(Download) "Evaluating Law Reform." by University of Western Sydney Law Review # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Evaluating Law Reform.
- Author : University of Western Sydney Law Review
- Release Date : January 01, 2006
- Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 253 KB
Description
There has sometimes been a naive confidence that better law can be a panacea, ameliorating social and other ills. Law reform, particularly legislative reform, has been touted as a means of facilitating progressive change. Liberal feminists, for example, have resorted to law to respond to the inequalities and inequities women experience. Other feminists have been sceptical of law reform, disillusioned with law's resistance to feminist legal analysis and challenges, and with the uncertain outcomes of feminist-inspired legal and policy changes. A brief survey of recent legislative reform in Australia would confirm this bleak estimation. Law has been used to facilitate neo-liberal economic programs and individualise employment relations; exclude asylum seekers; send single parents back to work; thwart legal recognition of same sex relationships and erode civil and political liberties. At such political junctures, reliance on litigation, rather than legislative reform, may be more effective to 'restrain, or at best, make visible unjust practices and policies ... [and] restore a cautious confidence in the law to effect change.' (1) This paper seeks to examine some of the scholarly literature about law reform to evaluate whether confidence in law reform is misplaced. It begins by distinguishing what one commentator has called classical and progressive approaches to law reform, and attempts to situate these approaches within broader philosophical, sociological and political theories. It then reviews some of the debates within feminist legal theory about the value of and risks associated with law reform. It concludes that although law reform will never be a sufficient response to inequalities and oppression, there will be times when it will be possible and necessary.
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