For some legal philosophers, if a law is procedurally correct, enacted in ways constitutionally recognised and agreed upon, then the content is of no significance. It is a "good" law, no matter what it does or justifies. The question of one's consent or opposition to any particular law is extraneous to the legality and is regarded merely as a political matter. The assumption is that a certain procedure and logic in law creation has taken place, and the law can be altered by a change in political leaders in a subsequent political election. However, this view and assumption obscure an uncomfortable fact. Some laws can be "bad" or "immoral." Critical legal theory suggests that there are often two (or more) sets of laws, and it makes no difference if Lady Justice is blindfolded or not. Laws change in the process of history, in part, because societal norms change. As common understandings of morality evolve, law adapts itself to the new moral environment. Norms can change slowly or rapidly, even within a lifetime. This book examines both social and legal norms and theories of how they are both created. Christine M. Hassenstab investigates how laws on sterilization, birth control and abortion were created, by focusing on the act of legislation; how the law was driven by scientific and social norms during the first and closing decades of the 20th century in the USA (especially in the state of Indiana) and Norway. The primary focus of Body Law and the Body of Law is the sociology of law and how and why the law changes. The author develops the notion "body law" for reproductive policies and uses sociological theories to untie the various strands of social history and legal history and looks at two cases of legislation. The book is divided in to two main sections. The first examines eugenic laws in the USA state of Indiana and Norway during the first decades of 20th century. The second part is about the birth control and abortion debate in both countries throughout the late 1960s and 1970s. Christine M. Hassenstab is a lawyer and sociologist. She served as a criminal defense attorney for 15 years (1987-2001) in Seattle, Washington. Currently, she is an adviser in the EU Grants Office at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway.

It has long been acknowledged that the death penalty in the United States of America has been shaped by the country's history of slavery and racial violence, but this book considers the lesser-explored relationship between the two practices' respective abolitionist movements. The book explains how the historical and conceptual links between slavery and capital punishment have both helped and hindered efforts to end capital punishment. The comparative study also sheds light on the nature of such efforts, and offers lessons for how death penalty abolitionism should proceed in future. Using the history of slavery and abolition, it is argued that anti-death penalty efforts should be premised on the ideologies of the radical slavery abolitionists.

Policing is a highly pragmatic occupation. It is designed to achieve the important social ends of peacekeeping and public safety, and is empowered to do so using means that are ordinarily seen as problematic; that is, the use of force, deception, and invasions of privacy, along with considerable discretion. It is often suggested that the ends of policing justify the use of otherwise problematic means, but do they? This book explores this question from a philosophical perspective. The relationship between ends and means has a long and contested history both in moral/practical reasoning and public policy. Looking at this history through the lens of policing, criminal justice philosopher John Kleinig explores the dialectic of ends and means (whether the ends justify the means, or whether the ends never justify the means) and offers a new, sharpened perspective on police ethics. After tracing the various ways in which ends and means may be construed, the book surveys a series of increasingly concrete issues, focusing especially on those that arise in policing contexts. The competing moral demands made by ends and means culminate in considerations of noble cause corruption, dirty hands theory, lesser degradations (such as tear gas, tasers, chokeholds, and so on), and finally, those means deemed impermissible by the majority in Western culture, such as torture.

Stem cell research has been a problematic endeavour. For the past twenty years it has attracted moral controversies in both the public and the professional sphere. The research involves not only laboratories, clinics and people, but ethics, industries, jurisprudence, and markets. Today it contributes to the development of new therapies and affects increasingly many social arenas. The matrix approach introduced in this book offers a new understanding of this science in its relation to society. The contributions are multidisciplinary and intersectional, illustrating how agency and influence between science and society go both ways. Conceptually, this volume presents a situated and reflexive approach for philosophy and sociology of the life sciences. The practices that are part of stem cell research are dispersed, and the concepts that tie them together are tenuous; there are persistent problems with the validation of findings, and the ontology of the stem cell is elusive. The array of applications shapes a growing bioeconomy that is dependent on patient donations of tissues and embryos, consumers, and industrial support. In this volume it is argued that this research now denotes not a specific field but a flexible web of intersecting practices, discourses, and agencies. To capture significant parts of this complex reality, this book presents recent findings from researchers, who have studied in-depth aspects of this matrix of stem cell research. This volume presents state-of-the-art examinations from senior and junior scholars in disciplines from humanities and laboratory research to various social sciences, highlighting particular normative and epistemological intersections. The book will appeal to scholars as well as wider audiences interested in developments in life science and society interactions. The novel matrix approach and the accessible case studies make this an excellent resource for science and society courses.

