Vulnerability and the Human Condition

08/17/2026

Read our latest digest here:
https://conta.cc/4bSLHZ1

Martha Albertson Fineman

06/08/2026

Get a sneak peak into class with Martha Albertson Fineman! Our latest podcast episode with Sofia Bettini, Emory Law '26, explores Professor Fineman's Law & Vulnerability class from a student perspective.

Listen to it here:

Vulnerability theory arises in opposition to neoliberalism, replacing the liberal legal subject with the universally vulnerable individual. It's a new way of analyzing state responsibility and human r

05/08/2026

Alexander Giles Green, Associate Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, informed us that his article, The State Itself as a Vulnerable Subject? Existential Resilience under International Law, was accepted by the Modern Law Review. We are pleased to share the abstract for that article here.

“This paper proposes a new framework for analysis of the law governing State continuity, with particular reference to Small Island Developing States (SIDS) threatened with legal extinction as a result of rising sea-levels. Prevailing wisdom suggests that if States were to lose their inhabitable land or permanently resident populations, their status under international law would thereby lapse. On such accounts, international law is presumed to be a collection of established norms responding ‘neutrally’, as it were, to the purely physical phenomenon of sea-level rise. This paper rejects that view, advancing an account of State vulnerability and resilience that draws upon Martha Albertson Fineman’s conception of the ‘vulnerable subject’ and the ‘responsive state within’ the domestic legal context. By making a shift of scale within vulnerability theory from ‘individuals and the state’ to ‘States and the international legal order’, all States themselves (that is, in addition to all individuals) can be conceptualised as vulnerable artificial entities in relation to which international law can be more or less ‘responsive’. From this perspective, the existential resilience of States must be recognised as contingent upon international law’s institutional and regulatory structure, which itself results from the collective choices and ongoing dispositions of States themselves.”- Alexander Giles Green

05/07/2026

This piece by Hrudya Anil, a researcher at University College in Thiruvananthapuram, uses vulnerability theory to explore menopause as a sociopolitical metaphor.

"Politics of menopause stems from the power to delineate, signify and respond to women’s bodies. It is embedded in how the societal structures defines, disciplines, and commodifies aging female bodies. Menopause eludes from a mere biological transition as it shifts into a terrain where culture, healthcare and gendered power intersect; a zone of control, scrutiny, and regulation. Menopause is pathologized by the medical enterprise, rendering the female bodies invisible, unfit and invalid, chiefly in public spaces and professional environments. This medical framing is not neutral as the capitalist enterprises leech their profits from marketing hormone therapy treatments and cosmetic regimes that commodify the aging bodies of menopausal women. Under the scrutiny of Fineman’s theory of vulnerability, this commodification of menopause manifests as a politically mediated vulnerability, steered by access to care, support and recognition. Resilience of menopausal women cannot be built independently, but politically enabled or denied by the very institutional systems (medical, cultural, economic etc.) that scaffold or erode her autonomy" - Hrudya Anil

Download the PDF here:https://assets.zyrosite.com/mnlqe15QrNhDLRg1/02-march-special-2026-vol-3-issue-1-qNhDNAf6awxCZZxi.pdf

05/06/2026

Listen to high school student, Mr. Adnan Javed of Aitchison College, Lahore, Pakistan, discuss parliamentary diplomacy and a vulnerability theory approach to international human rights abuses here:

Listen to high school student, Mr. Adnan Javed of Aitchison College, Lahore, Pakistan, discuss parliamentary diplomacy and a vulnerability theory approach to international human rights abuses. At Em

05/05/2026

VHC Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. Helena Moradi, published a chapter in What is a Family?: Law and Regulation in a Transdisciplinary Context by Alice Margaria and Claire Fenton-Glynn. The chapter is titled “From Folkhemmet to Post- welfare Sweden: Rethinking Care and Dependency in a Neoliberal Context,” and Dr. Moradi introduces us to her piece below.

“Through this chapter, I wanted to examine how the state shapes the idea of ‘the family,’ and how a welfare order grounded in shared responsibility for dependency has been reoriented in a more privatized direction. Using Sweden as a study, the chapter traces the erosion of Folkhemmet, the Swedish ‘people’s home’ ideal, and shows how care and dependency have increasingly been recast as private family responsibilities. It also considers how this shift is reflected in Swedish family law, particularly in custody and mediation frameworks that rely on procedural neutrality and presume equal bargaining power between parents. Drawing on Vulnerability Theory, I hope the piece makes visible the institutional conditions on which family life depends and suggests that care should not be relegated to the private sphere, but understood as a central question of social responsibility and responsive state action.” – Dr. Helena Moradi

Read more here: https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/what-is-a-family-law-and-regulation-in-a-transdisciplinary-context

05/04/2026

Professor Martha T. McCluskey, Professor Emeritus at the University at Buffalo School of Law, State University of New York, recently contributed a chapter in the second edition of the Research Handbook on Law and Political Economy, edited by John Haskell.

“This chapter connects the message of personal responsibility in three issues: welfare reform, financial system implosion, and climate collapse. These three issues mark key points of public reckoning with government failures to protect against an economy geared to make human well-being more costly and insecure for most. For each issue, public authorities restrained their power for institutional change by presenting widespread harm as a problem best addressed by individualized choices, on the theory that power is most legitimately wielded by autonomous self-reliant actors. Instead, a robust vision of democracy and justice requires grounding legitimate power in institutional responsibility, replacing the formal autonomous individual of liberal theory with the universally embodied, embedded human subject. Without actively structuring political economic power in favor of distinctly human subjects, government will appear more responsible the more it yields power to institutional structures that undermine the substantive conditions necessary for effective human agency and value.”

– Martha T. McCluskey

Find the volume at [https://www.elgaronline.com/edcollchap/book/9781803921198/chapter2.xml] or contact [email protected] for a pre-publication copy, courtesy of Martha McCluskey.

04/30/2026

Our latest edition of the VHC Digest is now available. We are pleased to share several articles that demonstrate the wide range of applied vulnerability theory. These pieces span subjects from “menopause in media” to law and economics, as well as Swedish family law and the concept of resilience in international law.

We also include a new podcast episode featuring Adnan Javed, a high school student from Lahore, Pakistan, who brings vulnerability theory analysis into the next generation's assessment of parliamentary diplomacy.

Read the digest here:

Email from The Vulnerability and the Human Condition Initiative   April 30, 2026 VHC Digest Welcome to our April edition of the VHC Digest. We are pleased to share several articles that demonstrate th

03/02/2026

Email from The Vulnerability and the Human Condition Initiative   March 2, 2026 VHC Digest PhD Course in Norway using Vulnerability Theory: Critical perspectives on welfare and care institutions Profe

03/02/2026

Read our latest digest at

Email from The Vulnerability and the Human Condition Initiative   March 2, 2026 VHC Digest PhD Course in Norway using Vulnerability Theory: Critical perspectives on welfare and care institutions Profe