ABSTRACT
This chapter considers civil society input to the series of legal judgements outlined in Chapter 3. Drawing on the ideas of Habermas (1996) and Alexander (2006), the chapter examines a history which pits fundamental rights against political intent, and explores the role of civil society actors in waging a legal campaign against a form of legislated social exclusion. The chapter thus illuminates a set of issues which arise from attempts to incorporate sociology into legal studies, and elaborates the scope for civil repair in the case of a group outside of citizenship and rendered marginal by the law. It shows how the actions of a small network of national non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and activist lawyers working through domestic legal institutions were able to forge a link between what Isin and Turner (2007:16) term everyday politics and cosmopolitan virtues. Such civil action may also begin to exemplify the broadened conception of citizenship embraced by these authors, and to demonstrate its association with the pursuit of universal rights.
