Erika Rackley

Janice Richardson

Feminist Perspectives on Tort Law

Situating privacy within the context of political philosophy, this book highlights the way in which struggles concerning the meaning of privacy have always been political. Different conceptions of privacy are here shown to involve diverse assumptions about ontology: our conceptions of self, culture, society and communication. Privacy theory’s debt to Locke, Kant or Mill, and what is at stake in their conceptual frameworks, is examined. The extent to which the term "privacy" has been used to the detriment of - and to create - weaker parties in marriage, in the workplace and now as citizens (or non-citizens) and consumers, as well as employees, is also demonstrated. In contrast, Janice Richardson pursues the relevance of Floridi’s philosophy of information, before turning to her application of Spinoza, the philosopher of communication, in order to outline a more useful framework through which to think about privacy today. The book will be of interest to those working in political philosophy, feminist philosophy, law, the philosophy of information, sociology, media, and cultural studies.

Law and the Philosophy of Privacy

Feminist Perspectives on Tort brings together acknowledged experts in these two areas to pursue a distinctly feminist approach to the major areas of tort law.

How can we live together without subordination and oppression? What does it mean to treat each other as free and equal persons? This book uses contemporary feminist insights to examine aspects of the classic social contractarians' arguments, focusing specifically upon the work of Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Rousseau and Kant. Considering the relationship between the 'self' and the law, this volume also looks at the points at issue between feminist political theorists and considers the usefulness of contractarian arguments for feminist politics today, together with an examination of the relationship between their political, legal and moral analyses.

Critical Perspectives from Contemporary Feminist Philosophy and Law

The Classic Social Contractarians

Ralph Sandland

What is the link between the way in which women are viewed as an aberration within law - such that pregnant women initially had to be compared with sick men to claim unfair dismissal - and the view of women as monstrous within philosophy? This book uses the failure of women to fit within male models of both law and theory as a way to rethink legal questions,including the meaning of equality, freedom, justice and citizenship. This includes concern about the way in which queer theory and critical race theory - as well as issues of class - intersect with feminist theory today. It also raises issues about the relationship between political theory and practice and the productive intersection between debates within law, philosophy and feminism. This collection of essays on feminist legal theory therefore provides an interdisciplinary approach, drawn not only from law and philosophy, but also from cultural and womens studies. Feminism may still be on the margins of both law and philosophy, yet it has the ability to disrupt both. This book moves beyond a feminist critique of existing frameworks to the constructive project of reworking theory from within. It goes beyond debates of traditional jurisprudence to draw its tools from the growing body of work on feminist philosophy - including the writings of Luce Irigaray, Drucilla Cornell and Christine Battersby - which intersect both contemporary continental philosophy and critical legal theory.

Janice Richardson

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