Legislative Frameworks for Reducing Intimate Partner Violence: Legal Capability, the Capability Approach and Access to Justice

In recent years, two separate projects have drawn on the notion of “legal capability” to consider the potential of the capability approach to provide a framework for thinking about access to justice and to call for greater engagement by legal scholars with capability theory. In this paper, I respond to that call, building on the work of Habbig, Robeyns and Watkins to think about enhancing the effectiveness of efforts to implement legislation that provides protection to survivor/victims of intimate partner violence (or “IPV”). I advocate for an understanding of the concept of legal capability that incorporates the idea of access to justice and makes space for the wide range of factors, both internal and external to the individual, that can prevent or discourage IPV survivor/victims from seeking protection from violence under the law. I argue that conceptualising the implementation of IPV legislation from a capabilities perspective can help to ensure that barriers to its use are identified and redressed in context.