Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Personhood: Perspectives from Critical Feminist, Disability and Queer Studies

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Legal Capacity & Gender

Abstract

This chapter will explore personhood—one of the two components of legal capacity—through the lens of critical social theory. It will draw on feminist, disability and queer studies to examine historical and modern structures that deny personhood to these groups. I am focusing on personhood because recognition of personhood is the prerequisite for an individual being entitled to rights—including the right to legal agency, the second component of the right to legal capacity. There is also much less scholarship available on the right to legal agency (Arstein-Kerslake and Flynn 2017), so I have chosen to explore personhood here in order to be able to draw on a breadth of literature. I use critical social theory because it is focused on unearthing systemic domination and oppression—which, as I will explore throughout this book, is particularly pertinent to how women, disabled women, and gender minorities experience the right to legal capacity because they have, in different ways, been systemically excluded from personhood throughout history and into the present. The aim of this chapter is to bring together these different discussions of personhood from these various areas of scholarship in order to inform how the right to legal personhood—as part of the right to legal capacity—can best be realised for these groups.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 119.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    The history of women, disabled women, and gender minorities being excluded from legal capacity—including legal personhood and legal agency—due to prejudicial notions of insufficient capacity is explored more in Chap. 3.

References

  • Agger, Ben. 2006. Critical Social Theories. 2nd ed. Paradigm Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ahmed, Sara. 2016. Deconstruction and Law’s Other: Towards a Feminist Theory of Embodied Legal Rights: Social & Legal Studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage CA. https://doi.org/10.1177/096466399500400103.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, Elizabeth. 2009. Toward a Non-Ideal, Relational Methodology for Political Philosophy: Comments on Schwartzman’s “Challenging Liberalism”. Hypatia 24: 130–145. JSTOR.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Arstein-Kerslake, Anna. 2017. Restoring Voice to People with Cognitive Disabilities. Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Arstein-Kerslake, Anna, and Eilionóir Flynn. 2017. The Right to Legal Agency: Domination, Disability and the Protections of Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. International Journal of Law in Context 13: 22–38. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744552316000458.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Assassi, Libby. 2009. Property and Gender: Irrational Women and Rational Men. In The Gendering of Global Finance, ed. Libby Assassi, 49–68. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230246690_3.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Bierstedt, Robert. 1950. An Analysis of Social Power. American Sociological Review 15: 730–738. JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.2307/2086605.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Blair, Margaret M. 2013. Corporate Personhood and the Corporate Persona Symposium: In the Boardroom. University of Illinois Law Review: 785–820.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bohman, James. 2019. Critical Theory. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, Winter 2019.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boucher, David, and Paul Kelly. 2003. The Social Contract from Hobbes to Rawls. Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Butler, Judith. 1999. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2004. Undoing Gender. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203499627.

