Meta‐Regulation in Practice: Beyond Normative Views of Morality and Rationality. By F.C. Simon. London: Routledge, 2017.

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12320
• Published date: 01 March 2018
• Date: 01 March 2018

structures of these legal genres moderate and are transformed

under their influence. Yet, considering the book’s focus on social

change and identity, more substantive engagement with existing

scholarship is needed to address the broader relationships between

social and legal change (Levitsky 2015; McCann 2006), law and

identity (Danielsen and Engle 1995), as well as the legal regulation

of sexual identity categories (Stychin 2003). These bodies of litera-

ture might have strengthened Tracey’s analysis in two ways: first, by

enriching her insights with more theoretical depth, and second, by

allowing her to show more explicitly how her findings might

extend, support, or challenge existing work in this field, and in

doing so better highlight the originality and utility of her claims.

Overall, Discourse, Identity, and Social Change in the Marriage

Equality Debates is a work of high quality and broad appeal. Tracey

offers an analysis of impressive depth and clarity, and in doing so,

makes a strong case for the utility and empirical power of discourse

analysis as a method, proving its ability to give us a comprehensive

way to understand legal phenomena. Her work will be of interest to

scholars working in fields as diverse as discourse and language stud-

ies, gender and sexuality studies, law and jurisprudence, sociology,

and sociolegal studies.

References

Danielsen, Dan & Karen Engle, eds (1995) After Identity: A Reader in Law and Culture.

New York:Routledge.

Levitsky, Sandra R (2015) “Law and Social Movements: Old Debates and New

Directions,” in Sarat, A. & Ewick, P., eds., The Handbook of Law and Society. Malden:

Wiley-Blackwell. 382–98.

McCann, Michael, ed. (2006) Law and Social Movements. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Stychin, Carl Franklin (2003) Governing Sexuality: The Changing Politics of Citizenship and

Law Reform. Oxford: Hart Publishing.

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Meta-Regulation in Practice: Beyond Normative Views of Morality and

Rationality. By F.C. Simon. London: Routledge, 2017.

Reviewed by Sangeetha Chandrashekeran, School of Geography, The

University of Melbourne

Meta-Regulation in Practice is an ambitious reflection on the chal-

lenges of Australian retail market regulation under dynamic and

280 Book Reviews