This book examines how, in response to crises, law tends to construct singular ‘events’ that obscure the underlying structural causes that any adequate response needs to acknowledge and address. Litigation is the main legal process that constructs events through a narrative that describes what happened and prescribes what should happen. Courts are theatres with competing stories and intense controversies. The legal event is compelling. But, through the examination of several cases from a range of jurisdictions, this book argues that the ability to construct and reconstruct legal events is so strong, appealing, and powerful that it limits our ability to engage in structural analysis. The difficulty of seeing beyond what is here called ‘the event horizon of legality’ interprets aspects of life as exceptional rather than structural, as it focuses attention on a limited range of possible causes, and so a limited range of possible interventions. So, if issues like famine, obesity, poverty, a rising cost of living, and climate change are even partially produced through non-eventful modalities of power, like colonialism, imperialism, or global capitalism, then, as this book analyzes, the event horizon of legality can only ensure that those issues continue. The book therefore calls for a critical re-evaluation of the role of law in shaping our representation of, and response, to crises; and so, for a rethinking of the power and promise of law. This original analysis of the operation of law will appeal to sociolegal scholars and legal theorists, as well as others working in relevant areas in critical and social theory.

This classic and pathbreaking study in the sociology of law has won multiple academic awards for its insight, clarity, and broad import in examining the UK's Rent Acts and landlord behavior over a period of time in the 1960s and 1970s. Not just a revelation of the unintended consequences of well-meaning tenant reforms--though it certainly does lay bare the bizarre side-effects of a law presented as protecting tenants from unscrupulous landlords--the book is a deeper penetration into the very notion of reform legislation, class dominance, competing interests, and the counter-use of reformist law as a weapon by those intended to be regulated. The study even questions the very notion of who really was the intended beneficiary or target of some of the housing reforms passed by Parliament to much fanfare and chest-thumping. Adding a new and reflective 2013 Preface by the author, the Classics of Law & Society edition of this recognized and much-cited book includes quality ebook formatting, active Contents, and linked endnotes--and even a fully-linked subject matter Index which uses the actual pagination of the original print edition, to facilitate continuity and referencing. Links in the Index take the reader to the precise page for that entry. The Quid Pro Books digital edition also includes all figures and tables from the original.

An analysis of the development of US water pollution laws, showing how legal processes and social relations interact as the state struggles to reconcile contradictory responsibilities.

"Why do we think about some practices as work, and not others? Why do we classify certain capacities as economically valuable skills, and others as innate characteristics? What, moreover, is the role of law in shaping our answers to these questions?" These are just some of the queries explored by Zoe Adams's analysis of the legal construction, and regulation, of work. Spanning from the 14th century to the present day, The Legal Concept of Work explores how the role of law and legal concepts comes to consider some forms of human labour as work, and some forms of human labour as non-work. It examines why perceptions of these activities can change over time, and how legal constitution impacts the way in which work comes to be regulated, organised, and valued. As part of the analysis, the book presents a series of case studies, ranging from the publishing industry, academia, medicine, and retail, with a view of illustrating some of the regulatory challenges different types of work face, in the context of capitalism.

Moving beyond the question of whether an area of scholarly investigation can truly be characterized as 'legal', Exploiting the Limits of Law combats the often unhelpful constraints of law's subject-matter and formal processes. Through a process of reflection on the limits of law and repeated efforts to redraw them, this book challenges the general sense of pessimism among feminists and others about the usefulness of law as an instrument of change. The work combines theoretical analysis of the law's boundaries with investigation of the practical settings for changing legal and policy environments. Both the empirical focus of this volume, and its underlying theoretical concern with the limits of the law and its gender implications, render it of interest to legal scholars throughout the world, whether of EU law, feminism, social policy or philosophy.

Critical realism is a movement in philosophy and the human sciences most closely associated with the work of Roy Bhaskar. Since the publication of Bhaskars A Realist Theory of Science, critical realism has had a profound influence on a wide range of subjects. This reader makes accessible, in one volume, key readings to stimulate debate about and within critical realism. It explores the following themes: * transcendental realist * the theory of explanatory critique * dialectics * Bhaskar's critical naturalist philosophy of science.