Guns as American Exceptionalism

There is no issue on which the U.S. is as exceptional as civilian ownership of firearms. There are an estimated 330 million firearms in private hands; there is at least one firearm in 40% of American households. With 5% of the world's population, the U.S. has more than half of the world's civilian gun stock. How can this situation be explained? What problem or problems does it cause? How can Americans tolerate mass shootings that seem to occur more and more regularly? How come the National Rifle Association exerts so much political influence? To what extent does the U.S. constitution constrain policy options? What is the prospect for sensible gun control in the near future

‘The party’s over’: critical junctures, crises and the politics of housing policy

The key argument set out in this article is that historical and comparative forms of investigation are necessary if we are to better understand the ambitions and scope of contemporary housing interventions. To demonstrate the veracity of our claim, we have set out an analysis of the UK housing polices enacted in the mid-1970s as a basis for comparison with those pursued 40 years later. The article begins with a critical summary of some of the methodological approaches adopted by researchers used to interpret housing policy. In the main section, we present our critical analysis of housing policy reforms (implemented by the Labour government between 1974 and 1979) noting both their achievements and limitations. In the concluding section, we use our interpretation of this period as a basis to judge contemporary housing policy and reflect on the methodological issues that arise from our analysis

Legal feminism and insolvency theory: A woman's touch

The impact of women’s lives and experiences on the law forms an essential part of the feminist legal movement. This article evaluates the existence of feminist ideologies in a hitherto unexplored area of the law, namely insolvency law and more specifically insolvency theory. Some main ideologies of the feminist movement are identified and contrasted with the views of the main insolvency theories. It aims to establish whether insolvency theories may also be categorised in relation to ideologies expressed in feminist legal theory