2020 Publications

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

 

The Global #MeToo Movement

Author: Estefanía Vela Barba, Nasrina Bargzie, Purna Sen, Shivangi Misra, Giorgia Serughetti, Virginia Marturet, Denise Neves Abade, Zuzana Andreska, Shreya Atrey, Zulaikha Aziz, Ivana Bacik, Kadriye Bakirci, Daphne Barak-Erez, Emmanuelle Bribosia, Marie Mercat-Bruns, Lucy-Ann Buckley, Laura Carlson, Yukyong Choe, Jessica Clarke, Debbie Collier, Peter Dunne, Lauren B. Edelman, Catherine L. Fisk, Barbara Havelková, Costanza Hermanin, Kazuko Ito, Jenny Jian Jang, Saru Jayaraman, Kalpana Kannabiran, Puja Kapai, Ulrike Lembke, Chloe Leroy, Catharine A. MacKinnon, Aileen McColgan, Ruth M. Mestre i Mestre, Amelia Miazad, Marianna Muravyeva, Ann M. Noel, Caroline Joelle Nwabueze, Karen O’Connell, Amy Oppenheimer, David B. Oppenheimer, Isabelle Rorive, Colleen Sheppard, Isabel C. Jaramillo Sierra, Ramya Kannabiran Tella, Maryamossadat Torabi, Lining Zhang

Publisher: Full Court Press

Language: English

About: When US activists started using the #MeToo hashtag (as created by Tarana Burke) to speak out against sexual harassment, they joined, and then helped propel, a global movement. On every continent, women are using the new tools of social media to confront one of the oldest barriers to equality: the threat of violence, including sexual harassment, as a tool of male supremacy. In The Global#MeToo Movement, produced by the Berkeley Center on Comparative Equality & Anti-Discrimination Law, 48 authors from 28 countries spanning every continent but Antarctica tell the story of how social media has driven a social movement against sexual harassment, and how the law has responded, often by helping men to push back. Twenty-two of the 48 authors are women of color, and many are part of a new generation of young women bringing new insights to the fight against discrimination and harassment. The authors also include leading university professors, NGO activists, and government officials, including a justice of the Israeli Supreme Court and a member of the Irish Senate. Chapter one is by the acclaimed feminist legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon.

Publicity: Check out how our book is being perceived globally in this interview , this article from the Indian Cultural Forum, and these two articles from The Leaflet: Traumascapes and an Arc of Resistance: #MeToo in India and Defamation Law is Being Weaponised to Destroy the Global #MeToo Movement: Can Free Speech Protections Help Counter the Impact?

Law and Society Today

Author: Riaz Tejani 

Publisher: University of California Press

Language: English

About: Law and Society Today is a problem-oriented survey of sociolegal studies, with a unique emphasis on recent historical and political developments. Whereas other texts focus heavily on criminal procedure, this book foregrounds the significant changes of the 2000s and 2010s, including neoliberalism, migration, multiculturalism, and the large influence of law and economics in law teaching, policy debates, and judicial decision-making.

Each chapter presents key concepts, real-world applications, and hypothetical problems that allow students to test comprehension. With an integrated approach to theory and practice and written in an accessible tone, this text helps students recognize the dynamic forces that shape the way the law is constructed and implemented, particularly how law drives social inequality.

Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist

Author: Judy Heumann 

Publisher: Beacon Press

Language: English

About: A story of fighting to belong in a world that wasn’t built for all of us and of one woman’s activism–from the streets of Brooklyn and San Francisco to inside the halls of Washington–Being Heumann recounts Judy Heumann’s lifelong battle to achieve respect, acceptance, and inclusion in society.

Paralyzed from polio at eighteen months, Judy’s struggle for equality began early in life. From fighting to attend grade school after being described as a “fire hazard” to later winning a lawsuit against the New York City school system for denying her a teacher’s license because of her paralysis, Judy’s actions set a precedent that fundamentally improved rights for disabled people.

As a young woman, Judy rolled her wheelchair through the doors of the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in San Francisco as a leader of the Section 504 Sit-In, the longest takeover of a governmental building in US history. Working with a community of over 150 disabled activists and allies, Judy successfully pressured the Carter administration to implement protections for disabled peoples’ rights, sparking a national movement and leading to the creation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Candid, intimate, and irreverent, Judy Heumann’s memoir about resistance to exclusion invites readers to imagine and make real a world in which we all belong.

The Construction of Fatherhood

Author: Alice Margaria

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Language: English

About: The book tackles one of the most topical socio-legal issues of today: how the European Court of Human Rights is responding to shifting practices and ideas of fatherhood. The jurisprudential analysis is situated in a context of social change that offers radical possibilities for the fragmentation of the conventional father figure and therefore urges decisions upon what kind of characteristics makes someone a legal father. In a range of paradigmatic domains, this book explores the Court’s understanding of what it means to be a father today, and whether care is valued at all. It also reflects on the genesis of the Court’s (re-)construction of fatherhood, thus shedding light on the roles played by doctrines of interpretation.

