Regulating the Body

Autonomy, Control, and the Broken Promise of Equality in American Law

By: Austin Sarat (Editor), Susanna Lee (Editor)

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Paperback | 5 August 2025

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Paperback
256 Pages

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15.1 x 22.8 x 1.8

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How legal regulation of the body is practiced and justified

Regulating the Body examines the practice of legal regulation of the body and how it has been justified. The essays in this anthology trace the ideological, moral, and religious arguments for increasing the reach of regulation and authorizing punishment for infractions.
Bringing together leading scholars in the law and humanities, this volume examines the practices and discourses used to regulate the body, concentrating on scenarios where ethical and legal inconsistencies abound. The regulations examined herein range from the sale of gametes, parental rights over children's genetic information, debates about masking, discourse regarding vaccines and abortion, anti-transgender legislation, and the control of inmates' bodies on death row. These are situated within a cultural and political environment that values regulation and punishment over our long-standing constitutional protections. At a time where rhetoric around regulation of the body is becoming increasingly incendiary, Regulating the Body reveals worsening legal hypocrisies and unmasks the threats to both personal autonomy and the claims of law itself.

Industry Reviews

"This book must be read cover to cover, as it is more than the sum of its parts. The six regulatory projects at its core are arranged biographically, as if one life extending from gametes to execution. The result is a provocative analysis of the ways the U.S. state claims social substance through regulatory scenarios selectively staged on the bodies of individuals. In the aggregate, the asymmetrical contests over those stagings compel a rethinking of liberal assumptions regarding citizenship as promising either legal and political agency or full membership in a national community."--Carol J. Greenhouse, Princeton University "Editors Austin Sarat and Susanna Lee shine stark light on how inconsistent and contested are regulations of reproduction, medical testing and treatment, punishment, and public health in the United States, post Covid-19. Striking essays by scholars and advocates expose how the language of autonomy, equality, harm, and dignity have little or no explanatory power when compared with the impact of individuals' economic resources, geographic locations, age, race, sex, and gender on government power deployed against human bodies. This compelling collection deserves reading and re-reading by anyone hoping to understand how contemporary America inscribes the political contests on people's physical lives."--Martha Minow, Harvard University

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