuality are culturally distinct and intersect in complex ways with gender, class and ethnicity in different national contexts.

The essays in this volume illustrate the findings of a European project on homophobia and fundamental rights in which sociologists and legal experts have analysed the position in four Member States: Italy, Slovenia, Hungary and the UK.

The first part of the book investigates the sociological dimensions of homophobia through qualitative methods involving both heterosexual and self-defined lesbian and gay respondents, including those in ethnic communities. The aim is to understand how homophobia and homosexuality are defined and experienced in the everyday life of participants.

The second part is devoted to a legal analysis of how homophobia is reproduced ‘in law’ and how it is confronted ‘with law’. The analysis examines statute and case law; ‘soft law’; administrative practices; the discussion of bills within parliamentary committees; and decisions of public authorities. Among the areas discussed are ‘hate crimes’ and ‘hate speech’; education at all levels; free movement, immigration and asylum; and cross-border reproductive services.

Please note that this book is also available as a free PDF download. For further information please click on the link below:
www.citidive.eu/en/rapporti-e-prodotti/.”

Women's Rights to Social Security and Social Protection, 2014

Authors: Beth Goldblatt, Lucie Lamarche

Publisher: Hart Publishing

Language: English

About: This collection examines the human rights to social security and social protection from a women’s rights perspective. The contributors stress the need to address women’s poverty and exclusion within a human rights framework that takes account of gender. The chapters unpack the rights to social security and protection and their relationship to human rights principles such as gender equality, participation and dignity. Alongside conceptual insights across the field of women’s social security rights, the collection analyses recent developments in international law and in a range of national settings. It considers the ILO’s Social Protection Floors Recommendation and the work of UN treaty bodies. It explores the different approaches to expansion of social protection in developing countries (China, Chile and Bolivia). It also discusses conditionality in cash transfer programmes, a central debate in social policy and development, through a gender lens. Contributors consider the position of poor women, particularly single mothers, in developed countries (Australia, Canada, the United States, Ireland and Spain) facing the damaging consequences of welfare cuts. The collection engages with shifts in global discourse on the role of social policy and the way in which ideas of crisis and austerity have been used to undermine rights with harsh impacts on women.

Women's Social and Economic Rights - Developments in South Africa, 2011

Authors: Beth Goldblatt, KS McLean

Publisher: Juta

Language: English

About: This book covers women’s rights to health, housing, social security, land, food, water and basic services, education and work and also explores these rights through a cross-cutting examination of the girl child’s rights and customary law. Chapters focus on the South African context, legislation and jurisprudence but also discuss the role of international human rights law in the area of women’s social and economic rights. A framework chapter offers a conceptual approach to ‘engendering’ social and economic rights rather than simply extending them in a gender neutral way to women.

Rights, Religious Pluralism and the Recognition of Difference: Off the scales of justice, 2015

Authors: Dorota Gozdecka

Publisher: Routledge

Language: English

About: Human rights and their principles of interpretation are the leading legal paradigms of our time. Freedom of religion occupies a pivotal position in rights discourses, and the principles supporting its interpretation receive increasing attention from courts and legislative bodies. This book critically evaluates religious pluralism as an emerging legal principle arising from attempts to define the boundaries of freedom of religion. It examines religious pluralism as an underlying aspect of different human rights regimes and constitutional traditions. It is, however, the static and liberal shape religious pluralism has assumed that is taken up critically here. In order to address how difference is vulnerable to elimination, rather than recognition, the book takes up a contemporary ethics of alterity. More generally, and through its reconstruction of a more difference-friendly vision of religious pluralism, it tackles the problem of the role of rights in the era of diverse narratives of emancipation.

