This explores the problems of gender and class bias inherent in the practice and very form of law. It does this by presenting a critique of a fundamental issue in law - the individual as envisaged by Anglo-Australian and American law. It argues that while the law professes to be based on the "universal" person" abstracted from social content - a person who could be anyone anywhere - in fact, the law endows its legal subject with very specific qualities. In so doing it excludes both women and working-class men from the legal notion of the human being. Designed for students and lecturers in jurisprudence and gender studies. "Ngaire Naffine took her PhD in law from the University of Adelaide. She is the author of "Female crime: the construction of women in criminology" (Allen & Unwin) and is currently a Visiting Fellow in the Law Department of the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University.".