Elgar Studies in Law and Society – serie

This book provides a cross-cultural analysis of how legislatures, judiciaries, NGOs, and corporations worldwide address workplace sexual harassment. Informed by the ongoing cultural relativism v. universalism debate, Cher Weixia Chen draws upon four theoretical models of gender and policy: the sameness model, the difference model, the dominance model, and the critical feminist model, injecting new vitality into the existing literature on sexual harassment.Chen systematically investigates and characterizes strategies for prohibiting workplace sexual harassment across the globe, moving beyond the Euro-American focus to offer a comprehensive global survey on an emerging universal human rights norm. She evaluates a vast range of data, including national workplace sexual harassment laws across 193 countries, 37 judicial decisions from the highest courts of 10 common law countries, and policies from 30 NGOs in six countries and the 50 largest global corporations. By raising awareness of the cultural variations in sexual harassment laws and policies, this book ultimately aims to contribute to improving the wellbeing of workers and building working environments free from harassment worldwide.Prohibiting Workplace Sexual Harassment is an essential resource for students and academics in gender and law, employment law, human rights, and law and society. Its diverse methodologies and engaging perspectives will also greatly benefit practising lawyers, policymakers and NGOs.

This timely book presents a considered analysis of age discrimination provisions and outlines constructive guidance as to how they might be reformed. It highlights the prevalence of age discrimination for all age groups but especially against older persons, demonstrating the importance of effective legal protection for this cohort - especially when age discrimination intersects with other grounds.Helen Meenan and Christa Tobler bring together expert scholars and legal practitioners to critically analyse how older persons are protected from age discrimination in legal frameworks internationally, regionally and nationally, appraising strengths and weaknesses in each system. In addition, the contributors to this volume include unique office-holders who enable the voices of older people to be heard. By critically examining where protection from age discrimination is now, where it needs to go and how best to arrive there, the authors highlight that protection from age-based prejudices is crucial to the full enjoyment of all human rights by older people. This book allows age discrimination to be appraised from varied yet complementary perspectives, reinforcing the importance of protecting victims of all backgrounds from age-based discrimination.This book is an essential tool for students and academics in fields such as human rights, employment law, discrimination law and gerontology. Its practical approach will also greatly benefit health and social protection researchers, law makers and policymakers, as well as NGOs, human rights institutions and organisations, and care institutions interested in tackling systemic ageism and protecting older persons from age discrimination.

This insightful book examines the U.S. Supreme Court in a broad historical context, concentrating on the influence of political movements, military and economic developments, the arts and technology on the law and vice versa. Exploring major case law in each period from the Age of Enlightenment and the Civil War to the Watergate Scandal and the present day, James Hart illustrates the role of the Supreme Court in American society.Using historical research to construct a sense of time and place that moves beyond purely legal issues, Hart analyzes major Justices, including John Jay, Robert Jackson and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, against the socio-legal backdrop of each era. Ultimately, the book creates a cohesive picture of how the personalities and perspectives of key Justices affected the Court’s jurisprudence and made it what it is today.This fascinating book is a vital resource for students and scholars of American law, constitutional and administrative law, law and society and legal history, and the general public as well. It is also highly beneficial for lawyers and policymakers interested in understanding the U.S. Supreme Court and society.

The idea of justice and the reality of justice are two very different things. Just Interests examines both concepts, offering accounts from lay people and legal officials to explore how the goals and interests of victims of crimes can be accommodated within the criminal justice process. Robyn Holder challenges the typical classification of ‘victim’ for those who have been victimized by violence, and re-positions them as members of a political community with diverse interests – both private and public. Departing from conventional approaches that see victims as a problem for law to contain, Holder draws on democratic principles of inclusion and deliberation to posit a criminal justice approach that mobilizes citizens to produce justice in their ordinary lives. This book will be of fundamental importance for analysts and advocates in governmental and non-governmental organizations to understand victims as citizens first and their engagements with criminal justice as citizenship practices. It will also be a valuable read for socio-legal scholars and researchers examining the constitutive nature of peoples and their public criminal law.

The U.S. Supreme Court and Racial Minorities offers an in-depth, chronologically arranged look at the record of the U.S. Supreme Court on racial minorities over the course of its first two centuries. It does not pose the anachronistic standard, ''Did the Supreme Court get it right?'' but rather, ''How did the Supreme Court compare to other branches of the federal government at the time?'' Have these Justices, prevented against removal from office by discontented voters (in contrast to the President and the members of Congress), done any better than the elected branches of government at protecting racial minorities in America? Goldstein examines treatment of four racial minorities (Indians, Blacks, Asians, and Hispanics) in this investigation of the life-tenured Supreme Court's comparative willingness to protect racial minorities. She finds that judicial review, while no panacea, did help America's racial minorities: when the Court was willing to help, it was particularly willing to act to check state-level oppressive policies and federal-level administrative abuses. She also documents the Supreme Court's leadership role on the civil rights of Black Americans from 1911-1989. This book will be a critical resource not only for scholars of political science and law, but for anyone interested in the history of the treatment of racial minorities by the U.S. government and the value of judicial review as a protector of minority rights.

