Prostitution Policy in Europe: A Time of Change?

There has been considerable recent debate about prostitution in Europe that reflects concerns about health, employment and human rights. Legal changes are being introduced in many countries. We focus on two examples in order to discuss the likely implications. A new law in The Netherlands is normalizing aspects of the sex industry through decriminalizing both workers and businesses. In Sweden, on the other hand, prostitution is considered to be a social problem, and a new law criminalizes the purchasers of sexual services in an attempt to reduce demand.Both reforms appear to have had their desired effect at one level; in The Netherlands, health and safety regulations will be introduced as in any other job, and EU sex workers gain full social, legal and employment rights; in Sweden there was initially a tenfold decrease in the numbers of women working visibly on the streets, and some workers have left the industry. However, in both countries, the new legislation has also driven some sex work underground. Many sex workers are excluded by the Dutch system and move underground to become effectively invisible to the authorities. In Sweden sex workers and their clients also become less visible in order that the latter can avoid sanction. Social and economic changes, such as increased migration and the growing use of the Internet will also render the sex industry less visible both to state regulation and to health care workers.The major problems of prostitution for the workers remain exploitation, stigma, abuse and criminalization. These are not unique to the industry, and can only be tackled effectively by the self-organization of sex workers into unions and rights groups, along with full decriminalization. An alternative vision is promised through self-organization and anti-racist actions by sex workers in Germany; normalization and workers’ rights are tackled alongside training programmes for those seeking alternatives. Policy makers throughout Europe would do well to look at their experience and not simply at the clash of legal reforms.     

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and Mental Health Law

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) took effect in 2008. This paper discusses a number of flashpoints where the CRPD will require real and significant reconsideration of English mental health and mental capacity law. The CRPD introduces a new paradigm into international disability law, relying on the social model of disability. While that is no doubt a good thing, there is as yet no clear sense as to how that is to be implemented. After providing an introduction to the Convention, the paper considers four specific areas: mental capacity law (focussing on the provisions of the Mental Capacity Act 2005), psychiatric treatment without consent, civil detention of people with mental disabilities, and mental disability in the criminal system (fitness to plead, insanity and diminished responsibility).     

Underpinning success in the real world of corporations law

This paper reports on an action research project which sought to evaluate and guide ongoing teaching and learning development in Principles of Corporations Law, a semester-long unit of study. Typically, enrolments in this subject area include students from a range of cultural contexts for whom the legislative and administrative concepts of the unit are unfamiliar and who also experience significant difficulties with cultural conventions of communication and business practice. At our university, unit enrolments include a high proportion of distance education as well as non-English speaking background (NESB) students, predominantly from China, who have not studied units formerly considered as prerequisite, and many of whom experience difficulties with basic academic skills. As the development team planned and created teaching features to ensure better learning outcomes for these students, it was clear that some truly contextual thinking as well as some practicable solutions would be required. While we had determined in the redesign planning that scenario- or problem-based learning (PBL) with its emphasis on finding, understanding and using information in context, was best suited to help students acquire the skills that underpin success in the unit, our experience in the project indicated students had a broader range of more basic needs. It emerged that students were struggling with fundamental issues that would need to be addressed before real change could occur.     

The End of Domestic Violence

In this article, I examine the rationales that have been given for extending domestic violence legislation to associated persons. I argue that the empirical and principled rationales are unfounded and that the ideological rationale is reactionary. With regard to the empirical rationale, the extent of violence that the aggregate of associated persons suffers is not high enough to justify privileging associated persons over other citizens with regard to protection from violence. In relation to the principled rationale, the impetus for domestic violence legislation was based on isolation and inequality, which are not experienced in particular by the category of associated persons when taken as a whole. With regard to the ideological rationale, it is worrying that intimacy and equality are emerging as the touchstones of a newer rationale for domestic violence legislation, which rightly has more to do with isolation and inequality than intimacy and equality.     

HUMAN TISSUE LEGISLATION AND MEDICAL PRACTICE: A BENEFIT OR A BURDEN?

The scandals surrounding organ removal and retention throughout the United Kingdom provoked several Inquiries and ultimately led to law reform. Although the medical professions were well represented at the Inquiries, little was heard of the voices of those at the 'coal face'. In this scoping study, funded by the Wellcome Trust, we interviewed a number of doctors and others engaged in the uses of human tissue and organs to explore their hopes, concerns and fears about the role of the law in their practices. We found that those involved in transplantation were more aware of, and more actively involve with, the law, whereas others, such as pathologists, had less direct engagement with the law. Most of those we interviewed expressed the hope that law reform would provide much-needed clarity. Although some expressed concern that the law might be over-intrusive, most felt that the placing of authority firmly in the hands of the person him or her self to decide what should happen to their bodies was to be welcomed.