Book Review: SCOTT VEITCH (ed), Law and the Politics of Reconciliation. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007, 246 pp., ISBN 9780754649243, £55 (hbk)
| Published date | 01 September 2008 |
| Date | 01 September 2008 |
| Author | François Du Bois |
| DOI | 10.1177/09646639080170030703 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 17(3)
Part III concentrates on reproductive autonomy and parenthood. In Chapter 8,
Judith Masson discusses the legal identification and recognition of parenting rights.
In this highly informative essay, Masson provides an overview of how paternity was
established according to English common law. To Masson, clarity about who will be
the child’s parents and the legal status of the relationship the child is born into are
highly relevant for the child’s welfare. She further argues that the system for deter-
mining the parentage of donor offspring has ignored the child’s welfare and rather
reified the child’s need for a father. Masson’s observations are important considering
the legislative movement towards removing sperm donors’ anonymity in Europe.
Andrew Bainham also questions the parental status associated with the birth of a
child. In a defence of openness, Bainham argues that it is a reproductive responsibility
to reveal the identity of genetic parents to a child.
The book ends with Sally Sheldon’s stimulating essay examining the influence of
gender on how we think about reproductive responsibilities. This is a powerful chapter,
which contains an intelligent combination of theoretical groundwork regarding sex,
gender and reproductive biology, analysis of two legal case studies and a sketch of the
changing medical and social recognition of reproductive responsibilities.
Although the articles within each section display a fair amount of cohesion, the
relationship between sections is rather vague. The book would also have benefited
from a concluding section drawing on issues raised in each individual section, thus
providing the sort of overarching thread currently missing. Freedom and Responsibility
in Reproductive Choice is, however, an important and stimulating book, particularly
for those who have an interest in socio-legal studies. Expanding the discussion well
beyond procreative autonomy and liberty rights, these highly informative essays
address the changing social conceptions and legal regulation of family-making, as well
as reproductive autonomy and parenthood. As Du Bois-Pedain points out in the
introductory chapter, perhaps the most important message of these essays is that, in
expanding human choices, medically assisted reproduction also brings with it new
responsibilities.
ILKE OZDEMIR
School of Law, University of Nottingham, UK
SCOTT VEITCH (ed), Law and the Politics of Reconciliation. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007,
246 pp., ISBN 9780754649243, £55 (hbk).
‘Reconciliation’ has grown into more than an ideal in political discourse and insti-
tutional practice. It is now, to adapt the words of one of the contributors to this volume,
a hegemonic global regime (Moon, p. 180). It dominates contemporary processes of
constitution and re-constitution that, engaging with past injustices, promise a better
future, in contexts as varied as the replacement of one sociopolitical order by another
(as in the classic transitional justice situation) and the judicial realignment of elements
of colonial legal orders (as in Australia and Canada). It has taken the place once
enjoyed by ‘development’: a...
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