This book considers how vulnerability theory provides the basis for a reconceptualization of the liberal ideas of autonomy, equality, and freedom. Vulnerability theory argues a “vulnerable legal subject” should displace the “liberal legal subject” that currently dominates law and policy. The theory is based on the fundamental empirical realities of the material body and offers an alternative to a social contract or rights-based notion of state responsibility, both of which tend to privilege abstractions such as rationality or dignity. A vulnerability analysis poses law and policy questions based on the “vulnerable legal subject” and requires new thinking about state or governmental responsibility. To achieve a truly comprehensive and inclusive notion of what constitutes social justice or a universal or common good, vulnerability theory mandates a reassessment of both equality and freedom as these concepts are currently conceived. Presenting the work of scholars from a wide range of doctrinal areas, it is this task that the book takes up. In particular, in recognizing that many social or institutional relationships entail uneven positions of dependence and reliance, it maintains that individualized notions of equality or freedom are inadequate and must be reformulated to include a sense of collective or social justice, incorporating asymmetric or unequal allocations of responsibility, and requiring appropriate limitations on the individual. This book’s reorientation of the subject, as well as the central objectives of law and policy, will appeal to scholars and students in law, vulnerability studies, gender studies, critical legal and political theory, politics, philosophy, and sociology.

This book considers how vulnerability theory provides the basis for a reconceptualization of the liberal ideas of autonomy, equality, and freedom. Vulnerability theory argues a "vulnerable legal subject" should displace the "liberal legal subject" that currently dominates law and policy. The theory is based on the fundamental empirical realities of the material body and offers an alternative to a social contract or rights-based notion of state responsibility, both of which tend to privilege abstractions such as rationality or dignity. A vulnerability analysis poses law and policy questions based on the "vulnerable legal subject" and requires new thinking about state or governmental responsibility. To achieve a truly comprehensive and inclusive notion of what constitutes social justice or a universal or common good, vulnerability theory mandates a reassessment of both equality and freedom as these concepts are currently conceived. Presenting the work of scholars from a wide range of doctrinal areas, it is this task that the book takes up. In particular, in recognizing that many social or institutional relationships entail uneven positions of dependence and reliance, it maintains that individualized notions of equality or freedom are inadequate and must be reformulated to include a sense of collective or social justice, incorporating asymmetric or unequal allocations of responsibility, and requiring appropriate limitations on the individual. This book's reorientation of the subject, as well as the central objectives of law and policy, will appeal to scholars and students in law, vulnerability studies, gender studies, critical legal and political theory, politics, philosophy, and sociology.

The shifting nature of employment practice towards the use of more precarious work forms has caused a crisis in classical labour law and engendered a new wave of regulation. This timely book deftly uses this crisis as an opportunity to explore the notion of precariousness or vulnerability in employment relationships. Arguing that the idea of vulnerability has been under-theorised in the labour law literature, Lisa Rodgers illustrates how this extends to the design of regulation for precarious work. The book’s logical structure situates vulnerability in its developmental context before moving on to examine the goals of the regulation of labour law for vulnerability, its current status in the law and case studies of vulnerability such as temporary agency work and domestic work. These threads are astutely drawn together to show the need for a shift in focus towards workers as ‘vulnerable subjects’ in all their complexity in order to better inform labour law policy and practice more generally. Constructively critical, Labour Law, Vulnerability and the Regulation of Precarious Work will prove invaluable to students and scholars of labour and employment law at local, EU and international levels. With its challenge to orthodox thinking and proposals for the improvement of the regulation of labour law, labour law institutions will also find this book of great interest and value.

This book challenges law’s reliance on neurology’s brain-sex binary. The brain has become the latest candidate in a historical search for a reliable and fixed biological marker of ‘true sex’ that has permeated every aspect of Western culture, including law. As definitions of the sexed and gendered body have become ever more contentious, the development and dissemination of brain-sex theories have come to dominate popular understanding of LGBTI+ identities. But, this book argues, the brain is no more helpful than earlier biological measures in ensuring just outcomes. Examining how law determines and differentiates ‘male’ and ‘female’ in two contested areas of sexed identity –through a discussion of Australian cases authorising medical interventions to alter the embodied sex characteristics of transgender minors and intersex minors –the book demonstrates an incoherence in the legal understanding of gender identity development. As the brain too fails as a convincing biological anchor for the binary sex categories of male and female, law must, it is argued, retreat from its aspiration to create, define, and regulate artificially bounded sex categories of male and female. This book will be of great interest to scholars and students in a range of disciplines who are working at the intersection of law, gender, and sexuality.