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aAt a troubling time in history when a conservative majority on the US Supreme Court has called into question the constitutional protection of women's health and equality, this book comes none too soon. The Reproductive Rights Reader gives us a uniquely comprehensive and useful collection of the major court decisions, legal briefs and scholarly commentaries on the searing debates about reproductive politics in US public discourse over the past 40 years. And it does so not only through the lenses of the law, science and public health but also with a clear focus on the critical dimensions of gender, race, class, sexuality, poverty, social exclusion and social justice. It is an absolutely indispensable resource.a
--Rosalind P. Petchesky, author of "Abortion and Womanas Choice"

aPowerful and provocative, The Reproductive Rights Reader explodes the stale debate over the constitutional legitimacy of "Roe v. Wade" by bringing critical perspectives of race, gender and class to the question of women's control over their reproductive lives. Taking seriously issues of substantive equality, this volume is essential reading for all those interested in human rights and social justice.a
--Nancy Northup, President, Center for Reproductive Rights, and Lecturer-in-Law, Columbia Law School

aThis type of anthology bridges the sciences and humanities and narrows the divide between these two broad areas of study.a
--Martha Chamallas, Moritz College of Law, The Ohio State University

Since the passage of "Roe v. Wade," the debate over reproductive rights has dominated Americaas courts, legislatures, and streets. The contributors to TheReproductive Rights Reader embrace reproductive justice for all women, but challenge mainstream legal and political solutions based on protecting free choice via neutral governmental policies, which frequently ignore or jeopardize the interests of women of color and the poor. Instead, the pieces in this interdisciplinary book -- including both legal cases and articles by legal scholars, historians, sociologists, political scientists and others -- favor a critical analysis that addresses the concrete material conditions that limit choices, the role of law and social policy in creating those conditions, and the gendered power dynamics that inform and are reinforced by the regulation of human reproduction.

The selections demonstrate that the right to choice isnat an automatic guarantee of reproductive justice and gender equality; to truly achieve this ideal it is essential to recognize the complexity of womenas reproductive experiences and needs. Divided into four sections, the book examines feminist critiques of medical knowledge and practice; and the legal regulation of pregnancy termination, conception and child-bearing, and behavior during pregnancy.

This book refutes the 21st-century zeitgeist that views advancing technology as an unambiguous social good, and examines the effects of this uncritical acceptance and dependence. It argues that technology has become the new religion for the digital age, and that elevating technology to the status of deity serves as a mechanism to allow for the denial of problems created by reliance upon machines. From the release of toxins into the environment to the unsustainable energy demands of the modern era, technological dependence and overreach are driving humanity to the brink of extinction. Despite these problems, existential issues such as artificial intelligence, and the proliferation of nuclear weapons, there is an unwavering belief in the ability of technology, particularly any device labeled "smart," to create a perfect future while denying the history of unmet promises and unintended consequences of technological innovation. In this book, the psychological underpinnings of these beliefs are explored from both a clinical and cognitive perspective. In addition, it critiques the social and economic forces that maintain our reliance on, or addiction to, technology, and examines the ethical and security issues associated with the control of advanced technology.

This book argues that policy-making is values-driven rather than, as is traditionally argued, the result of interest-driven politics or the consequences of path-dependent/institutionalist perspectives. Stewart devotes chapters to major values which drive public policy across developed nations such as fairness, efficiency and economic growth.

Since World War II, abortion policies have remained remarkably varied across European nations, with struggles over abortion rights at the forefront of national politics. This volume analyses European abortion governance and explores how social movements, political groups, and individuals use protests and resistance to influence abortion policy. Drawing on case studies from Italy, Spain, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the European Union, it analyses the strategies and discourses of groups seeking to liberalise or restrict reproductive rights. It also illuminates the ways that reproductive rights politics intersect with demographic anxieties, as well as the rising nationalisms and xenophobia related to austerity policies, mass migration and the recent terrorist attacks in Europe.

