Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
This book proposes a conception of social justice according to international human rights law. Social rights include everyday rights such as housing, food, fuel and social security.
Drawing on extensive research with frontline practitioners, the book frames access to social justice as a journey that should end with the realisation of an effective remedy. It highlights discourses that marginalise and disempower rights holders and reclaims the narrative around social rights as legal rights.
This is a unique contribution to our understanding of access to social justice from a social rights perspective complete with key recommendations for policy and practice.
This chapter maps the conceptual terrain for understanding social justice in the United Kingdom (UK), focusing on the state’s international obligations concerning social rights (SR) such as housing, food, fuel and social security. It addresses the substantive violations of these rights and the systemic barriers that impede access to social justice. By situating its analysis within the legal frameworks of administrative law, human rights and social justice, the chapter also draws from various social science theoretical lenses, including hegemony, power narratives and deliberative democracy theory. Empirical insights from practitioners across the UK highlight the multifaceted nature of SR violations and the inadequacies of the current legal system. This chapter proposes a model for improving access to social justice by recognizing and overcoming procedural and substantive barriers. It emphasizes the need for a multi-pronged approach to legal processes that ensure effective remedies and uphold human rights standards. In doing so, it advocates for the simultaneous development of both individual and structural remedies to achieve social justice.
This chapter takes a deeper dive into the concerns and challenges that emerged from the UK-wide empirical case studies by identifying various dynamics that interconnect laws, policy and public services to create the daily realities of policy in action ‘on the ground’. Informed by a critical discourse lens, it highlights how barriers to social justice are socially and discursively produced, and, more importantly, how understanding these dynamics can inform practice and chart ways forward to create legitimacy for social rights (SR) in the UK. It reveals how competing discourses marginalize those who experience violations of SR, pushing them further towards the margins and further away from social justice. If access to justice for SR is to be realized in the UK, attending to both structural injustice as well as a keen understanding of social and discursive barriers is necessary. This chapter concludes with a set of recommendations which, if implemented by the relevant decision makers, could begin to address the accountability gaps that plague SR adjudication in the UK, facilitating a rights-based approach and reclaiming the narrative for social rights as legal rights.
This chapter presents an overview of the legal obligations for economic, social and cultural rights in international human rights law. It is designed for a non-expert audience to understand the obligation of progressive realization better as it appears in the ICESCR and to provide insight into the interwoven ‘subduties’ to which the obligation gives rise. It draws on the international human rights legal framework, which includes the treaties, accompanying guidance, scholarly input and international treaty monitoring. It then moves on to explore the legal framework in relation to the right to food, the right to housing and the right to social security as they appear in the ICESCR. In doing so, it also provides insight into the UK’s compliance with these rights and demonstrates possible actions to enable further protection. Finally, it explores the emerging right to fuel as a derivative right under international law.
This chapter sets out the data generated from the empirical research via four UK-wide case studies that provide insights into the everyday reality of the justice gap in practice, drawing on the experience of a broad range of practitioners. Specific SR legal case studies from three of the four UK jurisdictions explore SR violations related to housing, social security, food and fuel, including access to Personal Independence Payment (PIP) for people with terminal illness. A more general approach was adopted to understanding access to justice for SR issues for Wales. Each of the case studies in this chapter provides glimpses of wider issues across the social welfare landscape, illustrating examples of processes and mechanisms that work together to constitute the jurisdictional frameworks for SR and the systemic gaps in the access to justice journey.
This chapter presents a doctrinal analysis of the issue of capacity to consent to sexual relations at the intersection of the civil and criminal law, exploring the various aspects of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and the Sexual Offences Act 2003. The chapter starts with the position outlined by the Supreme Court in A Local Authority v JB, with which the authors agree, to argue that ‘consent’ as a concept ought to be part of the information relevant to a decision to engage in sex. It then goes on to explore the various boundaries between the civil and criminal legal frameworks regarding capacity to consent to sex, justifying the differences in approach through analysing their differing theoretical and policy functions. Furthermore, the chapter considers whether it is right to view the boundaries between the civil and criminal law here as fixed or unchangeable, and whether, instead, we might usefully learn from a hybrid approach to dealing with the problem of sexual offending towards vulnerable adults.
As shown throughout this edited collection, not only has the law around capacity, consent and sexual relationships recently undergone shifts in the form of the Supreme Court case of A Local Authority v JB [2021] UKSC 52, but it is an area of increasing importance for professionals and practitioners working in areas such as social work, health or supporting victims of sexual abuse. The aim of this collection has not been to resolve legal or practical issues, but to re/open some of the existing discussions and debates on mental capacity and sex, as well as offering new perspectives. In doing so, this collection has shown that such conversations and debates must not focus solely on the doctrinal questions which have historically tended to preoccupy lawyers but must also consider the challenges and opportunities the legal framework poses for disabled adults, and for professionals working in health, social care and sectors beyond. It is undoubtedly the case that A Local Authority v JB (JB), as well as many of the other decisions from the lower courts outlined in the Introduction and throughout the chapters, have precipitated a renewed focus on mental capacity and sex, often driven by legally and factually complex cases where there may be concerns about sexual abuse. The clarification offered by the Supreme Court in JB as to what is considered relevant information under the Mental Capacity Act 2005, as well as the relationship between the civil and criminal law frameworks, is – in many ways – to be welcomed.
This chapter discusses the legal regulation of sexual relations and intimacy from the middle of the 19th century to the coming into force of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and Mental Capacity Act 2005 in the early years of the 21st century. The chapter demonstrates that this history is both spasmodic and episodic, with legal developments occurring only in fits and starts. The law as it stood at the start of the 21st century was patchy at best in terms of substantive content. What is equally if not more striking about this history is that it reflects systematic discrimination against persons with mental disabilities which has been of such depth that the very humanity of persons so categorised was put into question by the law.
This chapter explores the in-depth accounts of disabled women who have experienced delayed naming of sexual violence through a materialist feminist and a social model of disability lens. The findings presented in the chapter demonstrate the complexities involved in realisation. Realisation refers to the process of a victim-survivor reflecting on what had happened to them and coming to the understanding that their sexual boundaries have been crossed, resulting in them consequently labelling their experience as sexual violence and/or rape. The chapter suggests that the struggles women face are not always located with the individuals’ decision-making in/capacity. The feminist and social model approach adds an important dimension for thinking through the ideas of ‘vulnerability’, risk, agency, naming and how law frames and responds to these. Through this chapter, the reader is invited to reflect on the ways the Mental Capacity Act 2005 perpetuates a medicalised or individualised focus on disability, while masking some of the social factors which are present in experiences of sexual violence.
Sexual and intimate relationships for anyone can be challenging, emotional and rewarding. People with intellectual or cognitive disabilities, however, have often been denied opportunities to develop such relationships, thanks to a historical legal framework that considered them to be ‘defectives’, ‘monsters’ and in need of confinement, and professional practice that has been – and, in many ways, arguably continues to be – considerably risk averse. More recent developments in the law, in part driven by the empowering ethos of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, have been transformative. In England and Wales, the legal framework contained in the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and associated case law has attempted to give a clearer steer on how to assess a person’s capacity to make decisions about sexual relationships, as well as other types of decisions that may also be a feature of intimate relationships such as contact with other individuals, and the use of social media and internet. Within this legal framework, however, supporting people with decision making about intimate relationships remains complex, daunting, and requires a balancing of many principles, including how best to promote a person’s right to have sexual or intimate relationships, and the extent to which they should be protected from abusive or exploitative intimate relationships, or be prevented from possibly abusing others themselves.