Unaccompanied child asylum seekers are amongst the world’s most vulnerable populations, and their numbers are increasing. The intersection of their age, their seeking asylum, and separation from their parents creates a specific and acute triple burden of vulnerability. Their precariousness has long been recognised in international human rights law. Yet, human rights-based responses have been subordinated to progressive global securitisation of irregular migration through interception, interdiction, extraterritorial processing and immigration detention. Such an approach necessitates an urgent paradigm shift in how we comprehend their needs as children, the impact of punitive border control laws on them, and the responsibility of States to these children when they arrive at their borders seeking asylum. This book reconceptualises the relationship between unaccompanied child asylum seekers and States. It proposes a new conceptual framework by applying international human rights law, childhood studies and vulnerability theory scholarship in analysing State obligations to respond to these children. This framework incorporates a robust analysis of the operation and impact of laws on vulnerable populations, a taxonomy for articulating the gravity of any consequent harms and a method to prioritise recommendations for reform. The book then illustrates the framework’s utility using Australia’s treatment of unaccompanied children as a case study. This book illuminates key learnings from human rights law, childhood studies and vulnerability theory and transforms them into a new roadmap for law reform. As such, it will be a valuable practice-based resource for practitioners, non-government organisations, advocates, policymakers and the general public interested in advocating for the rights of vulnerable populations as well as for academics, researchers and students of human rights law, refugee law, childhood studies and vulnerability studies.

This book uses the concepts of vulnerability and resilience to analyze the situation of individuals and institutions in the context of the employment relationship. It is based on the premise that both employer and employee are vulnerable to various social, economic, and political forces, although differently so. It demonstrates how in responding to those complementary institutional relationships of employer and employee the state unequally and inequitably favors employers over employees. Several chapters included in this collection also consider how the state shapes, creates and maintains through law the social identities of employer and employee and how that legal regime operates as the allocation of power and privilege. This unique and fundamental role of the state in defining the employment relationship profoundly affects the respective abilities and degree of resiliency of actual employers and employees. Other chapters explore how attention to the respective vulnerability and resilience of those who do and those who direct work in assessing the employment relationship can raise fundamental questions of social justice and suggest new avenues for critical engagement with labor and employment law. Collectively, these pieces articulate a framework for imaging what would constitute an appropriately "Responsive State" in the employment context and how those interested in social justice might begin to use the concepts of vulnerability and resilience in their arguments.

This Handbook provides an accessible overview of the different methods, approaches and theories which can be used to enrich labour law research. Drawing on cutting-edge research projects, leading scholars present insights and reflections on the past, present and future of labour law scholarship.

Humans are responsible for biodiversity loss in many related and sometimes conflicting ways. Human-wildlife conflict, commonly defined as any negative interaction between people and wildlife, is a primary contributor to wildlife extinction and a manifestation of the destructive relationship that people have with wildlife. The author presents this 'wicked' problem in a social and legal context and demonstrates that legal institutions structurally deny human-wildlife conflict, while exacerbating conflict, promoting values consistent with individual autonomy, and ignoring the interconnected vulnerabilities shared by human and non-human species alike. It is the use of international and state law that sheds light on existing conflicts, including dingo conflict on K'Gari-Fraser Island in Australia, elephant conflict in Northern Botswana, and the global wildlife trade contributing to COVID-19. This book presents a critical analysis of human-wildlife conflict and its governance, to guide lawyers, scientists and conservations alike in the transformation of the management of human-wildlife conflict.

Taking up the concept of vulnerability, this book examines the gendered impact of market-based procurement practices. In recent years, ideological shifts and real managerial constraints have forced states everywhere to rely on private resources to solve public problems. Focusing on instances where the state retains ownership of assets and rights, even if it temporarily devolves its authority to a private entity (profit or non-profit), this book uncovers the ways in which these private actors are not just suppliers of materials goods, but increasingly policy influencers. More specifically, the book focuses on the gendered dynamics within the law, policy, and practice of public procurement and investigates how vulnerability is conceptualized and coded in the process of public acquisition of works, goods, and services from private suppliers. In this book, a series of rich case studies from Africa, the Middle East, and Europe show how vulnerability theory can inform the design of public institutions that are more responsible and responsive to gender-informed demands for social justice. This is the first book to integrate vulnerability theory into public procurement studies in global and comparative perspectives, and it will appeal to scholars and others with interests in gendered dynamics in law and society, international development, public policy, and international political economy.

This book focuses on queer people and their encounters with international law. Traversing a wide range of topics, from trans discrimination and conversion therapy to sadomasochism and abolitionism, this book asks questions about the (im)possibility of freedom and equality for queer communities in the world and the role that different areas of international law have to play in such a pursuit. It considers how queer lives and bodies are rendered legible or illegible to the law through how we define concepts such as ‘gender [identity]’ or ‘private life’. It also reflects on whether legal activism focused on LGBTIQA+ rights can ever reflect the insights of queer theory. The book engages with new issues in international law, such as recent contestation over the meaning of ‘gender’ in international human rights law and international criminal law. It also showcases the diversity of approaches to queering international law that are emerging. While some chapters offer a critique of international law’s violent and exclusionary tendencies, others re-invest in international law as a tool in the struggle for queer liberation by seeking to re-imagine it in queer directions. The questions addressed in this book are wide-ranging and approached differently by the authors. However, all centre on the complex relationship between international law, queer theory, and queer lives and what the future holds for these encounters going forward. This collection of queer encounters with international law will be invaluable to scholars of international law, human rights, and international relations with an interest in critical approaches to these areas, as well as to researchers, activists, and practitioners working in cultural, gender, and sexuality studies.