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Articles 1 - 17 of 17

Full-Text Articles in Law

Gender Matters: Making The Case For Trans Inclusion, Nancy K. Knauer Dec 2006

Gender Matters: Making The Case For Trans Inclusion, Nancy K. Knauer

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “The transgender communities are producing an important and nuanced critique of our gender system. For community members, the project is self-constitutive and, therefore, has an immediacy that also marks the efforts of other marginalized groups who have attempted to make sense of the world through description, interrogation, and ultimately a program for transformation. The transgender project also has universalizing elements because, existing within the gender system, each one of us embodies a particular gender articulation. It is through this articulation that we define ourselves in relation to the gender we were assigned at birth, the gender we choose, the …


Imagining The Law-Trained Reader: The Faulty Description Of The Audience In Legal Writing Textbooks., Jessica E. Price Sep 2006

Imagining The Law-Trained Reader: The Faulty Description Of The Audience In Legal Writing Textbooks., Jessica E. Price

ExpressO

In law schools today, first-year legal writing courses play a crucial role in helping students learn to communicate about the law. Many legal writing teachers approach legal writing education in a practical way, attempting to pass on their own experiences in law practice settings to students. Unfortunately, as other writers have observed, such reliance on personal knowledge about “what lawyers are like” may lead legal writing teachers to oversimplify a complicated matter – the needs and preferences of the audience for legal writing – and may even amount to indoctrination in stereotypes about law practice. This article offers a closer …


Internalizing Gender: International Goals, Comparative Realities, Darren Rosenblum Aug 2006

Internalizing Gender: International Goals, Comparative Realities, Darren Rosenblum

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article uses the example of international women's political rights to examine the value of comparative methodologies in analyzing the process by which nations internalize international norms. As internalized in Brazil and France, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women suggests possibilities for (and possible limitations of) interdisciplinary comparative and international law scholarship. Indeed, international law scholarship is divided between theories of internalization and neorealist challenges to those theories. Comparative methodologies add crucial complexity to internalization theory, the success of which depends on acknowledging vast differences in national legal cultures. Further, comparative methodologies expose important …


Untying The Knot: An Analysis Of The English Divorce And Matrimonial Causes Court Records, 1858-1866, Danaya C. Wright Jun 2006

Untying The Knot: An Analysis Of The English Divorce And Matrimonial Causes Court Records, 1858-1866, Danaya C. Wright

ExpressO

This paper is an analysis of the petitions, answers, affidavits, and court docket for the first nine years of the English divorce and matrimonial causes court. It examines in detail the child custody, alimony, gender, and class components of the court’s first nine years. After analyzing the petitions and court docket along gender lines for the different causes of action (divorce, separation, annulment, and restitution of conjugal rights), and their success rate by gender and by age of the marriage, it then breaks down marriages by age and speculates on a variety of causes for the different results and considers …


Superstition-Based Injustice In Africa And The United States: The Use Of Provocation As A Defense For Killing Witches And Homosexuals, Jennifer Dumin Jan 2006

Superstition-Based Injustice In Africa And The United States: The Use Of Provocation As A Defense For Killing Witches And Homosexuals, Jennifer Dumin

ExpressO

This Article examines two different instances where strong cultural and religious beliefs suggest that an individual is justified in taking another’s life. Focusing primarily on South Africa and the United States, it argues that the rationale used to defend those who kill suspected witches and those who kill suspected homosexuals is the same – merely because a criminal holds a belief that the victim is evil, the criminal is somehow entitled to a lesser punishment. In the United States, those who readily recognize the absurdity of the witchcraft defense may have some difficulty in recognizing the same level of absurdity …


Gender And Constitutional Design, Paula A. Monopoli Jan 2006

Gender And Constitutional Design, Paula A. Monopoli

Faculty Scholarship

Does the allocation of power between the legislative and executive branches, and the way we define the scope of the executive affect whether women ascend to executive office? In this article, Professor Monopoli argues that the constitutional process of boundary-drawing between the legislative and executive branches of government has implications for how successful women will be in ascending to executive positions. She posits that the Hamiltonian vision of an expansive executive with plenary power is the model least likely to result in women’s ascending to executive office. The essay traces the philosophical heritage of Hamilton’s vision and outlines the empirical …


Confronting Conventional Thinking: The Heuristics Problem In Feminist Legal Theory, Nancy Levit Jan 2006

Confronting Conventional Thinking: The Heuristics Problem In Feminist Legal Theory, Nancy Levit

Nancy Levit

The thesis of The Heuristics Problem is that the societal problems about which identity theorists are most concerned often spring from and are reinforced by thinking riddled with heuristic errors. This article first investigates the ways heuristic errors influence popular perceptions of feminist issues. Feminists and critical race theorists have explored the cognitive bias of stereotyping, but have not examined the ways probabilistic errors can have gendered consequences. Second, The Heuristics Problem traces some of the ways cognitive errors have influenced the development of laws relating to gender issues. It explores instances in judicial decisions in which courts commit heuristic …


