Jens Scherpe – författare

The need to allow a change of legal sex/gender in certain cases is no longer disputed in most jurisdictions, and for European countries there is no question as to whether such a change should be allowed after the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in Goodwin v. United Kingdom (Application no. 28957/95). The question has therefore shifted to what the requirements for such a change of the legal sex/gender should be. Many jurisdictions have legislated or developed an administrative approach to changing sex/gender, but the requirements differ significantly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, particularly with regard to age, nationality and marital status, as well as the medical and psychological requirements. The latter in some jurisdictions still include surgery and sterility as a precondition, thus potentially forcing the persons concerned to choose between the recognition of their sex/gender identity and their physical integrity.The book also examines questions that are thus far under-researched, namely what the full legal consequences of a change of legal sex/gender should be, for example with regard to existing legal relationships such as marriages and registered partnerships, but also concerning children and parentage.The Legal Status of Transsexual and Transgender Persons is the result of an international research project, including not only national reports from 14 European and non-European jurisdictions but also two chapters that look at legal sex/gender changes from a Christian perspective and one chapter from a medical-psychological perspective. The final comparative chapter compares and contrasts the different approaches and requirements and makes recommendations for best practice and law reform.

The Legal Status of Intersex Persons provides a basis for discussion regarding all legal aspects concerning persons born with sex characteristics that do not belong strictly to male or female categories, or that belong to both at the same time. It contains contributions from medical, psychological and theological perspectives, as well as national legal perspectives from Germany, Australia, India, the Netherlands, Columbia, Sweden, France and the USA. It explores international human rights aspects of intersex legal recognition and also features chapters on private international law and legal history.The book is a timely one. Until very recently, the legal gender of a person both at birth and later in life in virtually all jurisdictions had to be recorded as either male or female; the laws simply did not allow any other option, and, in many cases, changing the recorded gender was difficult or impossible. However, there are many cases where this gender binary is unable to capture the reality of a persons physical presentation and/or perception of self. Consequently, this gender binary is increasingly being challenged and several jurisdictions have begun to reform their gender status laws.For example, in 2013 Germany became the first Western jurisdiction in modern times to introduce legislation allowing a person's gender to be recorded as 'indeterminate' at birth and thus give them a legal gender status other than male or female for all intents and purposes. However, this legislation has proved problematic in many ways and rightly was subject to pertinent criticism. In 2017 the German Constitutional Court then held that these rules were in violation of the German constitution as they only allowed a non-recognition, as opposed to a positive recognition of a gender other than male or female, and mandated law reform. Similarly, the Austria Constitutional Court held in June 2018 that current civil status laws had to be interpreted to allow registration of alternative gender identities. Therefore, two European jurisdictions will now have legal gender recognition beyond the binary.This book looks at law reform taking place around the world, with diverse perspectives from relevant fields, to provide the reader with a comprehensive analysis of the legal status of intersex persons and related issues.