The Right to Legal Personhood of Marginalised Groups

Auteur
Professor Anna Arstein-Kerslake is a world-leading expert on legal personhood, including the rights to legal capacity and personhood. She has published widely in these fields and provides key-note presentations on the subjects at venues around the world. She is a Professor at the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the University of Galway and an Associate Professor at Melbourne Law School. She has also consulted widely with government and civil society groups, including providing support for the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disability in the development of their first General Comment on the Right to Legal Capacity.

Texte du rabat

This book argues that equal recognition before the law is the key to achieving social equality for marginalised groups. It examines how the law denies equal recognition to members of marginalised groups through denials of their legal personhood and legal agency and how we can use human rights law to address these wrongs.

Résumé
Legal personhood is required for voting, marrying, inheriting, contracting, consenting, and other critical social acts that can be predicates to power and privilege. The Right to Legal Personhood of Marginalised Groups addresses personhood and legal capacity as human rights issues, in particular as they relate to disabled people, migrant groups, indigenous peoples, racial minorities, women, and gender minorities. The concepts of personhood, legal capacity, and agency have conflicting definitions in the literature, and there is a lack of clarity regarding their application. Dr. Anna Arstein-Kerslake brings her expertise as a renowned thinker in the areas of human rights, disability rights, gender justice, and legal personhood to this discussion. She provides clarity on personhood and legal capacity by developing definitions of these concepts based on the articulation of the right to legal capacity in Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. She then applies these definitions to the situations of various minority groups. The Right to Legal Personhood of Marginalised Groups has the potential to significantly enrich the understanding of how and why marginalised groups are denied equality. It goes beyond the traditional analysis of discrimination and equal protection of the law and explores a new social justice imperative: equal recognition before the law.

Contenu

• 1: Defining Legal Personhood

• 2: Human Rights Law and the Individual

• 3: Legal Personhood and Marginalised Groups

• 4: Legal Personhood and Disability

• 5: Legal Personhood, Migrant Groups, and Stateless Peoples

• 6: Legal Personhood, Racial Minorities, and Indigenous Peoples

• 7: Legal Personhood and Gender: Women and Gender Minorities

• 8: Identifying Implications and Creating Solutions: Breaking Down the Barriers to Legal Personhood