Edited by Virginia Mantouvalou and Jonathan Wolff

In developing her conception of structural injustice, Iris Marion Young made a strict distinction between large-scale collective injustice that results from the normal functions of a society, and the more familiar concepts of individual wrong and deliberate state repression. Her ideas have attracted considerable attention in political philosophy, but legal theorists have been slower to consider the relation between structural injustice and legal analysis. While some forms of vulnerability to structural injustice can be the unintended consequences of legal rules, the law also has potential instruments to alleviate some forms of structural injustice. Structural Injustice and the Law presents theoretical approaches and concrete examples to show how the concept of structural injustice can aid legal analysis, and how legal reform can, in practice, reduce or even eliminate some forms of structural injustice. A group of outstanding law and political philosophy scholars discuss a comprehensive range of interdisciplinary topics, including the notion of domination, equality and human rights law, legal status, sweatshop labour, labour law, criminal justice, domestic homicide reviews, begging, homelessness, regulatory public bodies and the films of Ken Loach. Drawn together, they build an invaluable resource for legal theorists exploring how to make use of the concept of structural injustice, and for political philosophers looking for a nuanced account of the law’s role both in creating and mitigating structural injustice.

London: UCL Press, 2024. 334p.

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

Sonny Shiu-Hing Lo

"The Politics of Policing in Greater China" delves into the intricate relationship between law enforcement and state power in the diverse regions of China. Through a comprehensive analysis, this book explores the historical development, organizational structures, and contemporary challenges facing police forces in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.

Examining the cultural, political, and legal dynamics shaping policing practices in Greater China, the authors navigate through the complexities of maintaining social stability, enforcing laws, and addressing issues of corruption and human rights. From the traditional models of policing rooted in Confucian principles to the modern adaptations in response to globalization and technological advancements, this book offers a nuanced understanding of the evolving landscape of law enforcement in the region.

"The Politics of Policing in Greater China" presents a thought-provoking narrative that uncovers the intersection between state authority, social control, and the protection of individual rights within the unique contexts of Greater China. A must-read for scholars, policymakers, and anyone interested in the intricacies of policing in a rapidly evolving society.

Palgrave Macmillan. 2016. 329p.

Edited by Håkan Hydén Roger Cotterrell David Nelken and Ulrike Schultz

This open access book pays homage to Reza Banakar, who passed away in August 2020, exploring the many different areas of socio-legal research that he worked on and influenced. It begins with a summary of his career and explains how he sparked a debate on the identity and aims of legal sociology. The book is then split into 5 sections: - Theory, including chapters on normativity and the stepchild controversy; - Methods and interdisciplinarity, illustrating how Banakar encouraged socio-legal scholars to push the boundaries of existing socio-legal knowledge through interdisciplinary imagination and methodological flexibility; - Legal culture, with particular focus on Iran - 2 areas of special interest for Banakar; - Law and science, covering topics such as human rights, the right to life, and the COVID-19 pandemic; and - Applied sociology of law, inspired by Banakar’s engagement with empirical research and case studies. As well as honouring Reza Banakar's memory and unique thinking, the book aims to advance the sociology of law by demonstrating the interconnectedness of the legal and the social from a broad range of perspectives.

Oxford; New York: Hart/Bloomsbury 2023. 495p.

By Mirjana Lazarova Trajkovska, Marharyta Zhesko

The Analysis includes in depth review of the case-law of the European Court on Human Rights (ECtHR), in regards to hate speech and hate crimes. Considering the ever-growing jurisprudence of the ECtHR in this area, it looks into the most significant and impactful decisions and the recent landmark judgments on the topics.

Vienna: Austria: OSCE, 2021. 108p.

This book explores the realm of human behavior in social situations and the way that we appear to others. Each person in everyday social intercourse presents himself and his activity to others, attempts to guide and control the impressions they form of him, and employs certain techniques in order to sustain his performance, just as an actor presents a character to an audience.By Erving Goffman

NY. Anchor. 1959. 269p.

By Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union

Human Rights Watch / ACLU joint submission regarding the United States’ record under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination

It has been nearly 30 years since the United States ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). Yet progress towards compliance remains elusive—indeed, grossly inadequate—in numerous key areas including reparative justice; discrimination in the US criminal legal system; use of force by law enforcement officials; discrimination in the regulation and enforcement of migration control; and stark disparities in the areas of economic opportunity, education, and health care. Racism and xenophobia persist as powerful and pervasive forces in American society. The ICERD is an important part of the solution: to confront these global problems effectively, the US needs to confront discrimination head on and proactively and swiftly engage in efforts to meet its international obligations. This report and its detailed appendix offer an initial roadmap for the US government to fulfill its obligations under the treaty.

New York: Human Right Watch and ACLU, 2022. 98p.

By Barney Afako, Orzala Nemat, Emadeddin Badi, Mary Fitzgerald, Ronald C.Slye and Srinjoy Bose

Transitional justice is a well-known area of theory and practice, but rarely are its central teachings applied as part of a negotiated conflict resolution strategy vis-à-vis “violent extremist” or jihadist groups. This new IFIT publication encompasses three original case studies on the issue. The case studies cover: 1) peace talks between the the Ugandan government and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA); 2) pre-2011 negotiations between the regime of Muammar Gaddafi and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG); and 3) post-2001 transitional justice and peace efforts in Afghanistan in relation to the conflict with the Taliban. Our research on “violent extremism” and transitional justice also involved the development of an original policy framework that draws on these three cases as well as earlier research published in partnership with UNU-CPR. Overall, this research underscores why negotiation cannot be discounted as an option with “violent extremist” groups, and how creative applications of transitional justice have the potential to make any negotiated deal not only more achievable, but also more legitimate.

Barcelona: Institute for Integrated Transitions, 2020. 204p.

By Christine Stewart

Papua New Guinea is one of the many former British Commonwealth colonies which maintain the criminalisation of the sexual activities of two groups, despite the fact that the sex takes place between consenting adults in private: sellers of sex and males who have sex with males. The English common law system was imposed on the colonies with little regard for the social regulation and belief systems of the colonised, and in most instances, was retained and developed post-Independence, regardless of the infringements of human rights involved.

Now the HIV pandemic has thrown a spotlight, not altogether welcome, on the sexual activities of these two groups. In Papua New Guinea, a growing body of behavioural research has focused on such matters as individual sexual partnering, condom use and awareness of HIV. My work, however, has a different purpose. I chose the terms in the title to highlight a nexus which I believe exists between the criminal law and negative attitudes of society. At an international level, the argument has been put that decriminalising sex work and sodomy will facilitate HIV epidemic management, reducing the stigma and discrimination these groups encounter and making them easier to reach. I undertook my research therefore with the aim of gaining deeper understanding of the effects the current situation of criminalisation might have on the social lives of these criminalised people today, in the country generally and in Port Moresby the capital in particular, and whether these effects might provide evidence to support the argument for law reform.

Canberra: ANU Press, 2014. 394p.

By Leopoldo Fergusson and Juan Fernando Vargas

Colombia is a Latin American outlier in that it has traditionally been a very violent country, yet at the same time remarkably democratic. This chapter explores Colombia's puzzle from a political economy perspective, shedding light on the broader relationship between democracy and violence. The chapter studies some of the most important democratization reforms since Colombia's independence 200 years ago. It argues that the reforms often failed to curb violence and sometimes even actively, though perhaps unintendedly, exacerbated violent political strife. Democratic reforms were unable to set the ground for genuine power-sharing. They were often implemented amidst a weak institutional environment that allowed powerful elites, the reforms' ex-ante political losers, to capture the State and offset the benefits of the reforms for the broader society. We conclude by highlighting the implications of the argument for other countries facing democratic reforms, as well as for Colombia's current peace-building efforts.

Bogotá, Colombia: Universidad del Rosario, Facultad de Economía, 2022. 21p.