Europe at the Edge of Pluralism, 2015

Authors: Dorota Gozdecka, Magdalena Kmak

Publisher: Intersentia

Language: English

About: This volume tackles contemporary problems of legal accommodation of diversity in Europe and recent developments in the area in diverse European legal regimes. Despite professing the motto ‘Unity in Diversity,’ Europe appears to be struggling with discord rather than unity. Legal discussions reflect a crisis when it comes to matters of migration, accommodation of minorities, and dealing with the growing heterogeneity of European societies. The book illustrates that the current legal conundrums stem from European oscillation between, on the one hand, acknowledging the need of accommodation, and, on the other, the tendencies to preserve existing legal traditions. It claims that these opposite tendencies have led Europe to the edge of pluralism. This ‘edge’ – just as with the linguistic interpretation of the word ‘edge’ – carries multiple meanings, conveying a plethora of problems encountered by law when dealing with diversity. The book explores and illustrates these multiple ‘edges of pluralism,’ tracing back their origins and examining the contemporary legal conundrums they have led to. Europe at the Edge of Pluralism encourages readers to explore whether there are fundamental problems with approaches to diversity. And, if so, can they be rescued from their current precarious position? It asks whether Europe at the edge is truly capable of uniting in diversity and developing a constructive approach to its growing pluralism. (Series: Ius Commune: European and Comparative Law – Vol. 134) [Subject: Socio-Legal Studies, European Law, Human Rights Law]

Letters of the Law: Race and the Fantasy of Colorblindness in American Law, 2015

Authors: Sora Han

Publisher: Stanford Law Books

Language: English

About: One of the hallmark features of the post–civil rights United States is the reign of colorblindness over national conversations about race and law. But how, precisely, should we understand this notion of colorblindness in the face of enduring racial hierarchy in American society? In Letters of the Law, Sora Y. Han argues that colorblindness is a foundational fantasy of law that not only informs individual and collective ideas of race, but also structures the imaginative capacities of American legal interpretation. Han develops a critique of colorblindness by deconstructing the law’s central doctrines on due process, citizenship, equality, punishment and individual liberty, in order to expose how racial slavery and the ongoing struggle for abolition continue to haunt the law’s reliance on the fantasy of colorblindness.
Letters of the Law provides highly original readings of iconic Supreme Court cases on racial inequality―spanning Japanese internment to affirmative action, policing to prisoner rights, Jim Crow segregation to sexual freedom. Han’s analysis provides readers with new perspectives on many urgent social issues of our time, including mass incarceration, educational segregation, state intrusions on privacy, and neoliberal investments in citizenship. But more importantly, Han compels readers to reconsider how the diverse legacies of civil rights reform archived in American law might be rewritten as a heterogeneous practice of black freedom struggle.

Water is Life: Women's human rights in national and local water governance in Southern and Eastern Africa, 2015

Authors: Anne Hellum, Patricia Kameri-Mbote, Barbara van Koppen

Publisher: Weaver Press

Language: English

About:This book approached water and sanitation as an African gender and human rights issue. Empirical case studies from Kenya, Malawi, South Africa and Zimbabwe show how coexisting international, national and local regulations of water and sanitation respond to the ways in which different groups of rural and urban women gain access to water for personal, domestic and livelihood purposes. The authors, who are lawyers, sociologists, political scientists and anthropologists, explore how women cope in contexts where they lack secure rights, and participation in water governance institutions, formal and informal. The research shows how women – as producers of family food – rely on water from multiple sources that are governed by community based norms and institutions which recognise the right to water for livelihood. How these ‘common pool water resources’ – due to protection gaps in both international and national law – are threatened by large-scale development and commercialisation initiatives, facilitated through national permit systems, is a key concern. The studies demonstrate that existing water governance structures lack mechanisms which make them accountable to poor and vulnerable water users on the ground, most importantly women. The findings thus underscore the need to intensify measures to hold states accountable, not just in water services provision, but in assuring the basic human right to clean drinking water and sanitation; and also to protect water for livelihoods.

Women's Human Rights: CEDAW in International, Regional and National Law, 2013

Authors: Anne Hellum, Henriette Sinding Aasen

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Language: English

About: As an instrument which addresses the circumstances which affect women’s lives and enjoyment of rights in a diverse world, the CEDAW is slowly but surely making its mark on the development of international and national law. Using national case studies from South Asia, Southern Africa, Australia, Canada and Northern Europe, Women’s Human Rights examines the potential and actual added value of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in comparison and interaction with other equality and anti-discrimination mechanisms. The studies demonstrate how state and non-state actors have invoked, adopted or resisted the CEDAW and related instruments in different legal, political, economic and socio-cultural contexts, and how the various international, regional and national regimes have drawn inspiration and learned from each other.

