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The book explores the relationship between violence against women on one hand, and the rights to health and reproductive health on the other. It argues that violation of the right to health is a consequence of violence, and that (state) health policies might be a cause of – or create the conditions for – violence against women. It significantly contributes to feminist and international human rights legal scholarship by conceptualising a new ground-breaking idea, violence against women’s health (VAWH), using the Hippocratic paradigm as the backbone of the analysis. The two dimensions of violence at the core of the book – the horizontal, ‘interpersonal’ dimension and the vertical ‘state policies’ dimension – are investigated through around 70 decisions of domestic, regional and international judicial or quasi-judicial bodies (the anamnesis). The concept of VAWH, drawn from the anamnesis, enriches the traditional concept of violence against women with a human rights-based approach to autonomy and a reflection on the pervasiveness of patterns of discrimination (diagnosis). VAWH as theorised in the book allows the reconceptualisation of states’ obligations in an innovative way, by identifying for both dimensions obligations of result, due diligence obligations, and obligations to progressively take steps (treatment). The book eventually asks whether it is not international law itself that is the ultimate cause of VAWH (prognosis).
popular sovereignty which runs through Irish political thought and history as the dominant theme. State sovereignty, which is the idea that a state has full autonomy in its relations with other states and is not subordinate to any other authority, did not become as big an issue until some time after the 1916 Rising. This is because many separatists, before this, were quite prepared to accept various forms of internal independence. The issue of state sovereignty came to the fore during the Treaty negotiations, when the Irish declared that what they were entitled to was
’s assertion, gratia non tollit naturam, sed perficit , there is the recognition of the existence and dignity of a purely ‘natural’ sphere of rational and ethical values.’ A. P. D’Entrèves, The Medieval Contribution to Political Thought: Thomas Aquinas, Marsilius of Padua, Richard Hooker (London, Oxford University Press, 1939), p. 21. W
which they are governed is advisable in a country where the traditional attitude of the people is to be against the law and against the Government. The Referendum, we consider, will be a stimulus to the political thought and the political education of the people.84 Besides the need to reassure the people, the referendum had two more purposes; it was ‘a device for enabling a substantial minority in the First Chamber to appeal to the electorate against a Bill passed by the majority and, on the other hand, as a solution of conflicts arising between the two Chambers’.85
, 1988); S. Moller Okin, Women in Western Political Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988). See also Meyersfeld, Domestic Violence, p. 100; H. Charlesworth, C. Chinkin and S. Wright, ‘Feminist approaches to international law’, American Journal of International Law 85 (1991) 613, p. 615; R. Gavison, ‘Feminism and the public/private distinction’, Stanford Law Review 45 (1992) 1; C. Romany, ‘State responsibility goes private: a feminist critique of the public/private distinction in international human rights law’, in Cook, Human Rights of Women, 85; K
. 4 A.E. Malone, ‘Party Government in the Irish Free State’ (1929) 44 (3) Political Science Quarterly 363. 5 That independent thought was not tolerated is also evident from O’Brien’s statement 1 2 120 Anti-party politics Committee members had suffered during the days when the Irish Nationalist Party dominated, ‘they knew that a strong party organisation meant the inevitable suppression of independent political opinion, and they knew that in its earlier stages certainly the Irish Free State would require more than anything else freedom of political thought