By Robert Muggah and John de Boer

While widely considered a core pillar of the peace and security architecture, Security Sector Reform (SSR) is coming under fire. SSR theory and practice are criticized for being overly focused on traditional conflict and post-conflict settings and for being unable to adjust to unconventional settings marked by chronic crime and terrorism. SSR tends to be disproportionately focused on national institutions and less amenable to engaging at the subnational scale. Drawing on the experiences of so-called ‘citizen security’ measures in cities across Latin America and the Caribbean, this paper offers some opportunities for renewing and revitalizing SSR. The emphasis of citizen security interventions on multiple forms of insecurity, data-driven and evidence-informed prevention, the promotion of social cohesion and efficacy and designing crime prevention into the social and built environment are all insights that can positively reinforce comprehensive SSR measures in the 21st century.

London: Ubiquity Press, 2019. 58p.

Edited by Karl Harald Søvig; Marit Skivenes; Malcolm Langford

Norway tops international indexes on children’s rights but continues to attract criticism for its level of compliance with the Convention of the Rights of Child. This book is the first scholarly attempt to address this implementation paradox. The authors ask: What is the current level of implementation? How can we explain any gap in perceived performance? Can we improve our measurement of children’s rights? With the use of quantitative and qualitative methods, the volume examines a wide range of areas relevant to children’s rights. These include child protection and sexual violence, detention and policing, poverty and custody proceedings, asylum and disability, sexual orientation and gender identity, and childcare and human rights education. In addition, the book offers a proposal for an alternative statistical approach to measuring Norway’s performance. The book’s editors conclude by pointing towards the complex set of factors that complicate full realisation and the need for the Government to engage in proper measurement of implementation.

Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 2019. 452p.

By Human Rights Watch

This report, based on interviews with survivors and experts, and a survey, documents the spread and impact in South Korea of what are referred to there as “digital sex crimes.” Digital sex crimes are crimes involving non-consensual intimate images. These crimes are a form of gender-based violence, using digital images that are captured non-consensually and sometimes shared, captured with consent but shared non-consensually, or sometimes faked. These images are almost always of women and girls. This report explores how technological innovation can facilitate gender-based violence in the absence of adequate rights-based protections by government and companies.

New York: HRW, 2021. 103p.

By Sana Ashraf

In the past decade, Pakistan has witnessed incidents such as the public lynching of a student on a university campus, a Christian couple being torched alive, attacks on entire neighbourhoods by angry mobs and the assassination of a provincial governor by his own security guard over allegations of blasphemy. Finding the Enemy Within unpacks the meanings and motivations behind accusations of blasphemy and subsequent violence in Pakistan. This is the first ethnographic study of its kind analysing the perspectives of a range of different actors including accusers, religious scholars and lawyers involved in blasphemy-related incidents in Pakistan. Bringing together anthropological perspectives on religion, violence and law, this book reworks prevalent analytical dichotomies of reason/emotion, culture/religion, traditional/Western, state/nonstate and legal/extralegal to extend our understanding of the upsurge of blasphemy-related violence in Pakistan. Through the case study of blasphemy accusations in Pakistan, this book addresses broader questions of difference, individual and collective identities, social and symbolic boundaries, and conflict and violence in modern nation-states.

Canberra: Australian National University Press, 2021. 270p.

By Keith L. Camacho

Between 1944 and 1949 the United States Navy held a war crimes tribunal that tried Japanese nationals and members of Guam's indigenous Chamorro population who had worked for Japan's military government. In Sacred Men Keith L. Camacho traces the tribunal's legacy and its role in shaping contemporary domestic and international laws regarding combatants, jurisdiction, and property. Drawing on Giorgio Agamben's notions of bare life and Chamorro concepts of retribution, Camacho demonstrates how the U.S. tribunal used and justified the imprisonment, torture, murder, and exiling of accused Japanese and Chamorro war criminals in order to institute a new American political order. This U.S. disciplinary logic in Guam, Camacho argues, continues to directly inform the ideology used to justify the Guantánamo Bay detention center, the torture and enhanced interrogation of enemy combatants, and the American carceral state.

Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019. 313p.

Edited by Trudie Knijn and Dorota Lepianka

Justice and Vulnerability in Europe contributes to the understanding of justice in Europe from both a theoretical and empirical perspective. It shows that Europe is falling short of its ideals and justice-related ambitions by repeatedly failing its most vulnerable populations.

Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020. 288p.