Confronting Conventional Thinking: The Heuristics Problem In Feminist Legal Theory, Nancy Levit Jan 2006

Confronting Conventional Thinking: The Heuristics Problem In Feminist Legal Theory, Nancy Levit

Faculty Works

The thesis of The Heuristics Problem is that the societal problems about which identity theorists are most concerned often spring from and are reinforced by thinking riddled with heuristic errors. This article first investigates the ways heuristic errors influence popular perceptions of feminist issues. Feminists and critical race theorists have explored the cognitive bias of stereotyping, but have not examined the ways probabilistic errors can have gendered consequences. Second, The Heuristics Problem traces some of the ways cognitive errors have influenced the development of laws relating to gender issues. It explores instances in judicial decisions in which courts commit heuristic …


Rethinking Prison Sex: Self Expression And Safety, Brenda V. Smith Jan 2006

Rethinking Prison Sex: Self Expression And Safety, Brenda V. Smith

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This article analyzes legislation and policies that limit prisoners' sexual expression and autonomy. The article juxtaposes prisoners interest in sexual expression against the interests of the state in regulating sex by and between prisoners. The article concludes that the state has an interest in regulating sex between inmates and staff and in regulating coerced or forced sex between inmates. In other instances prisons could accommodate prisoners' interest in sexual expression and achieve important goals such as better decisionmaking; improved relations with family and partners to aid community reentry; reduction of prison rape; and as inmate management.


Fair Use And The Fairer Sex: Gender, Feminism, And Copyright Law, Ann Bartow Jan 2006

Fair Use And The Fairer Sex: Gender, Feminism, And Copyright Law, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

Copyright laws are written and enforced to help certain groups of people assert and retain control over the resources generated by creative productivity. Because those people are predominantly male, the copyright infrastructure plays a role, largely unexamined by legal scholars, in helping to sustain the material and economic inequality between women and men. This essay considers some of the ways in which gender issues and copyright laws intersect, proposes a feminist critique of the copyright legal regime which advocates low levels of copyright protections, and asserts the importance of considering the social and economic disparities between women and men when …


Women And Law: A Comparative Analysis Of The United States And Indian Supreme Courts’ Equality Jurisprudence, Eileen Kaufman Jan 2006

Women And Law: A Comparative Analysis Of The United States And Indian Supreme Courts’ Equality Jurisprudence, Eileen Kaufman

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.


Foreword, Paula A. Monopoli Jan 2006

Foreword, Paula A. Monopoli

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.


Women And Microfinance: Why We Should Do More, Elissa Mccarter Jan 2006

Women And Microfinance: Why We Should Do More, Elissa Mccarter

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.


Women’S Representation On The Courts In The Republic Of South Africa, Ruth B. Cowan Jan 2006

Women’S Representation On The Courts In The Republic Of South Africa, Ruth B. Cowan

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.


No Penis, No Problem, Kay L. Levine Jan 2006

No Penis, No Problem, Kay L. Levine

Fordham Urban Law Journal

Over the past century and a half, the gendered essence of statutory rape has become deeply embedded in the purpose of the statute, extending its tentacles far beyond the statutory language, such that we can no longer extricate the male-on-female image from the formal law's requirements for prosecution. The reality of statutory rape is, however, far more complex than the traditional gender construct implies. Female sex abusers and male victims exist, in substantial numbers and varieties. Part I documents the statutory rape law's gendered essence, explaining the formal law's traditional gendered classification scheme, the Supreme Court's approval of that approach, …


Incarcerated Men And Women, The Equal Protection Clause, And The Requirement Of “Similarly Situated”, Natasha L. Carroll-Ferrary Jan 2006

Incarcerated Men And Women, The Equal Protection Clause, And The Requirement Of “Similarly Situated”, Natasha L. Carroll-Ferrary

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.


Against "Academic Deference": How Recent Developments In Employment Discrimination Law Undercut An Already Dubious Doctrine, Scott A. Moss Jan 2006

Against "Academic Deference": How Recent Developments In Employment Discrimination Law Undercut An Already Dubious Doctrine, Scott A. Moss

Publications

When the defendant in an employment case is a college or other institution of higher education, the plaintiff usually will face an "academic deference" argument. Citing the importance of their "academic freedom," defendants and sympathetic courts have asserted that federal courts should decline to "invade" higher education with "federal court supervision." Whether or not courts cite the "academic deference" doctrine expressly, they certainly have proven hostile to professors' claims of discrimination, dismissing as a matter of law claims that seemed quite strong, or at least solid enough to allow a factfinder to rule either way. Indeed, empirical evidence shows that …