W.A. Bogart – författare

Regulating Obesity?: Government, Society, and Questions of Health explores the effectiveness of legal interventions aimed at promoting healthier lifestyles. In it, W.A. Bogart suggests that the government's emphasis on encouraging weight loss and preventing excess gain have largely failed to resolve obesity and have instead fueled prejudice against fat people. He suggests that a major challenge lies in shifting norms away from stigmatization of the obese and towards more nutritious and healthy lifestyle habits in addition to the acceptance of bodies in all shapes and sizes. Part of this challenge lies in the complex effects of law and its relationship with norms, including the unintended consequences of regulation. Regulating Obesity? begins by arguing for the protection of the overweight and obese from discrimination through human rights laws. It then examines three other areas of interventions--marketing, fiscal policy, and physical activity--and how these interventions operate within the context of "health equity." Professor Bogart evaluates the effectiveness of legal regulation in addressing obesity and concludes that a healthier population is more important than a thinner population. Regulating Obesity? is the first book to engage in the comprehensive evaluation of this role for law and the implications of society's fascination with regulating consumption.

Good Government? Good Citizens? explores the evolving concept of the citizen in Canada at the beginning of this century. Three forces are at work in reconstituting the citizen in this society: courts, politics, and markets. Many see these forces as intersecting and colliding in ways that are fundamentally reshaping the relationship of individuals to the state and to each other.How has Canadian society actually been transformed? Is the state truly in retreat? Do individuals, in fact, have a fundamentally altered sense of their relationship to government and to each other? Have courts and markets supplanted representative politics regarding the expression of basic values? Must judicialized protection of human rights and minority interests necessarily mean a diminished concern for the common good on the part of representative politics? To what extent should markets and representative politics maintain a role in the protection of human rights and minority interests? Will representative politics ever hold the public trust again?Good Government? Good Citizens? responds to these questions. It does so by examining the altered roles of courts, politics, and markets over the last two decades. It then examines a number of areas to gauge the extent of the evidence regarding transformations that have occurred because of these changing roles. There are chapters on the First Peoples, cyberspace, education, and on an ageing Canada. The book concludes with reflections on the "good citizen" at the dawning of the new century.Of particular interest to professors and students of law and political science, Good Government? Good Citizens? will appeal to anyone interested in the changing face of Canada and its citizens.

Canada and the United States increasingly rely on law to grapple with complex societal issues. What is the impact of this growing dependence on law and legal systems? W.A. Bogart offers a timely and erudite investigation of the impact of law on societies, and how this excessive reliance on law, particularly litigation, has generated difficulties in achieving consensus regarding issues of domestic policy. Focussing mainly on the United States as the center for post World War II legal culture, the book takes into consideration other western countries, and allows the reader a comparison of legal systems. Consequences begins by documenting the growth of law and the reasons for its enhanced influence; the book then discusses the complex meanings of impact and the substantial difficulties in gauging outcomes produced by law. Bogart illustrates his discussion with five case studies, documenting law's complex ties to economics, education, and political issues, and asserts that positive outcomes have occurred despite litigation's disappointing record. Consequences is a timely, important and interdisciplinary contribution to the study of law and sociology, and will make a substantial addition to the studies of law and society.