The Development of Disability Rights Under International Law, 2014

Authors: Arlene S. Kanter

Publisher: Routledge

Language: English

About: The adoption of the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (CPRD) by the United Nations in 2006 is the first comprehensive and binding treaty on the rights of people with disabilities. It establishes the right of people with disabilities to equality, dignity, autonomy, full participation, as well as the right to live in the community, and the right to supported decision-making and inclusive education. Prior to the CRPD, international law had provided only limited protections to people with disabilities.

This book analyses the development of disability rights as an international human rights movement. Focusing on the United States and countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East the book examines the status of people with disabilities under international law prior to the adoption of the CPRD, and follows the development of human rights protections through the convention’s drafting process. Arlene Kanter argues that by including both new applications and entirely new approaches to human rights treaty enforcement, the CRPD is significant not only to people with disabilities but also to the general development of international human rights, by offering new human rights protections for all people.
Taking a comparative perspective, the book explores how the success of the CRPD in achieving protections depends on the extent to which individual countries enforce domestic laws and policies, and the changing public attitudes towards people with disabilities. This book will be of excellent use and interest to researchers and students of human rights law, discrimination, and disability studies.

A Theory of Discrimination Law, 2015

Authors: Tarunbah Khaitan

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Language: English

About: Marrying legal doctrine from five pioneering and conversant jurisdictions with contemporary political philosophy, this book provides a general theory of discrimination law. Part I gives a theoretically rigorous account of the identity and scope of discrimination law: what makes a legal norm a norm of discrimination law? What is the architecture of discrimination law? Unlike the approach popular with most textbooks, the discussion eschews list-based discussions of protected grounds, insteadorganising the doctrine in a clear thematic structure. This definitional preamble sets the agenda for the next two parts. Part II draws upon the identity and structure of discrimination law to consider what the point of this area of law is. Attention to legal doctrine rules out many answers that ideologically-entrenched writers have offered to this question. The real point of discrimination law, this Part argues, is to remove abiding, pervasive, and substantial relative group disadvantage. This objective is best defended on liberal rather than egalitarian grounds. Having considered its overall purpose, Part III gives a theoretical account of the duties imposed by discrimination law. A common definition of the antidiscrimination duty accommodates tools as diverse as direct and indirect discrimination, harassment, and reasonable accommodation. These different tools are shown to share a common normative concern and a single analytical structure. Uniquely in the literature, this Part also defends the imposition of these duties only to certain duty-bearers in specified contexts. Finally, the conditions under which affirmative action is justified are explained.

Mobilizing for Policy Change: Women's Movements in Central and Eastern European Domestic Violence Policy Struggles, 2015

Authors: Andrea Krizsan

Publisher: Central European University Press

Language: English

About: The aim of this edited volume is to explore and understand the influence of women’s movement mobilization on domestic violence policy change in Central and Eastern Europe. Fifteen years ago domestic violence was barely present on the policy agenda of countries in the CEE region. By 2005 most countries of the region adopted laws and policies addressing it and proceeded with implementation. Domestic violence policy processes can be seen as one of the most remarkable successes of women’s movements in the region, which may stand to challenge skepticism around the policy efficiency of women’s movements in Central and Eastern Europe. While variation certainly exists in the extent to which policy change that ultimately took place responds to women’s rights concerns, there is undoubted progress in all countries of the region.

This volume addresses a series of questions: what are the dynamics that led to movement successes in the region? Which movements and the strategies they adopt are successful in promoting progressive policy change? Why do some movements manage to secure policy change that is women’s rights friendly, while others lose control beyond setting the agenda? How do alliances, institutionalization and framing make a difference? And how patterns of achieving policy influence resemble or differ from patterns found in Western post-industrialized states? Are Central and Eastern European domestic violence policy processes any different? The book develops a theoretical framework explaining the links between mobilization and change, followed by the portrayal of in-depth case studies on Bulgaria, Croatia, Poland, and Romania.

Institutionalizing Intersectionality The Changing Nature of European Equality, 2012

Authors: Andrea Krizsan, Hege Skjeie, Judith Squires

Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan

Language: English

About: An exploration of the ways that multiple inequalities are being addressed in Europe. Using country-based and region-specific case studies it provides an innovative comparative analysis of the multidimensional equality regimes that are emerging in Europe, and reveals the potential that these have for institutionalizing intersectionality.