Domestic Judicial Treatment of European Court of Human Rights Case Law. Beyond Compliance

Author: David Kosař, Jan Petrov, Katarína Šipulová, Hubert Smekal, Ladislav Vyhnánek, Jozef Janovský

Publisher: Routledge & CRC Press

Language: English

About: The European Court of Human Rights (“ECtHR”) suffers from the burgeoning caseload and challenges to its authority. This two-pronged crisis undermines the ECtHR’s legitimacy and consequently the functioning of the whole European human rights regime. Domestic courts can serve as welcome allies of the Strasbourg Court. They have a potential to diffuse Convention norms domestically, and therefore prevent and filter many potential human rights violations. Yet, we know very little about how domestic courts actually treat the Strasbourg Court’s rulings. This book brings unique empirical findings on how often, how and with what consequences domestic judges work with the ECtHR’s case law. It moves beyond the narrow concept of compliance and develops a new three-level methodology for analysing the role played by domestic courts in the implementation of ECtHR case law. Moreover, using the example of Czechia, it shifts the attention from Western countries to a more volatile Central and Eastern European region, which has recently witnessed democratic backsliding and backlash against international checks on human rights and the rule of law standards. Looking at a wider social and legal context, this book identifies factors helping transitional countries to adapt to regional human rights regimes.

The work will be an essential resource for students, academics and policy-makers working in the areas of Constitutional law, Politics and Human Rights law. Its global appeal is enhanced by the methodological framework which is applicable in other international systems.

Comparative Equality and Anti-Discrimination Law, Third Edition

Author: David B. Oppenheimer, Sheila R. Foster, Sora Y. Han, Richard T. Ford

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Language: English

About: This revised and updated casebook comprehensively compares the U.S. legal approach to problems of inequality and discrimination with the approaches of a variety of other legal systems around the world, including those in Europe, South Africa, China, Colombia, India and Brazil. This book provides an introduction to theories of equality and sources of equality law, and examines inequality and discrimination based on gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and identity, religion and disability.

Vulnerable: The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19

Editors: Colleen M. Flood, Vanessa MacDonnell, Jane Philpott, Sophie Thériault, Sridhar Venkatapuram

Publisher: University of Ottawa Press

Language: English, with some chapters in French

About: The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes the disease known as COVID-19, has infected people in 212 countries so far and on every continent except Antarctica.

Vast changes to our home lives, social interactions, government functioning and relations between countries have swept the world in a few months and are difficult to hold in one’s mind at one time. That is why a collaborative effort such as this edited, multidisciplinary collection is needed. This book confronts the vulnerabilities and interconnectedness made visible by the pandemic and its consequences, along with the legal, ethical and policy responses. These include vulnerabilities for people who have been harmed or will be harmed by the virus directly and those harmed by measures taken to slow its relentless march; vulnerabilities exposed in our institutions, governance and legal structures; and vulnerabilities in other countries and at the global level where persistent injustices harm us all.

Hopefully, COVID-19 will forces us to deeply reflect on how we govern and our policy priorities; to focus preparedness, precaution, and recovery to include all, not just some.

Les grands arrêts en matière de handicap

Editors: Isabelle Hachez, Jogchum Vrielink

Publisher: Larcier

Language: French

About: L’accès à la justice des personnes en situation de handicap reste compliqué, et, lorsqu’elles existent, les décisions rendues en la matière par les organes de contrôle belges et internationaux demeurent méconnues. D’où le parti pris par Isabelle Hachez et Jogchum Vrielink de les rassembler dans cet ouvrage collectif, en les organisant autour de neuf thématiques (le handicap à travers les sources du droit ; les définitions du handicap ;  handicap et dignité ; handicap et égalité ; handicap et capacité juridique ; handicap et autonomie individuelle ; handicap et participation sociale ; handicap et vie privée ; handicap et lieux privatifs de liberté). Au total, l’ouvrage compte quarante auteurs (des universitaires, francophones ou néerlandophones, mais aussi des praticiens), trente commentaires de décisions – parfois aussi d’avis – afférentes aux thématiques retenues, ainsi que des conclusions générales capitalisant sur les enseignements livrés par les commentaires en lien avec les cinq questions adressées aux auteurs à l’entame de la recherche. Celle-ci souligne notamment le caractère pluriel du handicap, lequel recouvre des situations diverses – quoique chacune unique – et fait l’objet, en droit belge, de définitions multiples, parfois éloignées des indications livrées par la Convention onusienne relative aux droits des personnes handicapées. Aussi est-ce en définitive la réalité belge du handicap – des handicaps – qui se dessine au fil des commentaires de l’ouvrage, avec, en arrière-fond, les contours de ce que pourrait être une société inclusive : celle que la Convention onusienne nous demande d’inventer. Si la perspective adoptée est avant tout juridique, cette recherche collective devrait intéresser tout qui porte attention au champ du handicap et aux droits des personnes handicapées : avocats, magistrats, services publics, chercheurs mais aussi associations et acteurs de la société civile.