  • Calhoun, Craig. 1995. Critical Social Theory: Culture, History, and the Challenge of Difference. Cambridge, MA, USA: Wiley-Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Campbell, Josephine. 2020. Critical Theory. In Salem Press Encyclopedia. Salem Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cannoot, Pieter. 2019. ‘#WontBeErased’: The Effects of (De)pathologisation and (De)medicalisation on the Legal Capacity of Trans* Persons. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 66: 101478. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijlp.2019.101478.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Christman, John. 2004. Relational Autonomy, Liberal Individualism, and the Social Constitution of Selves. Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition 117: 143–164. JSTOR.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Collins, Patricia Hill. 2019. Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory. Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dhanda, Amita. 2012. Universal Legal Capacity as a Universal Human Right. In Mental Health and Human Rights: Vision, Praxis, and Courage, ed. Michael Dudley, Derrick Silove, and Fran Gale. Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dunn, John. 1982. The Political Thought of John Locke: An Historical Account of the Argument of the “Two Treatises of Government”. Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Epstein, Richard A. 2002. Animals as Objects, or Subjects, of Rights. SSRN Scholarly Paper ID 359240. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fiske, Susan T., and Jennifer Berdahl. 2007. Social Power. In Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles, 2nd ed., 678–692. New York, NY, US: The Guilford Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fisse, Brent. 1995. Corporations, Crime and Accountability. Current Issues in Criminal Justice 6: 378–386. https://doi.org/10.1080/10345329.1995.12036668.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Flynn, Eilionoir, and Anna Arstein-Kerslake. 2014a. The Support Model of Legal Capacity: Fact, Fiction, or Fantasy. Berkeley Journal of International Law: 124–143.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2014b. Legislating Personhood: Realising the Right to Support in Exercising Legal Capacity. International Journal of Law in Context 10: 81–104. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744552313000384.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, Michel. 1990. The History of Sexuality. Penguin History. Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frenkel, David A., and Yotam Lurie. 2001. Culpability of Corporations - Legal and Ethical Perspectives Articles and Addresses. Criminal Law Quarterly 45: 465–487.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gilligan, Carol. 1993. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Green, Frederick. 1945. Corporations as Persons, Citizens, and Possessors of Liberty. University of Pennsylvania Law Review 94: 202–237.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gutmann, Amy. 1980. Liberal Equality. CUP Archive.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hacking, Ian. 1986. Making Up People. In Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in Western Thought, ed. Thomas C. Heller, Morton Sosna, and David E. Wellbery, 222–236. Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1998a. Rewriting the Soul. F Second Printing Used Edition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1998b. Mad Travelers: Reflections on the Reality of Transient Mental Illnesses. Charlottesville, Va: University of Virginia Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Honkasalo, Julian. 2018. Unfit for Parenthood? Compulsory Sterilization and Transgender Reproductive Justice in Finland. Journal of International Women’s Studies 20: 40–52.

    Google Scholar 

  • Horkheimer, Max. 1972. Critical Theory: Selected Essays. A&C Black.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hudson, Barbara. 2006. Beyond White Man’s Justice: Race, Gender and Justice in Late Modernity. Theoretical Criminology 10: 29–47. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480606059981.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hughes, Bill. 2012. Civilising Modernity and the Ontological Invalidation of Disabeld People. In Disability and Social Theory, ed. Bill Hughes, Dan Goodley, and Lennard J. Davis, 17–32. Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hughes, Bill, and Kevin Paterson. 1997. The Social Model of Disability and the Disappearing Body: Towards a Sociology of Impairment. Disability & Society 12: 325–340. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599727209.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ikäheimo, Heikki. 2008. Personhood and the Social Inclusion of People with Disabilities: A Recognition-Theoretical Approach. In Arguing about Disability: Philosophical Perspectives, ed. Kristjana Kristiansen, Simo Vehmas, and Tom Shakespeare, 77–92. Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jackson, Ronald, II, and Michael Hogg. 2010. Queer Theory. In Encyclopedia of Identity, 612–616. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, Inc. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412979306.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Jaworska, Agnieszka, and Julie Tannenbaum. 2018. The Grounds of Moral Status. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, Spring 2018.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, Allan G. 2005. The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy. Temple University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Karkazis, Katrina Alicia. 2008. Fixing Sex: Intersex, Medical Authority, and Lived Experience. E-Duke Books Scholarly Collection. Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Karlan, Pamela S., and Daniel R. Ortiz. 1992. In a Diffident Voice: Relational Feminism, Abortion Rights, and the Feminist Legal Agenda. Northwestern University Law Review 87: 858–896.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kimmel, Michael. 2017. Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era. PublicAffairs.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kimmel, Michael, and Jacqueline Zuzann Holler. 2011. The Gendered Society. Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kittay, Eva Feder. 1999. Love’s Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency. Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2005. At the Margins of Moral Personhood. Ethics 116: 100–131. JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.1086/454366.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kittay, Eva Feder, and Licia Carlson, eds. 2010. Cognitive Disability and Its Challenge to Moral Philosophy. 1st ed. Chichester, West Sussex; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kohlberg, Lawrence, and Richard H. Hersh. 1977. Moral Development: A Review of the Theory. Theory Into Practice 16: 53.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kramer, Matthew H. 2008. Where Law and Morality Meet. Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kukathas, Chandran, and Philip Pettit. 1990. Rawls: A Theory of Justice and Its Critics. Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lee, Rebecca (I). 2015. Forced Sterilization and Mandatory Divorce: How a Majority of Council of Europe Member States’ Laws Regarding Gender Identity Violate the Internationally and Regionally Established Human Rights of Trans People. Berkeley Journal of International Law 33: 114–152.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lennon, Kathleen. 2019. Feminist Perspectives on the Body. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, Fall 2019.

