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31 Liverpool L. Rev. 1 (2010)

handle is hein.journals/lvplr31 and id is 1 raw text is: Liverpool Law Rev (2010) 31:1-12 DOI 10.1007/s10991-010-9069-6 Socio-Legal Perspectives on Gender, Sexuality and Law: Editorial Chris Ashford Published online: 29 April 2010 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 Introduction This special edition of Liverpool Law Review offers four articles that consider contemporary issues in Gender, Sexuality and Law. They are united by the socio- legal approach that they take to a range of global social phenomena and were each originally presented as part of the Gender, Sexuality and Law stream at the 2009 Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA) Annual Conference in Leicester. Each piece highlights the importance of socio-legal approaches to the examination of gender and sexuality in both domestic and international legal discourses and this editorial sets forth some of the issues in developing the 'field' of gender, sexuality within a socio-legal context. Defining Socio-Legal Drawing a collection of work under the banner 'socio-legal' is, despite the modern commonality of the term, not without problems.1 Philip Thomas has described the difficulties in defining Socio-Legal Studies2 whilst Nelkin has noted the very term 'socio-legal' can be contentious amongst those who prefer the term 'Sociology of Law'3 and who seek to draw a distinction between the two.4 This distinction, or boundary, Banakar and Travers argue, is 'an obstacle which hinders the Cownie (2004a): 51. 2 Thomas (1997). 3 Nelkin (1981). See more generally: Cotterrell (1995). 4 See Travers (2001). C. Ashford (E) University of Sunderland, Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, UK e-mail: chris.ashford@sunderland.ac.uk _ Springer