Intersezionalità. Teorie e pratiche tra dritto e società.

Author: Barbara Giovanna Bello

Publisher: Franco Angeli Edizioni

Language: Italian

About: L’intersezionalità offre strumenti ai diversi attori sociali per operare fruttuose analisi dei mutamenti sociali e giuridici, intraprendere nuovi discorsi epistemologici e promuovere una piena tutela giuridica. Il volume mira a descriverne le implicazioni nello studio della società e del diritto, presenta lo stato dell’arte della sua integrazione all’interno della tutela antidiscriminatoria sovranazionale e nazionale ed esplora, infine, le pratiche seguite dagli operatori giuridici e dalle associazioni impegnate nell’affermazione dei diritti, evidenziando il dialogo tra i diversi livelli dell’odierna cultura ed esperienza giuridica.

Intersectionality and Human Rights Law

Editors: Shreya Atrey, Peter Dunne

Publisher: Hart Publishing

Language: English

About: This collection of essays analyses how diversity in human identity and disadvantage affects the articulation, realisation, violation and enforcement of human rights.

The question arises from the realisation that people, who are severally and severely disadvantaged because of their race, religion, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, class etc, often find themselves at the margins of human rights; their condition seldom improved and sometimes even worsened by the rights discourse. How does one make sense of this relationship between the complexity of people’s disadvantage and violation of their human rights? Does the human rights discourse, based on its universal and common values, have tools, methods or theories to capture and respond to the difference in people’s lived experience of rights? Can intersectionality help in that quest? This book seeks to inaugurate this line of inquiry.

The Queer Outside in Law

Editors: Senthorun Raj, Peter Dunne

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Language: English

About: This book contributes to current debates about “queer outsides” and “queer outsiders” that emerge from tensions in legal reforms aimed at improving the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer people in the United Kingdom. LGBTIQ people in the UK have moved from being situated as “outlaws” – through prohibitions on homosexuality or cross-dressing – to respectable “in laws” – through the emerging acceptance of same-sex families and self-identified genders. From the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in the Sexual Offences Act 1967, to the provision of a bureaucratic mechanism to amend legal sex in the Gender Recognition Act 2004, bringing LGBTIQ people “inside” the law has prompted enormous activist and academic commentary on the desirability of inclusion-focused legal and social reforms. Canvassing an array of current socio-legal debates on colonialism, refugee law, legal gender recognition, intersex autonomy and transgender equality, the contributing authors explore “queer outsiders” who remain beyond the law’s reach and outline the ways in which these outsiders might seek to “come within” and/or “stay outside” law. Given its scope, this modern work will appeal to legal scholars, lawyers, and activists with an interest in gender, sex, sexuality, race, migration and human rights law.  

Caring Responsibilities in European Law and Policy: Who Cares?

Author: Eugenia Caracciolo di Torella, Annick Masselot

Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group

Language: English

About: This book explores the emerging engagement of EU law with care and carers. The book argues that the regulation of care by the EU is crucial because it enables the development of a broad range of policies. It contributes to the sustainability of society and ultimately it enables individuals to flourish. Yet, to date, the EU approach to regulating the caring relationship remains piecemeal and lacks the underpinning of a cohesive strategy. Against this backdrop, this book argues that the EU can and must take leadership in this area by setting principles and standards in accordance with the values of the treaty, in particular gender equality, human dignity, solidarity and well-being. The book further makes a case for a stronger protection for carers, who should not only be protected against discrimination but should also be supported, valued and put in a position to make choices and lead full lives. In order to achieve this, a proactive approach to rebalancing the relationship between paid and unpaid work is necessary. Ultimately, the book puts forward a series of legal and policy recommendations for a holistic approach to care in the EU.

Power, Legal Education, and Law School Cultures

Editors: Meera E. Deo, Mindie Lazarus-Black, Elizabeth Mertz

Publisher: Routledge

Language: English

About: There is a myth that lingers around legal education in many democracies. That myth would have us believe that law students are admitted and then succeed based on raw merit, and that law schools are neutral settings in which professors (also selected and promoted based on merit) use their expertise to train those students to become lawyers. Based on original, empirical research, this book investigates this myth from myriad perspectives, diverse settings, and in different nations, revealing that hierarchies of power and cultural norms shape and maintain inequities in legal education.

Embedded within law school cultures are assumptions that also stymie efforts at reform. The book examines hidden pedagogical messages, showing how presumptions about theory’s relation to practice are refracted through the obfuscating lens of curricula. The contributors also tackle questions of class and market as they affect law training.

Finally, this collection examines how structural barriers replicate injustice even within institutions representing themselves as democratic and open, revealing common dynamics across cultural and institutional forms. The chapters speak to similar issues and to one another about the influence of context, images of law and lawyers, the political economy of legal education, and the agency of students and faculty.