The horror genre has endured a long and controversial success within popular culture. Fraught with accusations pertaining to its alleged ability to harm and corrupt young people and indeed society as a whole, the genre is constantly under pressure to suppress that which has made it so popular to begin with - its ability to frighten and generate discussion about society's darker side. Recognising the circularity of patterns in each generational manifestation of horror censorship, The Myth of Harm draws upon cases such as the Slenderman stabbing and the James Bulger murder amongst many others in order to explore the manner in which horror has been repeatedly cast as a harmful influence upon children at the expense of scrutinising other more complex social issues. Focusing on five major controversies beginning in the 1930's Golden Age of Horror Cinema and ending on a more contemporary note with Cyber-Gothic horror - this book identifies and considers the various myths and false hoods surrounding the genre of horror and question the very motivation behind the proliferation and dissemination of these myths as scapegoats for political and social issues, platforms for "moral entrepreneurs" and tools of hyperbolae for the news industry.

The book presents an important and well known but so far not described episode in the history of banned books in the communist Poland - the activity of the so-called Tatra climbers. They were students and scholars from Warsaw, who initiated a risky cooperation with the centre of Polish political emigration in Paris - Kultura monthly. Inspired by the Prague Spring they tried to develop cooperation between the students from Eastern Bloc countries, smuggled books through the Polish-Slovak border, and gathered texts critical about communist rulers. After a few months, their activity was stopped by the Polish political police. The monograph shows the circumstances and motivations behind this dangerous activity of young people, traces the police investigation against them, and describes the mock trial in 1970.

This book centers on the role of media in shaping public perceptions of breastfeeding. Drawing from magazines, doctors' office materials, parenting books, television, websites, and other media outlets, Katherine A. Foss explores how historical and contemporary media often undermine breastfeeding efforts with formula marketing and narrow portrayals of nursing women and their experiences. Foss argues that the media's messages play an integral role in setting the standard of public knowledge and attitudes toward breastfeeding, as she traces shifting public perceptions of breastfeeding and their corresponding media constructions from the development of commercial formula through contemporary times. This analysis demonstrates how attributions of blame have negatively impacted public health approaches to breastfeeding, thus confronting the misperception that breastfeeding, and the failure to breastfeed, rests solely on the responsibility of an individual mother.

This book offers a broad overview of public attitudes to the death penalty in India. It examines in detail the progress made by international organizations worldwide in their efforts to abolish the death penalty and provides statistics from various countries that have already abolished it. The book focuses on four main aspects: the excessive cost and poor use of funds; wrongful executions of innocent people; the death penalty's failure as an efficient deterrent; and the alternative sentence of life imprisonment without parole. In closing, the book analyses the current debates on capital punishment around the globe and in the Indian context. Based on public opinion surveys, the book is essential reading for all those interested in India, its government, criminal justice system, and policies on the death penalty and human rights.

In Dershowitz on Killing: How the Law Decides Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die, Alan Dershowitz-New York Times bestselling author and one of America's most respected legal scholars-examines the subjects of death, life, and the law. Alan Dershowitz has been called "one of the most prominent and consistent defenders of civil liberties in America" by Politico and "the nation's most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer and one of its most distinguished defenders of individual rights" by Newsweek. His legal career as a criminal defense lawyer has been deeply involved with death and life decisions. Dershowitz on Killing is a timely examination of issues and questions that are front and center in today's society. Employing a philosophical, moral, religious, and cultural lens to the legal aspects surrounding death and life, Dershowitz elucidates the role of government to determine who shall live and who shall die in declaring wars, ordering executions, authorizing deadly force, permitting or denying abortions, providing or mandating vaccines, controlling climate change, allowing or refusing asylum for endangered migrants, and other life and death rulings. He notes that when the government decides these choices, it is asked to do so by first determining whether a "right" is involved, because rights trump mere interest, just as constitutional restrictions trump legislative and executive actions. Dershowitz on Killing asserts that the rules governing death and life decisions should reflect the irreversibility of death. It is essential reading for anyone interested in or concerned about how these decisions are allocated among state and federal; executive, legislative, and judicial; private and governmental; religious and secular institutions-and how people in a democracy, through the power of the ballot, have the ultimate say in these critical decisions.

All humans laugh. However, there is little agreement about what is appropriate to laugh at. While laughter can unite people by showing how they share values and perspectives, it is also has the power to separate and divide. Humor that "crosses the line" can make people feel excluded and humiliated. This collection of new essays addresses possible ways that moral and ethical lines can be drawn around humor and laughter. What would a Kantian approach to humor look like? Do games create a safe space for profanity and offense? Contributors to this volume work to establish and explain guidelines for thinking about the moral questions that arise when humor and laughter intersect with medicine, gender, race, and politics. Drawing from the work of stand-up comedians, television shows, and ethicists, this volume asserts that we are never just joking.

