Overview
- Provides an overview of current interpretations of the right to legal capacity
- Discusses theories of personhood from critical feminist, disability, and queer theory
- Includes a chapter on good practice in the protection of the right to legal capacity for women, disabled women, and gender minorities
- Recommends concrete guidance for reform to secure the right to legal capacity for all
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Table of contents (6 chapters)
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Front Matter
Keywords
- Gender
- Disability
- Human RIghts
- Legal Capacity
- Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
- CRPD
- Article 12 CRPD
- Autonomy
- Personhood
- Legal Agency
- International Convenant of Civil and Political Rights
- Decision-Making
- Supported Decision-Making
- Critical Social Theory
- Critical DIsability Studies
- Feminist Theory
- Queer Theory
- Legal Capacity
- Civil Rights
- ICCPR
About this book
This book explores the role of gender in the recognition of an individual’s legal capacity. It discusses the meaning of the right to legal capacity and its two core elements – legal personhood and legal agency. It then analyses historical and modern denials of personhood and agency experienced by women, disabled women, and gender minorities – for example, prohibitions from voting, limitations on contracting, loss of personhood upon marriage, and gender binary requirements leading to an inability to exercise legal capacity, among others. Using critical feminist, disability, and queer theory, this book also offers insights into the construction of legal personhood and its role as a predictor of power and privilege. The book identifies patterns of oppression through legal capacity denial in various jurisdictions and discusses situations in which modern law continues to enforce these denials. In addition, the book presents solutions: it identifies practices to learn from in various jurisdictions around the world – including both civil law and common law jurisdictions. It also uses case studies to illustrate the ways in which existing laws, policies and practices could be reformed. As such, the book offers both a novel contribution to the field of legal capacity law and a tool for creating change and helping to realise the right to legal capacity for all.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Dr Anna Arstein-Kerslake is an Associate Professor at Melbourne Law School. She is the author of one of the first books on the right to legal capacity, Restoring Voice to People with Cognitive Disabilities (Cambridge University Press, 2017). She supported the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in the drafting of their general comment on the right to equal recognition before the law and she has worked with domestic and international bodies around the world on law and policy reform towards the realisation of the right to legal capacity.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Legal Capacity & Gender
Book Subtitle: Realising the Human Right to Legal Personhood and Agency of Women, Disabled Women, and Gender Minorities
Authors: Anna Arstein-Kerslake
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63493-3
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Law and Criminology, Law and Criminology (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-63492-6Published: 26 January 2021
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-63495-7Published: 27 January 2022
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-63493-3Published: 25 January 2021
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XV, 153
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Human Rights, Private International Law, International & Foreign Law, Comparative Law , Gender Studies, Gender Studies, Politics and Gender