This volume presents new thinking and new directions in feminist legal scholarship. Rethinking key concepts in legal feminism, Cowan and Hunter provide a unique examination of key socio-legal concepts in law, jurisprudence and legal and political theory. Written by an international cast of contributors, offering different cultural perspectives as well as doctrinal and theoretical knowledge, this collection of essays presents a dialogue between different feminist positions and approaches to a common theme. It addresses a range of questions, including: Can 'consent' be rethought and infused with different meanings in a post-liberal feminist politics? And, Can the concepts of 'choice' and 'consent' have consistent meanings and functions between different areas of law, or whether they prove to be highly contingent when viewed across the broad field of law? Exploring the deeply gendered concepts of 'choice' and 'consent' and examining the philosophical and jurisprudential issues surrounding them as well as how 'choice' and 'consent' operate in particular areas of law, including criminal law, medical law, constitutional law, employment law, family law and civil procedure, this volume is a key resource for postgraduate law students studying jurisprudence.

This paper analyses the way in which the image, masculinity and sexual identity of Elvis Presley
have been recently culturally deployed by particular social groups. It explores the way in which the
image of Elvis is used by lesbian drag king performers who try to queer the cultural stereotypes
which underpin the social regulation of gender roles; and the use of Elvis’s image by the U.K.
fathers’ rights campaign group Fathers 4 Justice, as a sign of unthreatening familiarity to support
traditional heteronormative ideas of masculinity and gender roles. These cultural re-appropriations
of Elvis raise questions for contemporary understandings of sex/gender and sexuality; as the motto
of the San Francisco-based Elvis impersonator ‘‘Extreme Elvis’’ suggests, “Every generation gets the
Elvis it deserves.”

Recent legal and social acknowledgement of (some) trans citizenship claims demonstrates the continuing evolution of trans politics and identity, and the relationship between socio-political identities and popular culture. This article examines current debates over trans citizenship and identity, and argues that certain kinds of identity and citizenship claims have cultural currency in contemporary representations of sex/gender. In order to address these issues, this article highlights key disputes and tensions in contemporary debates about transgender identity, citizenship and claims to legal rights, by examining the ways in which sex/gender identity is portrayed in three films – Cabaret, Transamerica and Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Each film demonstrates various ways of interpreting and reworking the constraints of heteronormative binary notions of sex/gender, and these struggles over meaning are also reflected in the ways in which different articulations of trans identity and citizenship claims have been legally and culturally recognised. The article explores the ways in which particular accounts of trans identity are given primacy within law, and how film can help us to reflect upon questions about which sexed/gendered people get to count as legal citizens. The paper concludes by reminding us that despite discourses of recognition, it is important to remember the exclusionary as well as inclusionary tendencies of law.

A significant proportion of women seeking refugee status in the United
Kingdom will claim to have been raped in their country of origin. Even
where this is not the sole basis of an asylum claim, it may be relevant to
its determination. While criminal justice responses to rape have been
the subject of extensive academic criticism and legislative reform, the
processes of disclosure and credibility assessment in the asylum
context have received little attention. This article explores possible
parallels and dissonances in the treatment of rape across the asylum
and criminal justice contexts, drawing in particular on the findings of a
2007 pilot study. It considers how problems such as the under-
reporting of rape, the inability of the victim to `tell the story' in her
own words, a hostile adjudicative environment, and the tendency to
regard factors such as late disclosure, narrative inconsistency, and
calm demeanour with suspicion ± may be replicated and compounded
in asylum cases. It also acknowledges the complex intersection of race,
gender, culture, and nationality in this context.

This paper argues that Article 8 of the ECHR, as applied to the protection of a person’s right to wear a headscarf, is an inappropriate locus for thrashing out arguments about the right to protection of religious freedom, and that Article 9 allows for a broader legal and political analysis of the multiple meanings and impacts of religion in our lives. However, the law should not prohibit women from wearing the headscarf. Legal regulation of the headscarf should be replaced with robust political debate about the many diverse and intersecting ways in which it is possible to experience womanhood, sexuality, culture, religion, race, nationality and economic security in the twenty-first century.

U.K. regulation of sexual identity within a marriage context has traditionally been linked to biological sex. In response to the European Court of Human Rights decisions in Goodwin, and I, and in order to address the question of whether a transsexual person can be treated as a “real” member of their adoptive sex, the U.K. has recently passed the Gender Recognition Act 2004. While the Act appears to signal a move away from biology and towards a conception of sexual identity based on gender rather than sex, questions of sexual identity remain rooted in medico-legal assessments of the individual transsexual body/mind. In contrast, because transsexual people in some parts of Canada have been able to marry in their post-operative sex since 1990, contemporary debates on the sexual identity of transsexual people in British Columbia and Ontario do not focus on the validity of marriage, and more frequently centre upon the provision of goods and services, in human rights contexts where sex is said to matter. Currently in Canada this is prompting questions of what it means to be a woman in society, how the law should interpret sex and gender, and how, if at all, the parameters of sexual identity should be established in law. This article seeks to compare recent U.K. legal conceptualisations of transsexuality with Canadian law in this area. As human rights discourse begins to grow in the U.K., the question remains as to whether or not gender will become an adequate substitute for sex.

ABSTRACT. In the case of Bellinger v. Bellinger the House of Lords has for the first time exercised the power to make a declaration of incompatibility under s. 4 of the Human Rights Act 1998, finding that U.K. law on marriage is in breach of Articles 8 and 12 of the European Convention on Human Rights. This case note argues, however, that despite this decision, and despite also recent judgments of the European Court of Human Rights upholding the rights of transsexual people, the principles applied in Bellinger demonstrate that judicial discourse on transsexuality remains bound within the heterosexual and biological framework of Corbett v. Corbett.

Feminists have analysed the problematic way in which rape law has evolved in the shadow of the mind/body dualism. This paper will extend this analysis to the problems arising when consent to sex is “intoxicated consent”. One central question is the whether consent is a state of mind or a set of actions or behaviours, performed in certain way, to signify consent. Whether one believes consent to be a state of mind or an action, adding intoxication to the mix renders the problem yet more intractable for criminal law. If consent is a state of mind then being in an intoxicated state can make it extremely difficult to come to a settled state of mind about consent since intoxicants clearly affect the cognitive capacities and it is often also of course, difficult for others to ascertain one’s state of mind. However if consent is an action, alcohol/drugs again can impair the physical and verbal abilities to the extent that action is either impossible or, again, difficult to read. Either way intoxication can render consent obscure. This paper offers a feminist critique of the criminal law’s treatment of the parameters of consent when the person giving consent is intoxicated.

This paper analyses the way in which the image, masculinity and sexual identity of Elvis Presley have been recently culturally deployed by particular social groups. It explores the way in which the image of Elvis is used by lesbian drag king performers who try to queer the cultural stereotypes which form the basis of the social regulation of gender roles; and the use of Elvis's image by the U.K. fathers' rights campaign group "Fathers 4 Justice" as a sign of unthreatening familiarity to support traditional heteronormative ideas of masculinity and gender roles. These cultural re-appropriations of Elvis raises questions for contemporary understandings of sex/gender and sexuality; as the motto of the San Francisco based Elvis impersonator "Extreme Elvis" suggests, "Every generation gets the Elvis it deserves".