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 of over 1,500 titles.
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.
Books: Research
Questions as to the mental capacity of an individual to consent to sex are an increasingly important aspect of legal scholarship and professional practice for those working in care. Recent case law has added new layers of complexity, requiring that a person must be able to understand that the other person needs to consent and can withdraw that consent. While this has been welcomed for asserting the importance of the interpersonal dynamics of sex, it has significant implications for practice and for the day-to-day lives of people with cognitive impairments.
This collection brings together academics, practitioners and organisations to consider the challenges posed by the current legal framework, and future directions for law, policy and practice.
This profound book by leading socio-legal scholar Joshua Castellino offers a fresh perspective on the lingering legacies of colonization.
While decolonization liberated territories, it left the root causes of historical injustice unaddressed. Governance change did not address past wrongs and transferred injustice through political and financial architectures.
Castellino presents a five-point plan aimed at system redress through reparations that addresses the colonially induced climate crisis through equitable and sustainable means.
In highlighting the structural legacy of colonial crimes, Castellino provides insights into the complexities of contemporary societies, showing how legal frameworks could foster a fairer, more just world.
This thought-provoking collection brings together academics from a range of disciplines to examine modern slavery.
It illustrates how different disciplinary positions, methodologies and perspectives form and clash together through a kaleidoscopic view and forms a unique insight into critical modern slavery studies. Providing a platform to critique the legal, ideological and political responses to the issue, experts interrogate the construct of modern slavery and the anti-trafficking discourse which have dominated contemporary responses to and understandings of exploitation.
Drawing from real-world examples across the world, this is a vital contribution to the study of modern slavery.
With contributions from an international team of experts, this collection provides a much-needed international, comparative approach to mental capacity law.
The book focuses particularly on exploring substantive commonalities and divergences in normative orientation and practical application embedded in different legal frameworks. It draws together contributions from eleven different jurisdictions across Europe, Asia and the UK and explores what productive or unproductive values and practices currently exist.
By providing a detailed comparison of how legal and ethical commitments to persons with disabilities are framed in capacity law across different national systems, the book highlights the values and practices that could lead to changes that better respect persons with disabilities in mental capacity regimes.
Disabled people report high levels of harassment worldwide, often based on intersectional characteristics such as race, gender and age. However, while #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter have highlighted ongoing experiences of sexual and racial harassment, disability harassment has received little attention.
This book focuses on legal measures to combat disability harassment at work. It sets disability harassment in its international context, including its human rights framework, and confronts the lack of empirical information by evaluating the Irish legal framework in practice.
It explores the capacity of the law to address intersectional harassment, particularly that faced by disabled women, and outlines the barriers to effective legal solutions.
The word ‘refugee’ is both evocative and contested; it means different things to different people. For lawyers, the main legal reference point is the UN Refugee Convention of 1951.
This concise and engaging book follows the structure of the Convention to explore international refugee law. Including an introduction to the historical and legal context, Colin Yeo draws on his experience as an immigration barrister to explain the present-day legal framework for global refugee protection. Chapters consider:
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well-founded fear;
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persecution;
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the loss of refugee status and exclusion;
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the rights of refugees;
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and state responses to refugee claims.
The book includes studies of key legal cases, reviews the successes and failures of the Convention and looks ahead to the future, including the impact of climate change and the Global Compact on Refugees.
Communicating important legal concepts in an approachable way, this is an essential guide for students, lawyers and non-specialists.
ePDF and ePUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence.
During the 20th century the locus of care shifted from large institutions into the community. However, this shift was not always accompanied by liberation from restrictive practices. In 2014 a UK Supreme Court ruling on the meaning of ‘deprivation of liberty’ resulted in large numbers of older and disabled people in care homes, supported living and family homes being re-categorized as ‘detained’.
Placing this ruling in its social, historical and global context, this book presents a socio-legal analysis of social care detention in the post-carceral era. Drawing from disability rights law and the meanings of ‘home’ and ‘institution’ it proposes solutions to the Cheshire West ruling’s paradoxical implications.
The UN Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty detailed many children’s poor experiences in detention, highlighting the urgent need for reform.
Applying a child-centred model of detention that fulfils the rights of the child under the five themes of provision, protection, participation, preparation and partnership, this original book illustrates how reform can happen. Drawing on Ireland’s experience of transforming law, policy and practice, and combining theory with real-life experiences, this compelling book demonstrates how children’s rights can be implemented in detention.
This important case study of reform presents a powerful argument for a progressive, rights-based approach to child detention. Worthy of international application, the book shares practical insights into how theory can be translated into practice.
At a time when the collective redress landscape is undergoing a period of transformative change, this important and timely research focuses on class actions in England and Wales.
The author provides an objective analysis of the costs and benefits of these proceedings from an access to justice perspective.
Aiming to promote accessibility, this pioneering work separates fact from fiction in an easily digestible way, offering progressive solutions for reform.
How do we maintain core values and rights when governments impose restrictive measures on our lives?
Declaring a state of emergency is the best way to protect public health in a pandemic but how do these powers differ from those for national security and economic crises?
This book explores how human rights, democracy and the rule of law can be protected during a pandemic and how emergency powers can best be ended once it wanes.
Written by an expert on constitutional law and human rights, this accessible book will shape how governments, opposition, courts and society as a whole view future pandemic emergency powers.