In Colors of Veracity, Vera Schwarcz condenses four decades of teaching and scholarship about China to raise fundamental questions about the nature of truth and history. In clear and vivid prose, she addresses contemporary moral dilemmas with a highly personal sense of ethics and aesthetics. Drawing on classical sources in Hebrew and Chinese (as well as several Greek and Japanese texts), Schwarcz brings deep and varied cultural references to bear on the question of truth and falsehood in human consciousness. An attentiveness to connotations and nuance is apparent throughout her work, which redefines both the Jewish understanding of emet (a notion of truth that encompasses authenticity) and the Chinese commitment to zhen (a vision of the real that comprises the innermost sincerity of the seeker's heart-mind). Works of art, from contemporary calligraphy and installations to fake Chinese characters and a Jewish menorah from Roman times, shed light light on the historian's task of giving voice to the dread-filled past. Following in the footsteps of literary scholar Geoffrey Hartman, Schwarcz expands on the "Philomela Project, which calls on historians to find new ways of conveying truth, especially when political authorities are bent on enforcing amnesia of past traumatic events. Truth matters, even if it cannot be mapped in its totality. Veracity is shown again and again to be neither black nor white. Schwarcz' accomplishment is a subtle depiction of "fractured luminosity," which inspires and sustains the moral conviction of those who pursue truth against all odds.

While the importance of consent has been discussed widely over the last few decades, interest in its study has received renewed attention in recent years, particularly regarding medical treatment, clinical research and sexual acts. The Routledge Handbook of the Ethics of Consent is an outstanding reference source to this exciting subject and the first collection of its kind. Comprising over thirty chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into five main parts: * General questions * Normative ethics * Legal theory * Medical ethics * Political philosophy. Within these sections central issues, debates and problems are examined, including: the nature and normative importance of consent, paternalism, exploitation and coercion, privacy, sexual consent, consent and criminal law, informed consent, organ donation, clinical research, and consent theory of political obligation and authority. The Routledge Handbook of the Ethics of Consent is essential reading for students and researchers in moral theory, applied ethics, medical ethics, philosophy of law and political philosophy. This volume will also be very useful for those in related fields, such as political science, law, medicine and social science.

Captivated at a young age by Russia, Marianna Tax Choldin immersed herself as a student at the University of Chicago in that country's language and culture. In her book she describes the tension between her strong commitment to freedom of expression and her growing understanding of Russian and Soviet censorship. Fluent in Russian, she travels widely in post-Soviet Russia, speaking with hundreds of Russians about their own censorship history. She writes of the close friendships she formed in Russia, and reflects on her Jewish roots in the country her family had left behind 100 years earlier.

This book was originally published in 1999. When one or more essential organs failed, the consequence used to be death. However, conventional medicine has developed artificial means of extending life, the most successful of which is transplantation. The most common form of organ to be transplanted is a kidney which will, on average, function for about a decade in its recipient. Organ transplantation as a whole is widely practiced in most countries. However, few can procure enough organs to meet demand. Many people who are suitable for a transplant die without getting one. Many kidney patients can access and stay alive on dialysis until a suitable organ becomes available. However, even here, sufficiency of organs would be beneficial because lesser reliance on dialysis would reduce healthcare costs and be better for patient quality of life. This invaluable book shows that in the light of current practice and attitudes, increasing living donor transplantation (LDT) levels is feasible. It is one of the few works to systematically analyse the ethical and legal issues involved in LDT use in the light of empirical evidence, including new data derived from a unique programme of interviews and questionnaires with transplant professionals, living donors and recipients. Readers are led to an understanding of when LDT is ethically and legally acceptable and to the strong case for using it much more extensively.

Women who came of age in the late twentieth century were raised in the era of choice; they grew up believing that reproductive decision-making is a political right, a responsibility of women living the successes of second wave feminism, and under their control. Contemplating Maternity in an Era of Choice: Explorations into Discourses of Reproduction explores contemporary maternity both within and in light of these late-twentieth century understandings. Employing a variety of feminist communication approaches, the volume's contributors discuss how discourses of choice shape and are shaped by women's identities and experiences as (non)mothers and how those same discourses affect and reflect private practices and public policies related to reproduction and motherhood. Through this process, the contributors illustrate a variety of ways of conducting feminist thinking, research, and practices within the communication discipline. Major sub-disciplines within communication studies are represented here including feminist organizational, interpersonal, rhetorical, critical/cultural, and social movement studies. Whereas many of the previous scholarly investigations into maternity highlight only one aspect or phase of motherhood, Contemplating Maternity in an Era of Choice is unique because it investigates discourses of choice across the arc of maternity and as enacted through various (non)maternal subject positions.