The Democratic Foundations of Policy Diffusion: How Health, Family, and Employment Laws Spread Across Countries, 2013

Authors: Katerina Linos

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Language: English

About: Why do law reforms spread around the world in waves? In the dominant account of diffusion through technocracy, international networks of elites develop orthodox policy solutions and transplant these across countries without regard for the wishes of ordinary citizens. But this account overlooks a critical factor: in democracies, reforms must win the support of politicians, voters, and interest groups. This book claims that laws spread across countries in very public and politicized ways, and develops a theory of diffusion through democracy. I argue that politicians choose to follow certain international models to win domestic elections, and to persuade skeptical voters that their ideas are not radical, ill-thought-out experiments, but mainstream, tried-and-true solutions. This book shows how international models generated domestic support for health, family, and employment law reforms across rich democracies. Information that international organizations have endorsed certain reforms or that foreign countries have adopted them is valuable to voters. Public opinion experiments show that even Americans respond positively to this information. Case studies of election campaigns and legislative debates demonstrate that politicians with diverse ideologies reference international models strategically, and focus on the few international organizations and countries familiar to voters. Data on policy adoption from many rich democracies document that governments follow international organization templates and imitate the policy choices of countries heavily covered in national media and familiar to voters. Benchmarks from Abroad provides a direct defense to a major criticism international organizations and networks face: that they conflict with domestic democracy. Even presumptively weak international efforts, such as the development of soft law and best practices, can increase voter support for major reforms. Instead, international and European Union negotiations to establish binding legal obligations can be costly and protracted, resulting in “too little, too late.” However, the book also explains how electoral calculations do not favor the spread of successful policies that happen to originate in small and remote states.

Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class, 2013

Authors: Ian Haney Lopez

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Language: English

About: Campaigning for president in 1980, Ronald Reagan told stories of Cadillac-driving “”welfare queens”” and “”strapping young bucks”” buying T-bone steaks with food stamps. In trumpeting these tales of welfare run amok, Reagan never needed to mention race, because he was blowing a dog whistle: sending a message about racial minorities inaudible on one level, but clearly heard on another. In doing so, he tapped into a long political tradition that started with George Wallace and Richard Nixon, and is more relevant than ever in the age of the Tea Party and the first black president.
In Dog Whistle Politics, Ian Haney López offers a sweeping account of how politicians and plutocrats deploy veiled racial appeals to persuade white voters to support policies that favor the extremely rich yet threaten their own interests. Dog whistle appeals generate middle-class enthusiasm for political candidates who promise to crack down on crime, curb undocumented immigration, and protect the heartland against Islamic infiltration, but ultimately vote to slash taxes for the rich, give corporations regulatory control over industry and financial markets, and aggressively curtail social services. White voters, convinced by powerful interests that minorities are their true enemies, fail to see the connection between the political agendas they support and the surging wealth inequality that takes an increasing toll on their lives. The tactic continues at full force, with the Republican Party using racial provocations to drum up enthusiasm for weakening unions and public pensions, defunding public schools, and opposing health care reform.
Rejecting any simple story of malevolent and obvious racism, Haney López links as never before the two central themes that dominate American politics today: the decline of the middle class and the Republican Party’s increasing reliance on white voters. Dog Whistle Politics will generate a lively and much-needed debate about how racial politics has destabilized the American middle class-white and nonwhite members alike.

Traite, Prostitution, Inégalité, 2014

Authors: Catharine A. MacKinnon

Publisher: Mount Royal

Language: French

About: N/A

Religion and Sexual Orientation: Conflict or Cohesion? In Religion in a Liberal State, 2013

Authors: M Malik

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Language: English

About: Our Study Group member Maleiha Malik has authored a chapter titled “Religion and Sexual Orientation: Conflict or Cohesion?” in this book.

