This chapter affirms the feminist impetus of this collection by reflecting on power relations in society and their impact on law and law’s regulation. An acute site for this inquiry is in the state itself, and the state’s determination of its own membership. It is the thesis of this chapter that the national subject, the legal citizen,1 is a space in which gender, sexuality and race keenly interact with the everyday lives of individuals. An appreciation of this point is often overlooked. While the language of citizenship is often gender neutral, it often ‘perpetuat[es] the invisibility of women’ as citizens.2 Margaret Thornton examines the civil status of women as citizens in the early years of the twentieth century to ‘illustrate the peripheral civil status of women as citizens’ and, therefore, questions the full membership consequences of citizenship.3

The chapter examines the different phases of the wartime ‘special relationship’ between the UK and the USA. Roosevelt’s initial contact with Churchill was born of the realisation that American security was tied to that of the UK but with the over-riding caveat that the USA would not become ‘a tail on the British kite’. Initially, Churchill worked hard to convince Roosevelt that Britain was serious about continuing the war, while FDR pursued a strategy of hemispheric defence. Co-operation then increased with Roosevelt developing a policy of all aid short of war. Pearl Harbor ushered in the high-water mark of the alliance, albeit with disagreements about strategy. FDR saw an opportunity to draw the English-speaking peoples together to create a new, multilateral world order that rejected imperialism, while Churchill saw the war as a means to restore the British Empire and perpetuate British power. Roosevelt’s pursuit of a bilateral relationship with Stalin led to a final phase of increasing tension. Ultimately, the special relationship that emerged from the war would become far more important in the UK than in the USA, yet it owed much to the two people’s shared belief in preserving democracy.

The chapter places Churchill’s lifespan firmly within ‘the golden age of print’. It looks at his apprenticeship as a writer, served while in the army, explaining how his early books helped him earn the war chest that allowed him to launch his political career, before showing how his shrewd and selective use of sources for his biography of Lord Randolph Churchill allowed him to reconcile his role as a defender of his father’s political legacy with his own move to the Liberal Party. Churchill’s working methods also changed as he entered government. He used a team to help produce his multi-volume history of the First World War in order to defend his role in the Dardanelles operation. Thereafter, Churchill had to juggle managing his tax liability as an author with his need for more income, but by the 1930s he was committed to several major publishing projects. After the war, he sought to capitalise on his premiership through his multi-volume histories of the Second World War and the History of the English-Speaking Peoples. The chapter analyses how Churchill managed his various literary projects, sheds light on his own role in the creative process and looks at how this changed over time.

This chapter looks at how and why Churchill has become such a divisive figure. It opens with a description of recent debates in the public discourse and on social media. It then briefly discuses Churchill’s reputation during his lifetime before recounting the role that he played in shaping his own legacy through his words, written and spoken, and through the creation of his archive and official biography. The authors then examine the long and complex historiography of Churchill, highlighting some of the most significant challenges to the dominant Churchillian narrative. Particular attention is paid to the more recent politicising of Churchill as a result of debates over Brexit, empire and race.

The chapter introduces Churchill’s army career between 1895 and 1900, but does so from an important new perspective: using his exploits in Cuba, India, the Sudan and South Africa to explore the origins of his lifelong interest in intelligence and clandestine operations. It argues that his first foray overseas to Cuba was in the ‘well-established tradition of the British amateur spy’ but that he maintained his interest in military intelligence thereafter through the connections he made to support his writing and journalism on the Indian north-west frontier, while attached to Kitchener’s expedition in the Sudan and later as a war correspondent and then soldier in South Africa. The author looks at the intelligence lessons that Churchill learned, including the power of guerrilla insurrection, the importance of properly resourced intelligence services, the comparative roles of the civil and military intelligence arms and the need for a managed relationship with the press.

This chapter engages the reproductive subject of international human rights law, a subject who conceives, gestates and births, or seeks to avoid them. Reproduction is a fascinating site for the critical study of gender and law because it necessitates grappling with bodies.1

This chapter is concerned with the last period of Churchill’s premiership and leadership of the Conservative Party. It focusses not just on the last part of his ‘Indian summer’ when back in office but also on the tempestuous moves and motives of the Conservatives to compel his retirement in an age before party leadership elections. It also examines Churchill’s manoeuvres to frustrate these ambitions and continue in power. While many studies have examined how British politicians gain the leadership of political parties, there has been less analysis of their inevitable fall. The chapter is written primarily from the Conservative perspective since, until the 1965 Douglas-Home Rules which established leadership elections and procedures, so-called customary processes existed to enable, largely without public knowledge (and even beyond the engagement of many Conservative politicians themselves), the emergence, and removal, of leaders ‘for the good of the party’.

