In the UK during the past decade, individuals and groups have increasingly tested the extent to which principles of English administrative law can be used to gain entitlements to health and welfare services, with priority for the needs of vulnerable and disadvantaged groups. One of the primary purposes of this book - now in paperback - is to demonstrate the extent to which established boundaries of judicial intervention in socio-economic disputes have been altered by the extension of judicial powers in sections 3 and 6 of the UK's Human Rights Act 1998, and through the development of a...

In recent years, feminist theory has increasingly defined itself in opposition to universalism and to discourses of human rights. Rejecting the troubled legacies of Enlightenment thinking, feminists have questioned the very premises upon which the international human rights movement is based. Rather than abandoning human rights discourse, however, this book argues that feminism must return to the universal and reconstruct the theory and practice of human rights. Discourse ethics and its post-metaphysical defense of universalism is offered as a key to this process of reconstruction. The...

Taking a critical attitude of dissatisfaction towards rights, the central premise of this book is that rights are technologies of governmentality. They are a regulating discourse that is itself managed through governing tactics and techniques - hence governing (through) rights. The opening chapter describes governmentality as a methodology that is then used to interrogate the relationship between rights and governance in three contexts: the international, regional and local. How rights regulate certain identities and conceptions of what is good governance is examined through the case study of...

Now available in paperback, this book explores some of the conceptual questions which underpin the legal disputes that arise in relation to equality and discrimination. Among these are questions about: the meaning of 'equality' as a legal concept and its relationship to the principle of non-discrimination * symmetrical and asymmetrical approaches to equality/non-discrimination * the role of comparators in discrimination/equality analysis * the selection of protected characteristics and the proper sphere of statutory and constitutional protections * the scope for and regulation of potential...

Gender equality law in the Czech Republic, as in other parts of post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe, is facing serious challenges. When obliged to adopt, interpret and apply anti-discrimination law as a condition of membership in the EU, Czech legislators and judges have repeatedly expressed hostility and demonstrated a fundamental lack of understanding of key ideas underpinning it. This important new study explores this scepticism of gender equality law, examining it with reference to legal and socio-legal developments that started in the state-socialist past and that remain relevant...