Body law and the body of law : a comparative study of social norm inclusion in Norwegian and American laws / Christine M. Hassenstab.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hassenstab, Christine M., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Law.

Law--Norway.

Law--United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 349 pages) : illustrations, charts; digital. PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Warsaw, [Poland] ; Berlin, [Germany] : De Gruyter Open, 2014.

Language Note:

English

System Details:

text file

Summary:

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 1960's and 1970's.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.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Note Regarding Legal Cases and Their Designation

1 Introduction

2 Theories Explained and Methodology Used

3 CASE ONE: A Comparison between Indiana (1907) and Norway (1934)

4 CASE ONE: Legal Norm Injection Points in Indiana and Norway: the Selection of Particular Bodies

5 CASE TWO: Reversals of Negative Body-Law in the United States

6 CASE TWO: Reversals of Body-Law in Norway: Birth Control and Abortion

7 Comparisons and Conclusions

8 Appendices

Selected Bibliography

Additional Literature

List of Figures

List of Tables

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

This eBook is made available Open Access. Unless otherwise specified individually in the content, the work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No-Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0 https://www.degruyter.com/dg/page/open-access-policy

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (ebrary, viewed May 31, 2015).

ISBN:

9783110412772

3110412772

OCLC:

1002253372