    Google Scholar 

  • Locke, John. 1794. The Works of John Locke. T. Longman, B. Law.

    Google Scholar 

  • Luborsky, Mark R. 1994. The Cultural Adversity of Physical Disability: Erosion of Full Adult Personhood. Journal of Aging Studies 8: 239–253. https://doi.org/10.1016/0890-4065(94)90002-7.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lund, William R. 1996. Politics, Citizens, and the Good Life: Assessing Two Versions of Ethical Liberalism. Political Research Quarterly 49: 479–504. JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.2307/449094.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mackenzie, Catriona, and Natalie Stoljar. 2000. Relational Autonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency, and the Social Self. Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Macklin, Ruth. 1983. Personhood in the Bioethics Literature. The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly. Health and Society 61: 35–57. JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.2307/3349815.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Maitland, Frederic Wiliam. 1905. Moral Personality and Legal Personality. Journal of the Society of Comparative Legislation 6: 192–200. JSTOR.

    Google Scholar 

  • Matambanadzo, Saru. 2005. Engendering Sex: Birth Certificates, Biology and the Body in Anglo American Law. Cardozo Journal of Law & Gender 12: 213–246.

    Google Scholar 

  • Matambanadzo, Saru M. 2012. Embodying Vulnerability: A Feminist Theory of the Person. Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy 20: 39.

    Google Scholar 

  • McClain, Linda C. 1991. Atomistic Man Revisited: Liberalism, Connection, and Feminist Jurisprudence. Southern California Law Review 65: 1171–1264.

    Google Scholar 

  • McConnell, Joyce E. 1996. Relational and Liberal Feminism: The Ethic of Care, Fetal Personhood and Autonomy Symposium: Farley v. Sartin and Fetal Personhood. West Virginia Law Review 99: 291–310.

    Google Scholar 

  • McFeeters, Belinda Bennett. 2019. White Privilege: The Invisible Advantages and Apparent Disadvantages. In Salem Press Encyclopedia. Great Neck Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Minow, Martha. 1987. Justice Engendered. Harvard Law Review 101: 10.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Minow, Martha, and Mary Lyndon Shanley. 1996. Relational Rights and Responsibilities: Revisioning the Family in Liberal Political Theory and Law. Hypatia 11: 4–29. JSTOR.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Murphy, Robert. 1995. Encounters: The Body Silent in America. In Disability and Culture, ed. Benedicte Ingstad and Susan Reynolds Whyte, 140–158. University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2016. The Damaged Self. In Understanding and Applying Medical Anthropology, ed. Peter J. Brown and Svea Closser, 249–260. Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Murphy, Robert F. 2001. The Body Silent: The Different World of the Disabled. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Naffine, Ngaire. 2009. Law’s Meaning of Life: Philosophy, Religion, Darwin and the Legal Person. Bloomsbury Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2011. Women and the Cast of Legal Persons. In Gender, Sexualities and Law, ed. Jackie Jones, Anna Grear, Rachel Anne Fenton, and Kim Stevenson, 15–25. Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2019. Criminal Law and the Man Problem. Bloomsbury Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nussbaum, Martha. 2001. The Enduring Significance of John Rawls. The Chronicle of Higher Education 7.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nussbaum, Martha Craven. 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Donnell, Erin, and Julia Talbot-Jones. 2018. Creating Legal Rights for Rivers: Lessons from Australia, New Zealand, and India. Ecology and Society 23. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-09854-230107.

