Digital Commons Network^™

Toward A Feminist Political Theory Of Judging: Neither The Nightmare Nor The Noble Dream, Sally J. Kenney

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Policing And The Clash Of Masculinities, Ann Mcginley

Scholarly Works

In 2014 and 2015, the news media inundated U.S. society with reports of brutal killings by police of black men in major American cities. Unfortunately, police departments do not typically keep data on police killings of civilians. The data that exist do show, however, that at least for a five-month period in 2015, there was a disproportionate rate of police killings of unarmed black men.

There is no question that race and class play a key role in the nature of policing that occurs in poor black urban neighborhoods, but the relationship between police officers and their victims is not …

Pursuing Justice For The Child: The Forgotten Women Of In Re Gault, David S. Tanenhaus

Scholarly Works

In this article, I first draw on my recent book The Constitutional Rights of Children to introduce the facts of the case and place the case in the larger context of the history of American juvenile justice. I then focus specifically on the role of four remarkable women in the history of this landmark decision: Marjorie Gault, Gerald's mother; Amelia Lewis, Gerald's lawyer; Lorna Lockwood, an Arizona lawyer who became the first woman to serve as the Chief Justice of a State Supreme Court; and Getrude "Traute" Mainzer, who assisted in the litigation of Gerald's case before the U.S. Supreme …

How Masculinities Distribute Power: The Influence Of Ann Scales, Ann C. Mcginley, Frank Rudy Cooper

Scholarly Works

Ann Scales's scholarship on masculinities in relation to sexual assault and militarism prompted us to consider exactly how power is distributed by assumptions about what is masculine. For instance, men privileged by association with hegemonic masculinities — those most dominant and preferred — are sometimes excused for acts of violence against people who are denigrated as unmasculine or excessively masculine. In one set of examples, communities excuse football players for sexual assaults on grounds that "boys will be boys." The implication is that boys should be allowed to act out before taking on adult responsibilities, and that they need to …

Work, Caregiving, And Masculinities, Ann C. Mcginley

Scholarly Works

In her book Reshaping the Work-Family Debate, Joan Williams demonstrates the vulnerability of parent workers in working class America. In Chapter 2, "One Sick Child Away from Being Fired," she examines the records of ninety-nine union arbitrations to analyze the problems of working class parents who struggle to juggle their working and parenting responsibilities. Because this chapter is a tour de force in an overall excellent book, and because it suggests an area that Professor McGinley's research has focused on over the past number of years, in this Essay, Professor McGinley limits her discussion almost exclusively to this chapter. …

Ricci V. Destefano: A Masculinities Theory Analysis, Ann C. Mcginley

Scholarly Works

This Article applies masculinity theory to explore the aspects Ricci v. Destefano and its political reverberations. Empirical evidence showed that virtually all written tests have a disparate impact on minorities, that a neighboring city had reached less discriminatory results using a different weighting system, and that other fire departments used assessment centers to judge firefighters' qualifications for promotions. While the black male and all female firefighters were made invisible by the case and the testimony, the fact that Ricci's and Vargas' testimony lionized a particularly traditional form of heterosexual masculinity was also invisible. While the command presence required of a …

The Geronimo Bank Murders: A Gay Tragedy, Joan W. Howarth

Scholarly Works

The Geronimo Bank Murders examines the intersection of homosexuality and capital punishment through the lenses of cultural criticism, queer theory, and legal analysis. The paper's subject is Jay Neill, who was executed in 2002 for murdering four people in a gruesome Geronimo, Oklahoma bank robbery in 1984, and for being gay. Current capital punishment doctrine permits, and perhaps even encourages, such results. The Geronimo Bank Murders recasts Neill's story, privileging homosexuality and gender, and uses that account to make three points, each based in law, culture, and politics. First, as a matter of legal doctrine, recognizing the error in using …

Coming Out For Kids: Recognizing, Respecting, And Representing Lgbtq Youth, Barbara Fedders

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Executing White Masculinities: Lessons From Karla Faye Tucker, Joan W. Howarth

Scholarly Works

Gender is a constant struggle. Throughout our lives, we contend with multiple unstable and oppositional social constructions of gender, or hierarchies of masculinities and femininities. Knowing, or trying to know, who is male and who is female, and how men and women should act, is a major part of the structure of our identities, our societies, and our democracy. These gender questions are not separate from race or class; together for example, they shape what is expected of a poor young White man or a middle-class, African American grandmother. Racialized and class-based, gender helps to tell us who is frightening, …

Women Defenders On Television: Representing Suspects And The Racial Politics Of Retribution, Joan W. Howarth

Scholarly Works

This Essay is about Ellenor Frutt, Annie Dornell, Joyce Davenport, and other women criminal defense attorneys of prime time television. It examines how high-stakes network television presents sympathetic stories about women working as criminal defense attorneys while simultaneously supporting the popular thirst for the harshest criminal penalties. Real women who choose to represent criminal defendants are fundamentally out of step with angry and unforgiving attitudes toward crime and criminals. Indeed, women defenders have chosen work that puts them in direct opposition to the widespread public willingness to incarcerate record numbers of Americans, often young African-American and Latino men, for longer …

Representing Black Male Innocence, Joan W. Howarth

Scholarly Works

This Article is a case study of a California capital case. Drawing on cultural studies, the first part develops the social construction of Black male gang member, especially as that identity is understood within white imaginations. The powerful and frightening idea of a Black man who is a gang member, even gang leader, captured the imagination and moral passion of the decisionmakers in this case, recasting and reframing the evidence in furtherance of this idea. In fundamental ways, this idea or imposed identity is fundamentally inconsistent with any American concept of innocence.

The second part uses the case to investigate …