Shelley AM Gavigan, BA, LLB (Sask.), MA (Toronto), LLM (Osgoode/York), SJD (Toronto), is Professor of Law at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, Canada, and a member of the Bars of Saskatchewan and Ontario. Dorothy E Chunn, MA, PhD (Toronto), is Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the Feminist Institute for Studies on Law and Society at Simon Fraser University. She is co-editor (with Susan B Boyd & Hester Lessard) of Reaction and Resistance: Feminism, Law, and Social Change (UBC Press, 2007).]
This volume makes a substantial contribution to the scholarly literature on the welfare state, elucidating the socio-legal forms of neo-liberalism and their adverse effects on poor women in Canada, Israel, and the U.S. The book is well organized, the chapters show painstaking research, and the authors make powerful arguments. Commendably, the contributors connect the material and the discursive aspects of the changing welfare state. Another strength is the volume's coherence and cohesiveness. ...the volume should be of particular interest and value to law and courts scholars. ...an intellectually rich volume, both theoretically and empirically, that deserves to become a staple of scholarly research and graduate courses across several disciplines. Elizabeth Bussiere Law and Politics Book Review September 2010