Harding: Law and Sexuality

Law and Sexuality has rapidly developed as a distinct area of critical and socio-legal scholarship over the last two decades. In that time, it has blossomed from a small community into a global field of enquiry, with contributions at the cutting edge of academic legal research around the world.

A key reason for its vigorous growth has been the rapid pace of legal change in recent years, with many Western societies providing or enhancing legal recognition of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender ('LGBT') individuals, relationships, and lives. Indeed, many jurisdictions have recently passed progressive anti-discrimination legislation enacting formal equality for LGBT individuals in education, the workplace, or in access to goods and services. And more and more states are developing recognition frameworks for same-sex relationships and LGBT families. In other jurisdictions, however, there has been a parallel rise in anti-gay measures, including constitutional amendments banning gay marriage in several US states and the high-profile 'Kill the Gays' Bill in Uganda.

This evolving legal cartography poses many interesting questions and dilemmas for scholars of law and sexuality, offering rich resources for insightful work. Conceptually, law-and-sexuality research is typified by a dynamic, evolving, and sophisticated conceptual and theoretical base, and this new four-volume collection from Routledge provides an essential work of reference for experts and neophytes alike. Law and Sexuality is prefaced by an introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the gathered materials in context. Each volume also includes a shorter introduction mapping developing themes and trajectories. The collection is sure to be welcomed as a crucial one-stop resource for reference and research.