The Foundations of Vulnerability Theory

This volume is the first collection of Martha Albertson Fineman’s most important and influential work. Feminist legal theorist Martha Albertson Fineman has spent decades pushing the boundaries of law, questioning and reconceptualizing legal and social definitions of family, dependency, vulnerability, and state responsibility. The pieces collected in this book trace the arc of Fineman’s scholarship, from gender equality; to the role of the family as a social institution; to dependency; to autonomy; to the legal subject and vulnerability theory.

This book reflects a lifetime of radical reimagining of the relationship between the state, individuals, families, and other social institutions that is just as relevant today, if not more so. In this book, Fineman offers a foundation for the achievement of true social justice, through the centering of our shared human vulnerability and dependency, grounded in the recognition of the ontological body and its material needs. Arranged in sections, and introduced by leading scholars in the field, these pieces ask us to re-examine our legally enshrined commitment to formal equality and the “mythological” autonomous independent legal subject; recognizing instead that we must call for an active and responsive state that meaningfully provides resilience through its social institutions. This collection demonstrates an evolution of heretical thought that has always pressed for a deeper understanding of the foundations of law and society, offering a model for other scholars on how to keep pressing through the hard work of thinking and rethinking the conceptual basics of language, law, society, and justice.

This book will appeal to academics, policymakers, lawyers, activists, and students in law and politics theory with interests in law and society, human dependency and vulnerability, state responsibility, and feminism and the family; as well as others who have applied Fineman’s vulnerability theory to issues in the fields of bioethics, artificial intelligence, and policing, to name just a few.