Embodiment and the Law: A New Approach to Analysis, Discourse and Reasoning

The law currently sees bodies as passive material upon which our values are inscribed rather than as an active part of the production of normative values. Rethinking current legal understandings of embodiment, this book proposes that people’s experiences of embodiment play an important role in the development of normative values and that the legal system should adopt an embodied understanding of all individuals.

Examining perspectives from multiple sub-disciplines, the book develops an extended concept of embodiment from the physical body to the environment through discourse, activities and information. Samuel Walker argues that existing legal frameworks do not fairly represent the heterogeneity and multiplicity of individuals, demonstrating how non-dominant embodiments are marginalised by the imposition of dominant normative propositions. Walker provides a comprehensive approach to the analysis of bodies in legal contexts and puts forward an alternative model of legal subjects to the traditional judicial concept.

Embodiment and the Law is greatly beneficial to students and academics in legal theory, gender and the law, health law, and law and society. Its combination of legal and medical viewpoints on the matter of bodies also makes this an important resource for practitioners in both law and medicine.