This timely Research Handbook offers significant insights into an understudied subject, bringing together a broad range of socio-legal studies of medicine to help answer complex and interdisciplinary questions about global health – a major challenge of our time.
The empirical study of law, legal systems and legal institutions is widely viewed as one of the most exciting and important intellectual developments in the modern history of legal research. Motivated by a conviction that legal phenomena can and should be understood not only in normative terms but also as social practices of political, economic and ethical significance, empirical legal researchers have used quantitative and qualitative methods to illuminate many aspects of law's meaning, operation and impact. In the 43 chapters of The Oxford Handbook of Empirical Legal Research leading scholars provide accessible and original discussions of the history, aims and methods of empirical research about law, as well as its achievements and potential. The Handbook has three parts. The first deals with the development and institutional context of empirical legal research. The second - and largest - part consists of critical accounts of empirical research on many aspects of the legal world - on criminal law, civil law, public law, regulatory law and international law; on lawyers, judicial institutions, legal procedures and evidence; and on legal pluralism and the public understanding of law. The third part introduces readers to the methods of empirical research, and its place in the law school curriculum.
The study of law and social movements provides an ideal lens for rethinking fundamental questions about the relationship between law and power. This Research Handbook takes up that challenge, framing a new, more global, dynamic, reflexive, and contextualised phase of social movement studies.
This unique Research Handbook maps the historical, theoretical, and methodological concepts in sociology of law, exploring the rich and complex nature of this area of research. It argues that sociology of law flourishes due to its strong capacity for interdisciplinary engagement and links to other scientific concepts, methodologies and research fields.
The Research Handbook on International Abortion Law provides an in-depth, multidisciplinary study of abortion law around the world, presenting a snapshot of global policies during a time of radical change. With leading scholars from every continent, Mary Ziegler illuminates key forces that shaped the past and will influence an unpredictable future.
A series of recent high-profile court cases has demonstrated the inadequacy of current laws in addressing issues relating to medical treatment decisions involving seriously ill children. The challenges of determining that life-sustaining medical treatment is not in a young child’s best interests have resulted in criticism of the best interests principle. This book explores the theoretical foundations of the best interests principle, and alternatives offered in the academic literature, to allow readers to understand why the principle remains contentious despite its prevalence. It provides theoretical background, exploration of what occurs in practice, and proposes a novel approach to address these challenges. Frameworks for decision-making identified in the academic literature are used to examine the application of the best interests principle in practice in England and Wales, Australia, and New Zealand through a review of the case law and qualitative research with paediatric doctors. The exploration of current practice allows readers to understand the challenges of applying the best interests principle, but also the need to retain a focus on the child. Readers are introduced to a human-rights based approach, which ensures that the focus remains on upholding the child’s best interests but also provides a more comprehensive explanation of the situation. Progressing the debate around end-of-life decision-making and children, the book will be a valuable resource for academics, researchers and policy-makers. It will also provide practical guidance to both legal and medical practitioners in managing disputes about the provision of life-sustaining treatment.
Since its foundation as an academic field in the 1990s, critical race theory has developed enormously and has, among others, been supplemented by and (dis)integrated with critical whiteness studies. At the same time, the field has moved beyond its origins in Anglo-Saxon environments, to be taken up and re-developed in various parts of the world – leading to not only new empirical material but also new theoretical perspectives and analytical approaches. Gathering these new and global perspectives, this book presents a much-needed collection of the various forms, sophisticated theoretical developments and nuanced analyses that the field of critical race and whiteness theories and studies offers today. Organized around the themes of emotions, technologies, consumption, institutions, crisis, identities and on the margin, this presentation of critical race and whiteness theories and studies in its true interdisciplinary and international form provides the latest empirical and theoretical research, as well as new analytical approaches. Illustrating the strength of the field and embodying its future research directions, The Routledge International Handbook of New Critical Race and Whiteness Studies will appeal to scholars across the social sciences and humanities with interests in race and whiteness.
This volume establishes the discipline of medical ethnomusicology and expresses its broad potential. It also is an expression of a wider paradigm shift of innovative thinking and collaboration that fully embraces both the health sciences and the healing arts.
The Oxford Handbook of U.S. Health Law covers the breadth and depth of health law, with contributions from the most eminent scholars in the field. The Handbook paints with broad thematic strokes the major features of American healthcare law and policy, its recent reforms including the Affordable Care Act, its relationship to medical ethics and constitutional principles, how it compares to the experience of other countries, and the legal framework for the patient experience. This Handbook provides valuable content, accessible to readers new to the subject, as well as to those who write, teach, practice, or make policy in health law.