Book Review: Law and Human Genetics: Regulating a Revolution
| Author | Susan Millns |
| Published date | 01 December 2000 |
| Date | 01 December 2000 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/096466390000900417 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
vividly demonstrates the difficulty of translation of claims into the language of Euro-
pean human rights discourse, for ‘people often tell their stories without translating
them into the language of the Law’ (p. 248). Finally, Thomas Spijkerboer focuses on
homosexual asylum seekers and the ways in which legal systems attempt to translate
the meaning of sexuality ‘there’ into a liberal legal rights discourse ‘here’. Spijkerboer
demonstrates how such translation can enact a type of dichotomous thinking which
does violence to the specificities of the claims being made.
The collection thereby raises central questions about the future of the European
project, providing an important corrective to the hegemony of functionalist and tech-
nocrat scholarship in the area. My hope, however, is that critical scholars will now
turn their attention to alternative imaginings of what transnationalism might offer.
There are clearly indications of such possibilities in this collection. Douglas-Scott
writes of plurality and difference; Lyons of the potential which citizenship offers if
transnational belonging can be ‘delinked’ from the nation state; and Kathleen Moore,
in an analysis of legal pluralism and Muslims in Britain, suggests the possibilities in
the interaction of local, national and transnational legal and non-legal normative
orders. Perhaps, though, it is Spijkerboer who presents the most radical challenge in
his analysis of asylum seeking through the ‘lens’ of Werner Fassbinder’s Querelle.
Spijkerboer, like Fassbinder, suggests that if ‘identities and authenticities are con-
structed in violent struggle’, then the alternative may be to reject ‘the concept of iden-
tity and authenticity’ (p. 199). The implications for the European project here become
clear: that it is only when the possibility of an imagining of Europe as an identity is
relinquished that the potential for imagining a less violent form of ‘union’ opens up.
How we imagine such alternatives, however, must be left for another collection.
CARL F. S TYCHIN
Department of Law, University of Reading, UK
ROGER BROWNSWORD, W. R. CORNISH AND MARGARET LLEWELYN (Eds), Law and
Human Genetics: Regulating a Revolution. Oxford: Hart Publishing, 1998, 224 pp.,
£15 (pbk).
This collection of essays was first published as a special issue of the Modern Law
Review (1998, vol. 61/5), following the 1998 MLR conference on Law and Genetics.
Its beginnings probably account for the diversity of the collection comprising seven
scholarly essays (by Julian Kinderlerer and Diane Longley, Julia Black, Deryck
Beyleveld and Roger Brownsword, Sheila A. M. McLean, Ruth Deech, Celia Wells
and Alain Pottage) together with two short, more descriptive pieces (by Colin Camp-
bell and Onora O’Neill) and an introduction by the editors. The passage from journal
to book form has not been unproblematic. The title of the collection is itself mys-
terious – the inside cover states that the book is entitled Human Genetics and the Law
subtitled Regulating a Revolution (this accords with the title of the introduction to
the collection and the initial article in the MLR volume) while on the outside
(extremely elegantly designed) cover the main title has switched to Law and Human
Genetics. Perhaps the rearrangement of word order is unintentional and without great
significance. On the other hand, maybe the editors wished their readers to grasp early
on the subliminal message (made explicit in some of the contributions) that the habit-
ual prioritization of science (human genetics) above other disciplines, including law,
should be resisted. Intentional or otherwise, the title apart, some sloppy errors have
crept into the collection which did not appear in the original MLR volume: for
example, the typographical errors on p. 2 (fn 3) and the incorrect running head
602 SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 9(4)
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