Book Review: Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment? Benefit Sanctions in the UK
| Date | 01 October 2019 |
| Author | Jed Meers |
| Published date | 01 October 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663919859772 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Social & Legal Studies 28(5)
oppose abortion access and to justify civil disobedience. To demonstrate this, Ziegler
uses the example of Operation Rescue and activists in the clinic blockade movement. To
them, Roe was bad law and could be, and needed to be, disregarded. Conservative
support for Roe continued to be strained, she argued, and now Roe is seen as a symbol
of judicial overreach, where instead of interpreting the law, the Supreme Court created
law. This history is vitally important to understanding some of the anxieties around
President Trump’s Supreme Court appointees; Ziegler’s chapter offers a concise apprai-
sal of events.
Ziegler concludes that Roe gave social movements a great opportunity to push for
change. While the arguments were not always successful, she argues that Roe required
courts to examine equality and dignity arguments closely. It involved ‘ordinary people’
who ‘made – and remade – law in ways rarely understood, appreciated or recalled’ (p.
14). It destabilized hierarchies in the home, workplace and in the hospital. By reading the
stories and following the timelines that she details in this book, readers can see that these
arguments are well made. Beyond the Trump administration, it is hard to say what future
Roe may have in the United States; but, in part now thanks to Ziegler’s book, we can be
sure of its place in the history of US activism.
ALANA FARRELL
University of Birmingham, UK
MICHAEL ADLER, Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment? Benefit Sanctions in the UK. London:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 151, ISBN 978-3-319-90355-2, £35.99 (hbk).
The Palgrave Macmillan ‘Pivot’ series bills itself as a publishing middle ground, offering
titles that are ‘longer than a journal article, but shorter than a monograph’.1 The con-
straints of this format did not dull Adler’s ambition. Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading
Treatment? Benefit Sanctions in the UK is a book that punches far above its modest
length. The headline of the review that follows is this: for socio-legal minded scholars
with an interest in the modern welfare state, this book a must-read. Adler provides a
measured but devastating critique of the practice of ‘benefit sanctions’ in the United
Kingdom, but his arguments – particularly his use of the ‘cruel’, ‘inhuman’ or ‘degrad-
ing’ benchmark and the deft handling of conditionality – will be of use to readers outside
of his particular substantive focus. The precision with which broad-ranging theoretical
debates are employed –...
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