Workers, Collectivism and the Law offers a captivating historical account of worker democracy, from its beginnings in European guild systems to present-day labor unions, across the national legal systems of Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. Analysing these legal systems in light of a Habermasian concept of participatory democracy, Laura Carlson identifies ways to strengthen individual employee voice in claims against employers.Carlson highlights how employee voice and democracy, both collective and individual, assume different guises in each of these four labor law models. By tracing voice and democracy as components in the history of collective worker organizations, from guilds to journeymen associations to modern labor unions, Carlson demonstrates how history has shaped today's national labor law models.In the context of modern labor law's central focus on human rights, Carlson articulates the need for stronger legal defence of mechanisms of transparency and procedural due process, to enhance voice and democracy for union members in invoking rights and asserting protections for workers.This insightful book is indispensable reading for labor law academics and for those practicing in employment law, while those interested in the history of labor law will revel in its penetrating survey of the materials.

This thought-provoking book explores the functions of charitable foundations in the People's Republic of China. Using both empirical fieldwork and extensive textual analysis, it examines the role of foundations in Chinese society and their relationship with the Chinese government.Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Katja Levy and Knut Benjamin Pissler offer a comprehensive overview of the contemporary legal and political frameworks within which Chinese charitable foundations operate, as well as an assessment of their historical and traditional contexts. They re-evaluate the existing literature on China's civil society, and provide a new, functional perspective on the role of foundations, complementing mainstream civil society and corporatist perspectives. This incisive book will be invaluable reading for scholars researching the third sector in China, as well as practitioners working in this sector. Scholars and students of contemporary Chinese law, politics and society will also find its insights useful.

Europe is ageing. However, in many European countries, and in almost all fields of life, older persons experience discrimination, social exclusion, and negative stereotypes that portray them as different or a burden to society. This pivotal book is the first of its kind, providing a rich and diverse analysis of the inter-relationships between ageing, ageism and law within Europe.Throughout the book - which builds on a European Cooperation in Science & Technology (COST) action - leading scholars offer theoretical and empirical analysis in order to discern the role European law plays in perpetuating and combating ageism. Including specific examples of how stereotypes and prejudices influence and shape the European legal system, the book contributes to the broader current global social movement towards advancing a new international human rights convention for older persons.Timely and engaging, this book will appeal to students and scholars of law, sociology, public policy and a wide range of related fields including gerontology, human rights, and health-studies. Practitioners, policy-makers, civil society organizations and senior citizens activists will also benefit from the insights into the socio-legal aspects of social policies and human rights of older persons.Contributors include: P. de Hert, M. De Pauw, I. Doron, N. Georgantzi, A. Gur, R. Harding, E. Mantovani, T. Mattsson, B. Mikolajczyk, A. Numhauser-Henning, G. Quinn, P. Quinn, B. Spanier, B. Sleap, J. Watson

This book explores the legal and societal implications of autonomous vehicles (AVs), drawing on historical examples of disruptive technologies and the complex process of their adoption. Employing broad interdisciplinary perspectives, Guy Seidman and Aviv Gaon imagine how the socio-cultural perception of AVs might develop and how they could fit into the urban landscape.Seidman and Gaon argue that AVs, despite their limitations, offer a significant improvement over the current state of human driving. They examine how the high costs of human-driven cars, including inefficiencies, pollution, and loss of life, justify the continued pursuit of self-driving cars. Chapters also cover other important topics such as social norms, social isolation, and traffic law. While the future of AVs is uncertain, understanding the socio-legal context can prepare society for the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.The Social and Legal Impact of Autonomous Vehicles is a thought-provoking read for researchers and students in the fields of law and society, law and technology, legal theory, transport geography, mobilities, and administrative and public law.

Offering an original legal definition of shaming, this incisive book argues for greater attention to shaming by legal scholars and practitioners. Suggesting nuanced procedures to regulate shaming in diverse areas of law, it seeks to make shaming by legal entities legitimate and effective, and to use legal mechanisms to limit inappropriate shaming.This book presents conceptual, normative, and descriptive insights of shaming by individuals, groups, and the state. Defining shaming as the deliberate dissemination of information likely to harm the reputation of whomever is shamed, chapters consider the historical, philosophical, sociological, economic, political, cultural, and legal aspects of shaming. The book offers novel insights into when and how shaming can be utilized by the law, for example by judges and environmental corporate regulators, and when shaming impedes justice, such as in family disputes, tax tribunals, and on social media.Advancing recent public debates, this book will be a fascinating read for legal scholars and students interested in the definition and regulation of shaming. It will also be an invaluable guide for legal practitioners seeking to understand what role shaming can legitimately play in their field.