As religion has become more visible in public life, with closer relations of co-operation with government as well as a force in some political campaigns, its place in public life has become more contested. Fudged compromises of the past are giving way to a desire for clear lines and moral principles. This book brings the disciplines of law, sociology, politics and theology into conversation with one anther to shed light on the questions thrown up by ‘religion in a liberal state’. It discusses practical problems in a British context, such as the accommodation of religious dress, discrimination against sexual minorities and state support for historic religions; considers legal frameworks of equality and human rights; and elucidates leading ideas of neutrality, pluralism, secularism and public reason. Fundamentally, it asks what it means to be liberal in a world in which religious diversity is becoming more present and more problematic.

The 'other' citizens: religion in a multicultural Europe in Law, state and religion in the new Europe: debates and dilemmas, 2012

Authors: M Malik

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Language: English

About: Our Study Group member Maleiha Malik has authored a chapter titled “The ‘other’ citizens: religion in a multicultural Europe” in this book.

The return of religion to the public sphere raises various dilemmas. Rights and values, pluralism and identity, justice and efficacy, autonomy and tradition, and integration and toleration cannot always be balanced without the loss of something valuable. This volume of essays tackles such dilemmas from two perspectives. To begin, major contemporary theorists rethink the place of religion in the public sphere from republican, liberal and critical-theoretical viewpoints. Contributors then bring together theory and practice to better conceptualize and assess the latest developments in European jurisprudence with respect to religion.

Anti-Muslim Prejudice: Past and Present, 2010

Authors: M Malik et al

Publisher: Routledge

Language: English

About: This book contributes to a deeper understanding of contemporary political problems and controversial topics, such as issues that focus on Muslim women: the ‘headscarf’ debates, honour killings and forced marriages. There is also analysis of media bias in the representation of Muslims and Islam, and other urgent social and political issues such as the social exclusion of European Muslims and the political mobilisation against Islam by far-right parties.

Importing EU Norms: Conceptual Framework and Empirical Findings, 2015

Authors: A. Masselot

Publisher: Springer

Language: English

About: This interdisciplinary work presents a conceptual framework and brings together constructivist and rationalist accounts of how EU norms are adopted, adapted, resisted or rejected. These chapters provide empirical cases and critical analysis of a rich variety of norm-takers from EU member states, European and non-European states, including the rejection of EU norms in Russia and Africa as well as adaptation of EU practices in Australia and New Zealand. Chapters on China, ASEAN and the Czech Republic demonstrate resistance to EU norm export. This volume probes differences in willingness to adopt or adapt norms between various actors in the recipient state and explores such questions as: How do norm-takers perceive of the EU and its norms? Is there a ‘normative fit’ between EU norms and the local normative context? Similarly, how do EU norms impact recipients’ interests and institutional arrangements? First, the authors map EU norm export strategies and approaches as they affect norm-takers. Second, the chapters recognize that norm adoption, adaption, resistance or rejection is a product of interaction and a relationship in which interdependence, asymmetry and power play a role. Third, we see that domestic circumstances within norm-takers condition the reception of norms. This book’s focus on norm-takers highlights the reflexive nature of norm diffusion and that nature has implications for the EU itself as a norm exporter. Anyone with an interest in the research agenda on norm diffusion, normative power and the EU’s normative dialogue with the world will find this book highly valuable, including scholars, policy makers and students of subjects including political science, European studies, international relations and international and EU law.

Reasoning Rights: Comparative judicial engagement, 2014

Authors: C. Mccrudden

Publisher: Hart Publishing

Language: English

About: This edited book is about comparative reasoning in human rights cases, exploring the questions: How is it that notionally universal norms are reasoned by courts in such dramatically different ways? What is the shape of this reasoning? What techniques are common across the transnational jurisprudence? What techniques are diverse? With contributions by a team of world-leading human rights scholars, the book moves beyond simply addressing the institutional questions concerning courts and human rights, which too often dominate discussions of this kind. Instead, it seeks a deeper examination of the similarities and divergence in the content of reasons being developed by different courts when addressing comparable human rights questions. These differences, while partly influenced by institutional issues, cannot be attributable to them alone. The book explores the diverse and rich underlying spectrum of human rights reasoning, as a distinctive and particular form of legal reasoning, evident in the case studies across the selected jurisdictions. It is a fascinating study for all those interested in human rights law and legal reasoning.

