2012 C.B. Macpherson Prize

Winner: Jennifer Nedelsky 

Law’s Relations Oxford University Press, 2011)

Excerpt from jury report: An extraordinarily ambitious, interdisciplinary and innovative work, Law’s Relation argues that we must reconceptualize the very idea of autonomy in law if our legal and political systems are to live up to their stated commitments. Challenging the dominant tendency to interpret autonomy in individualistic and boundary-assigning ways, this work develops a contending concept of relational autonomy in compelling and new ways. Equally importantly, it analyzes a wealth of empirical cases and demonstrates that the consistent application of the idea of relational autonomy in legal reasoning would safeguard and enhance relational autonomy in ways that our current notions of autonomy cannot. A remarkable book and a defining statement, it should resonate not only in many academic fields of study, but also in the practice of law.