The vision of the self promoted by the law is of an isolated, independent, self-sufficient, autonomous man. Far from the reality of our vulnerable, caring, relational selves. The rights the law tends to protect are well suited for the legal self: those of autonomy, privacy and self-determination. They are unsuited for the reality of our existence in which autonomies are mixed; meaning is found in sharing experiences; and flourishing is discovered in the mingling of our lives. The legal self privileges particular activities, those traditionally seen as the world of men, and downplays the importance of caring, traditionally seen as the world of women. This side-lining of care, and the aggrandising of what is labelled ‘economically productive’, helps sustain and reinforce patriarchal oppression of women.

In Salisbury, Connecticut, ‘gender trouble’ took place during a local election in 1843,1 as the ‘sex’ of one voter was contested. Allegedly, the Whig Party had introduced – what was contested as – a woman into the electorate. Determining the ‘sex’ of the voter was necessary to judge whether the ballot could be validly cast. A medical expert was summoned. An imperforated penis and a small testicle were found. This discovery temporarily resolved the dispute, and the person was admitted to the vote. On Election Day, however, the voter was denied electoral rights. Since the ‘sex’2 of the voter was subject to further controversy, two more doctors were called in to consult. The presence of a testicle was established, thus ‘legitimizing’ the vote. Yet a few days later, it became known that the individual menstruated. A third examination was deemed necessary, which led to the discovery of a uterus. The person, referred to as ‘the hermaphrodite’,3 was concluded to have ‘unduly used the right to vote’.4 This story widely reverberated.5 Not only had it shed light on what ‘sex’ was understood to be, it also hinted at the ultimate reason for gender-based rules of political franchise: What would have happened if a woman had been able to slip into the electorate? Furthermore, why should this or that specific biological characteristic be the determining factors in this case? Such ‘gender troubles’ were not limited to the public sphere. For example, the French Court of Cassation had to decide on the ‘sex’ of one of two spouses to determine the validity of their marriage in 1903. That court relied on the external appearance of genitals.

The words ‘terror’ and ‘terrorized’ are not new to discussions of gender-based violence. Indeed, these words are often used to describe the lived experience of gender-based violence.1 Likewise, the association between gender violence and other forms of extreme violence, such as torture, has already been established in international law.2 On the one hand, the recognition of this association allows for greater awareness of the gravity of this particular form of violence. On the other hand, this association has encouraged an overall harshening of punishment and a criminal-law approach to violence. This has been particularly notable in the field of international crime, where there has been a significant increase in the volume of norms criminalizing gender-based violence – many of which have paid special attention to sexual offences, which are now even included in the Rome Statute’s Article 7 as one type of crimes against humanity.

The chapter examines Churchill’s role on the international stage and his summit diplomacy with Roosevelt and Stalin. Faced with the surprise collapse of France in 1940, he was forced to seek new partners, assiduously courting the United States while seizing the opportunity of an alliance with the Soviet Union. The result was that he had to juggle the conflicting demands of Roosevelt and Stalin, embarking on strenuous personal diplomacy in the face of declining British influence. The chapter reviews the key decisions of the major meetings before looking at their postwar legacy in Churchill’s attempts to advance European reconciliation and his ultimately unsuccessful bid to resume summitry with the Soviet Union.

How do we construct sexual citizenship? Put differently, how do we as a society identify those whose sexual conduct and identities as sexual beings are consistent with our notions of citizenship and the public good? Often, identifying the ideal sexual citizen means identifying the traits associated with sex and sexuality that we deem useful, beneficial and productive – the kinds of sexual conduct we value, reward and encourage. But, as is often the case when constructing ideals, our understanding of that which is normatively desirable and desired is often informed by its foil – that which is decidedly undesirable. In this regard, the construction of a normative ideal of sexual citizenship has been tethered to the production of the sexual outlaw – those individuals who live their lives outside of the bounds that constrain citizenship. But it is not just that the law’s construction of the ideal sexual subject depends on the construction of its foil (the sexual outlaw); law also constructs sexual citizenship in ways that are deeply gendered and raced.