Understanding Human Dignity, 2013

Authors: C. Mccrudden

Publisher: Oxford University press

Language: English

About: Understanding Human Dignity” aims to help the reader make sense of current debates about the meaning and implications of the idea of “human dignity.” The concept of human dignity has probably never been so omni-present in everyday speech, or so deeply embedded in political and legal discourse. In debates on torture, abortion, same-sex marriage, and welfare reform, appeals to dignity are seldom hard to find. The concept of dignity is not only a prominent feature of political debate, but also, and increasingly, of legal argument. Indeed, courts tell us that human dignity is the foundation of all human rights. But the more important it is, the more contested it seems to have become. There has, as a result, been an extraordinary explosion of scholarly writing about the concept of human dignity in law, political philosophy, and theology. This book aims to reflect on these intra-disciplinary debates about dignity in law, philosophy, history, politics, and theology, through a series of edited essays from specialists in these fields, explored the contested concept in its full richness and complexity.

The Global Politics of Impairment and Disability: Processes and Embodiments, 2014

Authors: Karen Soldatic, Helen Meekosha

Publisher: Routledge

Language: English

About: Disability is of central concern to the developing world but has largely been under-represented in global development debates, discourses and negotiations. Similarly, disability studies has overlooked both the theorists and the social experience of the global South, and there has been a one-way transfer of ideas and knowledge from the North to the South in this field.

This volume seeks to redress the processes of scholarly colonialism by drawing together a diverse set of understandings, theorizing and experiences. The chapters situate disability within the Southern context and support the work of Southern disabled scholars and activists seeking to decolonize Southern experiences, knowledges and absences in the field while simultaneously attempting to make an intervention into able-bodied (mainstream) development discourses, practices and politics.

Discriminations en Droit du Travail: Dialogue avec la Doctrine Américaine, 2013

Authors: Marie Mercat-Bruns

Publisher: Dalloz

Language: French

About: Comment mieux appréhender les discriminations directes et indirectes ? En quoi le harcèlement peut-il révéler des discriminations systémiques ?
Quelles sont les particularités de la discrimination fondée sur la religion, le sexe, l’âge ou le handicap ? Une série d’entretiens avec des chercheurs américains suivis d’observations de l’auteur, sert de prétexte à l’étude d’un champ relativement nouveau : la non-discrimination en droit du travail. Elle fait partie du socle des droits fondamentaux de l’ordre juridique international et national. En outre, l’évocation outre-Atlantique de l’égalité et de la diversité renvoie à une interprétation et une critique des normes, qui mettent en perspective les notions françaises et européennes. Apparaissent certains enjeux de la non-discrimination en Europe, où la catégorisation des personnes est au coeur du droit social. Le droit comparé est ici mis à l’honneur : il permet de réfléchir à la portée théorique et pratique du droit de la non-discrimination.

Ruth Colker, Frank Dobbin, Chai Feldblum, Richard Ford, Janet Halley, Christine Jolls, Linda Krieger, Martha Minow, David Oppenheimer, Devah Pager, Robert Post, Vicki Schultz, Reva Siegel, Susan Sturm et Julie Suk ont contribué, grâce à leur expertise, aux entretiens.

Diplômée de l’école de droit de l’Université de Pennsylvanie et de l’Université Paris Ouest Nanterre, Marie Mercat-Bruns est maître de conférences des Universités au Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, et membre du laboratoire LISE-CNRS. Elle enseigne également à l’école de droit de Sciences Po et y supervise le programme pédagogique « Accès au droit » au sein de la clinique du droit.

A matter for two courts: the fundamental rights question for the EU, 2015

Authors: Sonia Morano-Foadi, Lucy Vickers

Publisher: Hart Publishing

Language: English

About: This collection joins the new and expanding scholarship on the protection of fundamental rights in Europe and reflects on the relationship between the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The book questions whether the changes introduced by the Lisbon Treaty align the CJEU to the ECtHR’s interpretation and methods, triggering different processes of institutionalisation within a coherent European system. These issues are explored through a contextual analysis of areas of law such as equality rights in employment law, citizenship and migration, internet law and access to justice. This volume includes perspectives from the scholarly community as well as practitioners, judges and European policy makers. It also examines the state of accession of the EU to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and considers the legal implications of the interactions of the two courts for the protection of the fundamental rights of EU citizens and individuals legally residing in Europe.
The volume is essential reading for practitioners, judges, European policy makers and members of the scholarly community working in this area of law.

