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[EN]If someone had asked us during the first days of confinement about our plans to cope with the crisis, we doubt that ‘writing a paper about musicians’ would had been our quick answer. We felt very distracted at first, unable to do research work, frantically checking out our body temperatures while explored the uncharted waters – at least for us – of online teaching. In all honesty, the task of trying to give sociological sense to mandatory social distancing dwarfed us, at least during the early stages – for us the lockdown effectively began on March the 12th; the Spanish Government formally declared a state of emergency on March the 14th. If only we had paid more attention to debates on moral panics or public health crises. We questioned our own skills and standing as sociologists. It was discomforting, and humbling, to realise that we, as academics, are not a vital profession.

Este estudio explora las ideas, actitudes y percepciones sobre la igualdad por parte de chicas de 16 a 20 años. Interesan sus actitudes hacia la política y el feminismo, pero también susdecisiones y circunstancias en relación con su vida personal. Las chicas jóvenes, sería la hipótesis de la investigación, quizás se sientan desenganchadas de la igualdad.

In this paper we consider the relationship between levels of judicial review litigation and the quality of local government services. The findings indicate that judicial review may be making a positive contribution to local government in England and Wales. The paper also considers the way local government officials perceive judicial review and argues that reactions cannot be wholly understood in terms of incentives. Judicial review makes a positive contribution to public administration at least partly because it promotes values that are central to the ethos of public administration and assists officials in resolving tensions between individual and collective justice.

Pertenece a la colección Religión, Género y Sexualidad / dirigida por Juan M. Vaggione ; v.8 De manera creciente, desde finales del 2013 el escenario español visibiliza no sólo las marchas y contramarchas en relación a derechos sexuales y reproductivos sino cómo las disputas se renuevan poniendo de relieve la necesidad de reflexionar sobre las dimensiones que se ponen en juego en un debate sociopolítico contemporáneo. Los trabajos que integran este libro, surgen al calor del debate público abierto en España en torno a la reforma de los marcos regulatorios vigentes sobre salud reproductiva e interrupción voluntaria del embarazo. Discusiones que demandan marcos analíticos que permitan pensar estos procesos considerando tanto sus particularidades coyunturales como sus dimensiones comunes. Los análisis que integran este libro abordan desde diferentes perspectivas, diferentes dimensiones de un debate que no sólo involucra la norma explícita formal (la ley) sino lo que ese mismo debate promueve como sancionable, cuestionable. El contexto español sirve, de esta manera, como disparador de reflexiones que abren el panorama privilegiando miradas múltiples. La participación de personas provenientes de distintas disciplinas enriquece la conexión entre los trabajos poniendo de relieve la necesidad de reflexiones críticas constantes y alertando sobre la necesaria recreación de la praxis política, en particular cuando visiones más restrictivas buscan impactar sobre los marcos legales vigentes, opacando las relaciones de poder y subordinación en las que el derecho a decidir de las mujeres se actualiza como operación de control.

This paper raises some of the key issues that have emerged from our study of the impact of judicial review litigation on the quality of local government services in England and Wales. Judicial Review is the High Court procedure by which those with a ‘sufficient interest’ can challenge decisions of public authorities on the grounds that authorities have failed to meet their legal obligations, including human rights obligations; or have acted unfairly or exceeded or abused their legal powers (or threatened to do these things). The paper discusses whether or not a greater engagement with public law litigation, as experienced in the UK in recent times, may be leading to improvements or declines - in access to services and in service delivery for individuals and classes of services user, to improvements in the clarity and accountability of processes within local authorities, and to greater levels of legal awareness, including the furtherance of the practical application of the rule of law. We focus on two areas of local authority activity: housing and homelessness and children’s services; and we distinguish in the paper between the impact of challenges, and the impact of judicial decisions. The paper draws on a series of qualitative interviews with ‘key informants’ in local authorities; and presents analyses of judicial review decisions of national significance in the area of children’s services. Our conclusions at this stage are tentative and indicate areas that we intend to pursue further. Our most general observation is that judicial review is a significant aspect of an environment that over the past two decades has subjected local authorities to an increasing range of external regulatory and controlling mechanisms. Against this background, we observe that judicial review is distinctive in various ways. We identify several potentially distinctive features of judicial review from a quality perspective, including its focus on individual problems, its ability to subject decisions to close scrutiny and its ability to provide authoritative statements as to local authorities’ duties. We also consider the circumstances under which decisions are likely to have most (or least) impact on the working and quality of local authority services.