As surprising as it may be to parents, young people today are immersed in porn culture everywhere they look. Through Internet porn, gaming, social media, marketing, and advertising, kids today have a much broader view of social and sexual possibilities, which makes it difficult for them to establish appropriate expectations or to feel adequate in their own sexuality. Even more important, no one is talking to kids directly about the problem. Parents tend to convince themselves that their children are immune to cultural influences, wait until it comes up, or hope schools and pediatricians will address the issues. Educators and doctors may be able to start the conversation but it is fundamentally a parent's job to provide information about sex and relationships early and often to help young people find their way through their social and sexual lives. Delaying the necessary but awkward conversations with their kids leaves them vulnerable. The media, marketers, and porn and gaming industries are eager to step in anywhere parents choose to hold back. Sexploitation exposes the truth to parents, kids, educators, and the medical profession about the seen and unseen influences affecting children, inspiring parents to take the role as the primary sexuality educator. With more information, parents will gain conviction to discuss and develop values, expectations, boundaries, and rules with their kids. Kids who enter their teens with accurate information and truths stand a better chance of developing an "inner compass" when it comes to sex and relationships, which sets them up for a healthy adulthood. In her comic and straightforward style, Pierce brings together the latest research with anecdotal stories shared with her by high school and college students in the thick of it. Above all else, her goal is to get people to develop more comfort around those difficult conversations so that kids gain more confidence and courage about drawing boundaries based on their own values not those put upon them.

This book explores censorship, particularly film and video censorship, in Japan in modern times. It shows how most censorship has been the film and video industry exercising self-censorship and how this system has been problematic in that it has allowed dominant players in the industry to impose their own standards and exclude independent filmmakers. It outlines notable obscenity cases and discusses how industry self-censorship bodies have been undermined both by industry outsiders setting up their own alternative regimes and by the industry self-censorship bodies themselves being prosecuted for obscenity. The book also examines the conflict between the obscenity law, introduced in Meiji times when Japan was importing Western models, and the freedom of speech law, which was put in place by the US occupation administration after World War II. The book concludes by assessing the current state of censorship in Japan and likely future developments.

In the nineteenth century, state policy towards prostitution was primarily shaped by an assessment of its role in spreading venereal diseases. In this book, the author traces normative and organisational efforts of the authorities of the Kingdom of Poland, which sought to maintain control over prostitution and the health of women who offered paid sexual services. The author uses data collected by the police and medical authorities supervising legal and illegal prostitution to provide a demographic and sociological picture of the big-city and small-town market of sexual commerce. It was only in the early twentieth century when prostitution became an important subject of the Polish public debate, a process which is described in the book against the backdrop of the major issues and fears of the epoch.

Strategies or decisions aimed at affecting, in a manner considered to be positive, the genetic heritage of a child in the context of human reproduction are increasingly being accepted in contemporary society. As a result, unnerving similarities between earlier selection ideology so central to the discredited eugenic regimes of the 20th century and those now on offer suggest that a new era of eugenics has dawned. The time is ripe, therefore, for considering and evaluating from an ethical perspective both current and future selection practices. This inter-disciplinary volume blends research from embryology, genetics, philosophy, sociology, psychology, and history. In so doing, it constructs a thorough picture of the procedures emerging from today's reproductive developments, including a rigorous ethical argumentation concerning the possible advantages and risks related to the new eugenics.

Human trafficking has become a global concern over the last twenty years, but its violence has terrorized and traumatized its victims and survivors for millennia. This study examines the deep history of human trafficking from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period. It traces the evolution of trafficking patterns: the growth and decline of trafficking routes, the everchanging relationships between traffickers and authorities, and it examines the underlying causes that lead to vulnerability and thus to exploitation. As the reader will discover, the conditions that lead to human trafficking in the modern world, such as poverty, attitudes of entitlement, corruption, and violence, have a long and storied past. When we understand that past, we can better anticipate human trafficking's future, and then we are better able to fight it.