Disability, Spaces and Places of Policy Exclusion, 2014

Authors: Karen Soldatic, Hannah Morgan, Alan Roulstone

Publisher: Routledge

Language: English

About: Geographies of disability have become a key research priority for many disability scholars and geographers. This edited collection, incorporating the work of leading international disability researchers, seeks to expand the current geographical frame operating within the realm of disability. Providing a critical and comprehensive examination of disability and spatial processes of exclusion and inclusion for disabled people, the book uniquely brings together insights from disability studies, spatial geographies and social policy with the purpose of exploring how spatial factors shape, limit or enhance policy towards, and the experiences of, disabled people.

Divided into two parts, the first section explores the key concepts to have emerged within the field of disability geographies, and their relationship to new policy regimes. New and emerging concepts within the field are critically explored for their significance in conceptually framing disability. The second section provides an in-depth examination of disabled people’s experience of changing landscapes within the onset of emerging disability policy regimes. It deals with how the various actors and stakeholders, such as governments, social care agencies, families and disabled people traverse these landscapes under the new conditions laid out by changing policy regimes. Crucially, the chapters examine the lived meaning of changing spatial relations for disabled people.

Grounded in recent empirical research, and with a global focus, each of the chapters reveal how social policy domains are challenged or undermined by the spatial realities faced by disabled people, and expands existing understandings of disability. In turn, the book supports readers to grasp future policy directions and processes that enable disabled people’s choices, rights and participation. This important work will be invaluable reading for students and researchers involved in disability, geography and social policy.

Fair Access to Higher Education: Global Perspectives, 2015

Authors: Anna Mountford-Zimdars, Daniel Sabbagh, David Post

Publisher: The University of Chicago Press

Language: English

About: What does “fairness” mean internationally in terms of access to higher education? Increased competition for places in elite universities has prompted a worldwide discussion regarding the fairness of student admission policies. Despite budget cuts from governments—and increasing costs for students—competition is fierce at the most prestigious institutions. Universities, already under stress, face a challenge in balancing institutional research goals, meeting individual aspirations for upward social mobility, and promoting the democratic ideal of equal opportunity.

Fair Access to Higher Education addresses this challenge from a broad, transnational perspective. The chapters in this volume contribute to our thinking and reflection on policy developments and also offer new empirical findings about patterns of advantage and disadvantage in higher education access. Bringing together insights drawn from a variety of fields, including philosophy, linguistics, social psychology, sociology, and public policy, the book sheds light on how “fairness” in university admissions has been articulated worldwide.

Age Discrimination and Labour Law. Comparative and Conceptual Perspectives in the EU and Beyond, 2015

Authors: Ann Numhauser-Henning, Mia Rönnmar

Publisher: Wolters Kluwer

Language: English

About: Benefit from the first in-depth study of the special complexities of the ban on age discrimination. Age Discrimination and Labour Law. Comparative and Conceptual Perspectives in the EU and Beyond, presents a detailed investigation of age discrimination from the dual perspectives of labour law and non-discrimination law.

Ensure that you have a full understanding of the latest global developments with the topical discussion and analysis of EU law and the national law in a representative range of Member States. The richly detailed comparative approach also examines developments in Australia, Japan, Latin America, South Africa, and the United States.

Distinguished scholars in the fields of non-discrimination law and labour law contribute comparative and conceptual analyses as well as details of national developments, delivering informative guidance to support your practice.

How will Age Discrimination and Labour Law. Comparative and Conceptual Perspectives in the EU and Beyond benefit my practice?

Defend or prosecute age discrimination cases with all available legal strategies
Develop a clear understanding of the commonalities and differences in age discrimination law among representative jurisdictions
Gain insight into the emerging global trends affecting the ban on age discrimination
The particular emphasis on the extensive, dynamic, and controversial case law of the Court of Justice of the EU and its implications will ensure practical understanding. Topics addressed include the following:

precarious and vulnerable workers;
austerity measures;
pension reform;
employers’ justification of differences in treatment;
how the goal of ‘active ageing’ can be used to weaken employment protection
youth unemployment; and
the dangers of intergenerational conflict and economic unsustainability.
Age Discrimination and Labour Law. Comparative and Conceptual Perspectives in the EU and Beyond is sure to be greatly valued by practitioners, policymakers, and academics in a number of relevant fields.

