scholarly journals ‘Endlessly Valuable’ Discursive Work—Intimate Partner Femicide, an English Case Study

Laws ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howe

Against the trend of roll-backs of pro-feminist initiatives by right-wing governments, feminist-led reforms to the law of murder deserve accolades as hard-fought feminist victories. For three decades, feminist analysts have critiqued the operation of provocation defences in intimate partner femicide cases. Their work has been rewarded with the implementation of reforms in several anglophone jurisdictions that have abolished or curtailed that defence. This article focuses on the revolutionary impact of the reform implemented in England and Wales. It argues for the continuing purchase for feminist legal scholars of a methodology championed by Carol Smart in her seminal 1989 text, Feminism and the Power of Law. She counselled feminist law scholars to read law as a site for contesting law’s truth about gendered relationships. This methodology has not only been critical in exposing the misogyny and injustice embedded in traditional provocation by infidelity defences; it also enables researchers to chart shifts in law’s discursive constitution of truth in the post-reform era.

Legal Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Rebecca Probert ◽  
Stephanie Pywell

Abstract During 2020, weddings were profoundly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. During periods of lockdown few weddings could take place, and even afterwards restrictions on how they could be celebrated remained. To investigate the impact of such restrictions, we carried out a survey of those whose plans to marry in England and Wales had been affected by Covid-19. The 1,449 responses we received illustrated that the ease and speed with which couples had been able to marry, and sometimes whether they had been able to marry at all, had depended not merely on the national restrictions in place but on their chosen route into marriage. This highlights the complexity and antiquity of marriage law and reinforces the need for reform. The restrictions on weddings taking place also revealed the extent to which couples valued getting married as opposed to having a wedding. Understanding both the social and the legal dimension of weddings is important in informing recommendations as to how the law should be changed in the future, not merely to deal with similar crises but also to ensure that the general law is fit for purpose in the twenty-first century.


1981 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
M Storper ◽  
R Walker ◽  
E Widess

The impact of performance regulations on industrial location in the USA or elsewhere has been little researched. This case study shows conventional assumptions to be questionable on two counts. First, industry appears not to consider local regulations until after selecting a site on more basic economic reasons. It assumes that regulations are not a significant barrier, owing to local eagerness to attract new growth. Second, the letter of the law is not the effect of the law, given the role of politics. In the case study described, opposition led to strict enforcement and the company's withdrawal, but a business backlash restored a more normal degree of governmental accommodation to industrial growth.


2008 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 181 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Glasgow

<p>A movement of activist ‘animal lawyers’ has recently arrived in Australia. This article contends that Australian lawyers have a significant role to play in advancing the animal protection cause. Part I discusses the philosophical foundation of the modern animal protection movement and describes the<br />important theoretical divide that splits it into animal ‘welfare’ and animal ‘rights’. Part II explains the Australian legal regime governing animal protection to show how the law acts as a site of exploitation. Part III explores the role of lawyers within the movement. It does this by appraising<br />the obstacles in the way of animal protectionism and exploring what makes an effective lawyer advocate. It then uses a case study of battery hens to demonstrate the valuable role lawyers can play to support the animal cause.</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 396-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thorsten Wojczewski

Abstract There is today a growing sense of a global rise of populism. Right-wing populist leaders and parties claim to represent the people and pit them against a “corrupt” elite and “dangerous” Others. However, the international dimensions of populism remain largely unexplored in the populism and international relations (IR) literature. By analyzing the relationship between foreign policy and populism, this article seeks to show how the phenomenon of populism can be integrated into IR theory and how IR scholarship can inform debates on populism. The article argues that poststructuralist IR, with its focus on foreign policy as a boundary-drawing practice that demarcates the Self from the Other, allows us to study how populist actors can use foreign policy as a site for the reproduction of their claim to represent the people. To grasp this, the article identifies different discursive strategies through which the people/elite antagonism can be constructed and interacts with other antagonisms such as the inside/outside divide of nationalism. It illustrates its arguments with a case study on India's foreign policy discourse under the Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi, who has promised to purify India from a corrupt elite and pursue an “India first” policy.


Author(s):  
Leila Mahmoudi Farahani ◽  
Marzieh Setayesh ◽  
Leila Shokrollahi

A landscape or site, which has been inhabited for long, consists of layers of history. This history is sometimes reserved in forms of small physical remnants, monuments, memorials, names or collective memories of destruction and reconstruction. In this sense, a site/landscape can be presumed as what Derrida refers to as a “palimpsest”. A palimpsest whose character is identified in a duality between the existing layers of meaning accumulated through time, and the act of erasing them to make room for the new to appear. In this study, the spatial collective memory of the Chahar Bagh site which is located in the historical centre of Shiraz will be investigated as a contextualized palimpsest, with various projects adjacent one another; each conceptualized and constructed within various historical settings; while the site as a heritage is still an active part of the city’s cultural life. Through analysing the different layers of meaning corresponding to these adjacent projects, a number of principals for reading the complexities of similar historical sites can be driven.


Author(s):  
Rudi Fortson

This chapter examines the legal and practical issues encountered by practitioners when dealing with unfitness to plead litigation. As the Law Commission for England and Wales has pointed out, defendants charged with a criminal offence may be unfit to plead or to stand trial for a variety of reasons, including difficulties resulting from mental illness, learning disability, developmental disorder, or communication impairment. Two issues are considered: (i) how might those defendants who are unfit be accurately identified; and (ii) what steps should be taken by legal practitioners and by the courts of criminal jurisdiction to cater for the interests of vulnerable defendants, victims, and society, and to maintain the integrity of the legal process as one that is fair and just? The chapter evaluates the reform proposals of the English Law Commission and assesses how the law could be improved for all those who are involved in dealing with the unfit to plead.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document