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The Jurisprudence Of The First Woman Judge, Florence Allen: Challenging The Myth Of Women Judging Differently, Tracy Thomas

Con Law Center Articles and Publications

A key question for legal scholars and political scientists is whether women jurists judge differently than men. Some studies have suggested that women judges are more likely to support plaintiffs in sexual harassment, employment, and immigration cases. Other studies conclude that women are more likely to vote liberally in death penalty and obscenity cases, and more likely to convince their male colleagues to join a liberal opinion. Yet other studies have found little evidence that women judge differently from men.

This article explores the jurisprudence of the first woman judge, Judge Florence Allen, to test these claims of gender difference …

The Long History Of Feminist Legal Theory, Tracy Thomas

Con Law Center Articles and Publications

This chapter challenges the conventional idea that feminist legal theory began in the 1970s. The advent of legal feminism is usually placed in the second wave feminist movement, birthed by the political activism of the women’s liberation movement and nurtured by the intellectual leadership of women scholars newly entering legal academia. However, legal feminism has a much longer history, going back more than a century earlier. While the term “feminist” was not used in the United States until the 1910s, the foundations of feminist legal theory were first conceptualized as early as 1848 and developed over the next one hundred …

Symposium: The 19th Amendment At 100: From The Vote To Gender Equality: The Constitutional Development Of The Nineteenth Amendment In The Decade Following Ratification, Paula A. Monopoli

ConLawNOW

This essay is based on my remarks at the Center for Constitutional Law’s symposium on the Centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment. It offers a brief summary of the thesis of my forthcoming book from Oxford University Press. In Constitutional Orphan: Gender Equality and the Nineteenth Amendment (forthcoming 2020), I argue that the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 represented a significant moment in American history, one which held the promise of change in the political, civil and social status of women in our republic. However, what emerged from a decade of contestation was a thin conception of the Nineteenth’s …

Symposium: The 19th Amendment At 100: From The Vote To Gender Equality: Woman Suffrage: The Afterstory, Ellen Carol Dubois

ConLawNOW

The history of the US woman suffrage movement did not end with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. While numbers slowly grew of eligible women voting, veterans of the suffrage movement organized to win elective office and use the power of women's votes to gain important legislative gains. This article follows both voting rates and women winning public office up to the revival of feminism in the 1960s.

More Than The Vote: The Nineteenth Amendment As Proxy For Gender Equality, Tracy Thomas

Con Law Center Articles and Publications

The original idea behind the Nineteenth Amendment was never just about the vote. Instead, the first women's rights movement 175 years ago, like the modern movement for the Equal Rights Amendment, sought comprehensive equality for women in all avenues of life. The constitutional text for women’s full equality and emancipation has changed over the centuries; first embodied in the grant of the vote as a proxy for structural change, and now incorporated into the demand for “equal rights.” Yet women have been consistent over time in understanding the radical idea that systems of governance, family, industry, and church need dismantling …

The Impact Of Justice Scalia's Replacement On Gender Equality Issues, Wilson R. Huhn

ConLawNOW

The last forty-six years may be accurately described as the era of the modern Republican Supreme Court. As a result of presidential elections, Republican presidents have nominated all ten of the Justices appointed to the United States Supreme Court between 1969 and 1991. Republicans have thus controlled the Court since 1970. During this period the right to gender equality was recognized and the right to marriage equality was realized. However, also during this period many Republican Justices staunchly opposed gender equality, and far more remains to be accomplished.

Since Justice Scalia’s death, the Supreme Court has been deadlocked on a …

Sexual Exploitation In The Rhetoric Of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lisa Shawn Hogan

ConLawNOW

In this essay, Lisa Hogan explores Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s attacks on marriage, including her critique of the institution of marriage and her support of liberal divorce laws. It reveals that Stanton’s most controversial writings addressed woman’s sexuality in a broader context, including discussions of sexual exploitation and infanticide.

The Origins Of Constitutional Gender Equality In The Nineteenth-Century Work Of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Tracy Thomas

ConLawNOW

This introduction to the symposium previews the colloquium held at the Center for Constitutional Law at Akron on the intellectual work of pioneering feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It highlights the talks from scholars in law, history, and women’s studies, published in this symposium issue, that explore Stanton’s philosophical and political work for gender equality in the political, domestic, and religious spheres.

The Origins Of Constitutional Gender Equality In The Nineteenth-Century Work Of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Tracy Thomas

Con Law Center Articles and Publications

This introduction to the symposium previews the colloquium held at the Center for Constitutional Law at Akron on the intellectual work of pioneering feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It highlights the talks from scholars in law, history, and women’s studies, published in this symposium issue, that explore Stanton’s philosophical and political work for gender equality in the political, domestic, and religious spheres.