Caring and the Law

Description

'Caring and the Law' considers the law's response to caring. It explores how care is valued and recognised, how it is regulated and restricted and how the values of caring are reflected in the law. It does this by examining the law's interaction with caring in a wide range of fields including family, medical, welfare, criminal and tort law. At the heart of the book is the claim that the law has failed to recognise the importance of caring in many areas and in doing so has led to the costs and burdens of care falling on those who provide it, primarily women. It has also meant that the law has failed to protect those who receive care from the abuse that can take place in a caring context. The book promotes an ethic of care as providing an ethical and conceptual framework for the law to respond to caring relationships.

Jonathan Herring is a Professor of Law at Oxford University and a Fellow of Exeter College.

Although the laws and cases Herring discusses are from the United Kingdom, the book should have a broad philosophical and legal appeal to those interested in social justice and issues of care in other countries. The book reads as if it represents a lifetime of investigation into Anglo-American literature and British court cases on care and the law. Graduate students and practitioners alike would find its stories, philosophy, and analysis informative and moving. Those who specialise in one area of law may fruitfully dip into a single chapter because Herring carries his thesis explicitly and clearly through each section of the book. This is a carefully reasoned and widely researched book that makes a passionate plea for embracing the wider moral and social significance of a relational understanding of care where all of us should hold one another, society, and the state responsible for the human obligation of caring relationships. -- Adelaide H. Villamoare * The Law and Politics Book Review, Volume 23, No. 12 * If the law has a heart, this book is a more than adequate expression of its inner emotion, making it essential reading for all of those interested in or affected by legal intervention in this area. Given the author's accurate assertion that everyone cares or is cared for, that makes for a very wide potential readership indeed. -- Nicole Busby * Journal of Law and Society, Volume 40, Number 4 * ... a thoroughly researched, extremely well-structured and highly thought-provoking text on how the law addresses - or does not, as the case may be - the issue of care. This is a book every law student and graduate should read to assist them to lay down a solid foundation upon which to build their future practice. -- Sue Field * Law Society Journal, Volume 51, Number 8 * It goes without saying that this is an excellent book - erudite, wide ranging and stimulating. Jonathan Herring is a leading legal scholar of our generation. -- Helen Reece * Social & Legal Studies, 23(2) * ... a provocative look at the caring/law intersection that makes a worthwhile contribution to the ageing literature. -- Marshall B. Kapp * Care Management Journals, Volume 15, No.2 * This is an accessible, easy-to-read book; the structure is always clear, with everything signposted. Its socio-legal approach means that the realities of caring are never lost; instead arguments from scholars in a number of disciplines are not only set out well but also firmly placed in context. Concrete examples are used to assist (and sometimes amuse) the reader. -- Annika Newnham * Child and Family Law Quarterly * In this accessible and engaging book, Herring takes us on a journey into a world that lawyers often marginalise, yet it is a world that is of relevance to us all...[Caring and the Law] consolidates core scholarly activity, offers suggestions for improvement and reveals how and why caring relationships deserve more attention from policy makers and academics -- Grace James * Feminist Legal Studies * Caring and the law [has] immeasurable value in jolting one...out of traditional ways of thinking and bravely presenting a vision of a different world. -- Brian Sloan * Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law * Herring should be commented for his up-to-date research within this publication. -- Gary Spencer-Humphrey * Professional Social Work *