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Law and Gender

University of Michigan Law School

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Race and law

Articles 1 - 8 of 8

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A Podcast Of One’S Own, Leah M. Litman, Melissa Murray, Katherine Shaw Jan 2021

A Podcast Of One’S Own, Leah M. Litman, Melissa Murray, Katherine Shaw

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In this short Essay, we discuss the lack of racial and gender diversity on and around the Supreme Court. As we note, the ranks of the Court’s Justices and its clerks historically have been dominated by white men. But this homogeneity is not limited to the Court’s members or its clerks. As we explain, much of the Court’s broader ecosystem suffers from this same lack of diversity. The advocates who argue before the Court are primarily white men; the experts cited in the Court’s opinions, as well as the experts on whom Court commentators rely in interpreting those opinions, are …


Centering The Teenage "Siren": Adolescent Workers, Sexual Harassment, And The Legal Construction Of Race And Gender, Anastasia M. Boles Jan 2015

Centering The Teenage "Siren": Adolescent Workers, Sexual Harassment, And The Legal Construction Of Race And Gender, Anastasia M. Boles

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Recent scholarship and media attention has focused on the prevalence of sexually harassing behavior directed at working teenagers, and the emergence of sexual harassment lawsuits by these minors against their employers. Although many of the legal issues concerning workplace sexual harassment and adult workers (and the various state and federal jurisprudence prohibiting it) have been widely discussed, there is surprisingly little discourse, research, and precedent addressing the problem of workplace sexual harassment and teen workers. Currently, most sexual harassment cases brought by adolescent workers are litigated using the doctrinal framework for adult workers. Only the Seventh Circuit has developed an …


Displaced Mothers, Absent And Unnatural Fathers: Lgbt Transracial Adoption, Kim H. Pearson Jan 2012

Displaced Mothers, Absent And Unnatural Fathers: Lgbt Transracial Adoption, Kim H. Pearson

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

While some might believe that Black versus gay discourse only surfaces in highly politicized settings like the military and marriage, it holds sway in the area of LGBT transracial adoption. LGBT transracial adoptions are a relatively small percentage of all adoptions, which include private adoptions, LGBT second-parent adoptions, and step-parent adoptions, but they are an important site for interrogating the Black versus gay discourse because adoption and custody decisions often address parent-child transmission. When claims intersect, as they do in a case where a White LGBT foster parent and a Black maternal grandmother dispute the adoption of a Black child, …


Contingent Equal Protection: Reaching For Equality After Ricci And Pics, Jennifer S. Hendricks Jan 2010

Contingent Equal Protection: Reaching For Equality After Ricci And Pics, Jennifer S. Hendricks

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article uses the term contingent equal protection to describe the constitutional analysis that applies to a range of governmental efforts to ameliorate race and sex hierarchies. "Contingent" refers to the fact that the equal protection analysis is contingent upon the existence of structural, de facto inequality. Contingent equal protection cases include those that involve explicit race and sex classifications, facially neutral efforts to reduce inequality, and accommodation of sex differences to promote equality. Uniting all three kinds of cases under a single conceptual umbrella reveals the implications that developments in one area can have for the other two.


"Just Like One Of The Family": Domestic Violence Paradigms And Combating On-The-Job Violence Against Household Workers In The United States, Kristi L. Graunke Jan 2002

"Just Like One Of The Family": Domestic Violence Paradigms And Combating On-The-Job Violence Against Household Workers In The United States, Kristi L. Graunke

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article argues that the immense problem of on-the-job abuse experienced by domestic workers demands a multifaceted plan of attack. The proposed responses specifically draw upon the capacities, strengths, and resources of women, particularly comparatively privileged women, as both activists and employers of domestic workers. By describing the circumstances of domestic work in the United States from the nation's inception to the present, Part I demonstrates the prevalence and intractability of on-the-job physical and sexual abuse and argues that other women, as employers of domestic workers, have historically played a complex role in participating in, condoning, or failing to acknowledge …


On The Road: Images Of Truthtelling In Rural America, Emily A. Spieler Jan 2000

On The Road: Images Of Truthtelling In Rural America, Emily A. Spieler

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This narrative is a true story. It raises the same central issue as many of the core stories of race and gender that have haunted us over the last decade: the identification of truthtellers. Theoretical analysis of truth and bias abound. This story, like many of these other stories, nevertheless stands on its own, without the need for iterative analysis.


Slavery Rhetoric And The Abortion Debate, Debora Threedy Jan 1994

Slavery Rhetoric And The Abortion Debate, Debora Threedy

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

There are many things that could be, and have been, said about the question of abortion. This article focuses on the rhetoric of the abortion debate. Specifically, I discuss how both sides of the abortion debate have appropriated the image of the slave and used that image as a rhetorical tool, a metaphor, in making legal arguments. Further, I examine the effectiveness of this metaphor as a rhetorical tool. Finally, I question the purposes behind this appropriation, and whether it reflects a lack of sensitivity to the racial content of the appropriated image.


Prostitution: Where Racism & Sexism Intersect, Vednita Nelson Jan 1993

Prostitution: Where Racism & Sexism Intersect, Vednita Nelson

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Black women find themselves in a unique and extremely difficult position in our society. They are forced to deal with the oppression that arises from being Black in a white-supremacist culture and the oppression that arises from being female in a male-supremacist culture. In order to examine the experience of being Black and female, this paper attempts to describe that very difficult, tight space where Black women attempt to survive-that space where racism and sexism intersect.