Edited by Silvana Mandolessi and Katia Olalde

This volume presents an interdisciplinary analysis of the practice of disappearances in Mexico, from the period of the so-called ‘dirty war’ to the current crisis of disappearances associated with the country’s ‘war on drugs’, during which more than 80,000 people have disappeared. The volume brings together contributions by distinguished scholars from Mexico, Argentina and Europe, who focus their chapters on four broad axes of enquiry. In Part I, chapters examine the phenomenon of disappearances in its historical and present-day forms, and the struggles for memory around the disappeared in Mexico with reference to Argentina. Part II addresses the political dimensions of disappearances, focusing on the specificities that this practice acquires in the context of the counterinsurgency struggle of the 1970s and the so-called ‘war on drugs’. The third section situates the issue within the framework of human rights law by examining the conceptual and legal aspects of disappearances. The final chapters explore the social movement of the relatives of the disappeared, showing how their search for disappeared loved ones involves bodily and affective experiences as well as knowledge production. The volume thus aims to further our understanding of the crisis of disappearances in Mexico without, however, losing sight of the historic origins of the phenomenon.

London; New York: Routledge, 2015. 259p.

By Torunn Wimpelmann

Since the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, violence against women has emerged as the single most important issue for Afghan gender politics. The Pitfalls of Protection, based on research conducted in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2015, locates the struggles over gender violence in local and global power configurations. Torunn Wimpelmann finds that aid flows and geopolitics have served as both opportunities for and obstacles to feminist politics in Afghanistan. Showing why Afghan activists often chose to use the leverage of Western powers instead of entering into either protracted negotiations with powerful national actors or broad political mobilization, this book examines both the achievements and the limits of this strategy.

Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2017. 231p.

By Hélène Le Bail, Calogero Giametta, Noémie Rassouw

The main objective of this study is to assess the impact on sex workers’ living and working conditions of the act of law n° 2016-444 (adopted by France’s parliament on the 13th of April 2016 with the aim of reinforcing the fight against the prostitution system and supporting people in prostitution).1 This is a qualitative study focused on the viewpoints of sex workers themselves who are directly affected by the law. For the purposes of this analysis interviews were conducted with 70 sex workers (a further 38 sex workers were consulted via focus groups and workshops). A further 24 interviews and focus groups were conducted with sex worker groups or other organisations working with sex workers across France. Two researchers (in political science and sociology) supervised the study and analysed the results in close collaboration with 11 outreach organisations. Alongside this qualitative study, a quantitative survey was also conducted between January and February 2018 involving 583 sex workers the results of which were integrated into this report.\

Saint-Denis, France: Médecins du Monde. 2019, 96p.

By Stefan Rühl and Gisela Will.

The aim of the study in hand is to report on extreme right-wing, xenophobic and antiSemitic crimes and acts of violence in Germany as well as to analyse the developments linked to them. The political climate, legal provisions, political measures and existent sources of data relating to this issue will be described. As a further step, extreme rightwing crimes will be analysed more closely and various Good Practice measures will be described.

Bamberg, Germany: European Forum for Migration Studies (EFMS) Institute at the University of Bamberg

By Thea Shahrokh and Joanna Wheeler.

This pilot evaluation explores how citizenship and agency among social activists can be fostered in contexts of urban violence at the local level. Many initiatives and approaches to addressing violence, particularly urban violence, tend to focus on security sector reform and policing, infrastructure and livelihoods. The role of citizens living in slums, informal settlements and housing estates in acting to stop violence and promoting peaceful relations is less understood and supported. In the urban context, violence is often a means of getting access to scarce resources (such as employment), political power, as well as enforcing discriminatory social norms such as those surrounding gender, age, race, religion and ethnicity. The focus of this pilot is to understand how a sense of democratic citizenship and the ability to act on that citizenship at the local level can contribute to reducing different types of urban violence and promote security, and how becoming an activist against violence can contribute to constructing a sense of citizenship. The case study for this analysis is based in the informal settlement of Khayelitsha, Cape Town, and focuses on community activism against gender-based violence.

Brighton, UK: Institute of Development Studies, 2014. 42p.