The Reach of Rights, 2015

Authors: Judith Resnik

Publisher: Yale Law School

Language: English

About: N/A

Sources of Law and of Rights, 2014

Authors: Judith Resnik

Publisher: Yale Law School

Language: English

About: N/A

Governments’ Authority, 2013

Authors: Judith Resnik

Publisher: Yale Law School

Language: English

About: N/A

Law’s Borders, 2012

Authors: Judith Resnik

Publisher: Yale Law School

Language: English

About: N/A

Le discriminazioni razziali ed etniche, 2011

Authors: Diletta Tega

Publisher: Armando Editore

Language: Italian

About: N/A

Diversity Ideologies in Organizations (Applied Psychology Series), 2014

Authors: Kecia M. Thomas, Victoria C. Plaut, Ny Mia Tran

Publisher: Routledge

Language: English

About: Since the increased attention toward diversity in the workplace, the concepts of “diversity initiatives” and “diversity management” have become a common place in many conversations among academics and practitioners alike. The diversity movement in the workplace originated from the increased avocation for equal treatment of minority groups due to the dynamic composition of the modern workforce. Many organizations were forced to face these changes and the dilemma of how to respond to group differences to maintain and/or increase organization effectiveness and productivity. This volume will present new research on the colorblindness versus multiculturalism debate, assist in broadening the diversity ideology conversation, share this conversation across social science domains including industrial/organizational psychology, social psychology, and law and public policy, and highlight how the nature of diversity ideology may be fluid and therefore be different depending on the diversity dimension discussed.

Making anti-racial discrimination law: a comparative history of social action and anti-racial discrimination law, 2011

Authors: Iyiola Solanke

Publisher: Routledge

Language: English

About: Making Anti-Racial Discrimination Law examines the evolution of anti-racial discrimination law from a socio-legal perspective. Taking a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, the book does not simply look at race and society or race and law but brings these areas together by drawing out the tension in the process, in different countries, by which race becomes a policy issue which is subsequently regulated by law. Moving beyond traditional social movement theory to include the extreme right wing as a social actor, the study identifies the role of extreme right wing confrontation in agenda setting and law-making, a feature often neglected in studies of social action. In so doing, it identifies the influence of both the extreme right and liberalism on anti-racial discrimination law. Focusing primarily on Great Britain and Germany, the book also demonstrates how national politics feeds into EU policy and identifies some of the challenges in creating a high and uniform level of protection against racial discrimination throughout the EU.

Using primary archival materials from Germany and the UK, the empirical richness of this book constitutes a valuable contribution to the field of anti-racial discrimination law, at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. The book will interest specialists and academics in law, sociology and political science as well as non-specialists, who will find this study stimulating and useful to expand their knowledge of anti-racial discrimination law or pursue teaching goals, policy objectives and reform agendas.

EU Law, Minorities and Enlargement, 2010

Authors: Kyriaki Topidi

Publisher: Intersentia

Language: English

About: The European Union, as it was perceived by its founders, was an economic organization. The completion of the ambitious task of enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe in 2004 and 2007 surfaced, however, new legal and policy challenges for the Union. One of the most contested areas of action, connected to enlargement, for the EU has been minority rights monitoring. The new task created a lack of clarity on the standards and criteria of assessment of the performance of current and perspective member states.

This book explains and analyses questions on the dominant trends on minority rights protection at EU level, their effects on member states and their future perspectives through the prism of the recent enlargements. It begins by considering the role of the EU in minority protection and then moves on to provide a balanced approach of different possible methods to protect ethnic minorities using legal tools and principles available in EU law. It also includes case-studies that test the theoretical approaches previously described. Finally, the book concludes with an assessment of the future avenues for minority rights protection within the EU.

The book’s distinct perspective aims at linking the complex legal framework of accession negotiations to the more political process of conditionality. It does so by tackling a subject area that has not often been treated from a human rights perspective “