  • Oliver, Mike. 2013. The Social Model of Disability: Thirty Years on. Disability & Society 28: 1024–1026. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2013.818773.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Phelan, Shane. 2000. Queer Liberalism? Edited by Mark Blasius, Morris Kaplan, Valerie Lehr, Steven Seidman, Andrew Sullivan, and Jeffrey Weeks. The American Political Science Review 94: 431–442. JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.2307/2586023.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Quinn, Gerard, and Anna Arstein-Kerslake. 2012. Restoring the ‘Human’ in “Human Rights”: Personhood and Doctrinal Innovation in the UN Disability Convention. In The Cambridge Companion to Human Rights Law, ed. Connor Gearty and Costas Douzinas, 36–55. Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Quinn, Gerard, and Abigail Rekas-Rosalbo. 2016. Civil Death: Rethinking the Foundations of Legal Personhood for Persons with a Disability. Irish Jurist 56: 286–325.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rawls, John. 1993. Political Liberalism. Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1999. A Theory of Justice. Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2005. Political Liberalism. Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Riley, Patrick. 2013. Will and Political Legitimacy: A Critical Exposition of Social Contract Theory in Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel. Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosenkranz, Mark Steven. 2012. White Male Privilege: Fourth Edition. Law Dog Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ross, Loretta, and Rickie Solinger. 2017. Reproductive Justice: An Introduction. Univ of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rothman, Joshua. 2014. The Origins of “Privilege”. The New Yorker, May 12.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rowlands, Sam, and Jean-Jacques Amy. 2018. Preserving the reproductive potential of transgender and intersex people. The European Journal of Contraception & Reproductive Health Care 23: 58–63. https://doi.org/10.1080/13625187.2017.1422240.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Scott, G.E. 1990. Moral Personhood: An Essay in the Philosophy of Moral Psychology. SUNY Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shakespeare, Tom. 2013. Disability Rights and Wrongs Revisited. Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2016. The Social Model of Disability. In The Disability Studies Reader, ed. Lennard J. Davis, 195–203. Taylor & Francis.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shaver, Sheila. 1996. Liberalism, Gender and Social Policy. Social Policy Research Centre Discussion Paper No. 68. Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South Wales.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, Adam. 1987. The Essential Adam Smith. W. W. Norton & Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, Bryant. 1928. Legal Personality. The Yale Law Journal 37: 283–299. JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.2307/789740.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stark, Cynthia A. 2007. How to Include the Severely Disabled in a Contractarian Theory of Justice. Journal of Political Philosophy 15: 127–145. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9760.2005.00257.x.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wahlert, Lance, and Autumn Fiester. 2012. Queer Bioethics: Why Its Time Has Come. Bioethics 26: ii–iv. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8519.2011.01957.x.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Warren, Mary Anne. 2000. Moral Status: Obligations to Persons and Other Living Things. Issues in Biomedical Ethics. Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Watson, Joanne. 2016. Assumptions of Decision-Making Capacity: The Role Supporter Attitudes Play in the Realisation of Article 12 for People with Severe or Profound Intellectual Disability. Laws 5: 6. https://doi.org/10.3390/laws5010006.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • West, Robin. 1988. Jurisprudence and Gender. The University of Chicago Law Review 55: 1–72. JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.2307/1599769.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Whitney, Shiloh Y. 2011. Dependency Relations: Corporeal Vulnerability and Norms of Personhood in Hobbes and Kittay. Hypatia 26: 554–574. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.2011.01188.x.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wilsdon, Emily A. 2010. Feminism and Personhood. SSRN Scholarly Paper ID 1632926. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wong, Sophia Isako. 2010. Duties of Justice to Citizens with Cognitive Disabilities. In Cognitive Disability and Its Challenge to Moral Philosophy, ed. Eva Feder Kittay and Licia Carlson, 127–146. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444322781.ch7.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Anna Arstein-Kerslake

Authors
  1. Anna Arstein-Kerslake
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Arstein-Kerslake, A. (2021). Personhood: Perspectives from Critical Feminist, Disability and Queer Studies. In: Legal Capacity & Gender. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63493-3_2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63493-3_2

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-63492-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-63493-3

  • eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation