Law Commons^™

Let’S Go To The Beach: Gender Segregation As A Tool To Accommodate Religious Minorities, Sarah Gibbons

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Male Same-Sex "Horseplay": The Epicenter Of All Sexual Harassment?, Kimberly Bailey

All Faculty Scholarship

In Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., the U.S. SupremeCourt recognized same-sex sexual harassment as a cognizable claim of sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. At the time, many scholars found this recognition to be significant andimportant, but some also argued that the Court provided an incomplete analysis regarding the meaning of discrimination “because of sex.” Specifically, some scholars argue that the Court’s opinion reinforces the sexual desire paradigm in the analysis of sexual harassment cases. Building upon this critique, this Article focuses specifically on the harassment of men who generally are perceived as …

"She Was Surprised And Furious": Expatriation, Suffrage, Immigration, And The Fragility Of Women's Citizenship, 1907-1940, Felice Batlan

All Faculty Scholarship

This article stands at the intersection of women’s history and the history of citizenship, immigration, and naturalization laws. The first part of this article proceeds by examining the general legal status of women under the laws of coverture, in which married women’s legal existence was “covered” by that of their husbands. It then discusses the 1907 Expatriation Act, which resulted in women who were U.S. citizens married to non-U.S. citizens losing their citizenship. The following sections discuss how suffragists challenged the 1907 law in the courts and how passage of the Nineteenth Amendment—and with it a new concept of women’s …

The Technology Enterprise: Systemic Bias Against Women, Lori Andrews

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Sick And Tired Of Hearing About The Damn Bathrooms, Colin Pochie

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Gavin Grimm’s struggle to access restrooms which align with his gender identity brought the plight of transgender students to the fore of national consciousness. With it came scrutiny of the judiciary’s historical failure to understand transgender individuals’ place in the law. The trend in cases like G.G. ex rel. Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board and Whitaker ex rel. Whitaker v. Kenosha Unified School District No. 1 Board of Education is reliance on equality theory and the law of sex stereotyping. And yet sex-stereotyping law does not mesh soundly with equality theory. Equality theory eradicates gendered difference—but the law of …

Quacking Like A Duck? Functional Parenthood Doctrine And Same-Sex Parents, Katharine K. Baker

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This Article unpacks the relationship between the functional parenthood doctrine, constitutionally protected parental autonomy rights and intent-to-parent tests as they are applied in same-sex parenting relationships. It argues that, with the advent of same-sex marriage and second parent adoption, the functional parent doctrine is unnecessary and ultimately counterproductive to anyone interested in expanding legal recognition of non-traditional family forms. The functional parent doctrine asks courts to employ traditional understandings of parenthood (“Who acted like a parent?”) in assigning parental status.

These traditional understandings are usually, if not inevitably, dyadic, heteronormative, genetic, and gendered. In practice, the functional parent doctrine undermines …

Campus Misconduct, Sexual Harm And Appropriate Process: The Essential Sexuality Of It All, Katharine Baker

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Feminist-In-Chief? Examining President Obama's Executive Orders On Women's Rights Issues, Mary Pat Treuthart

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This article focuses on President Obama’s use of executive orders in various areas of women’s rights issues including the empowerment of women, gender-based violence, reproductive rights, and employment. As scholars of the American presidency have noted, executive orders can be used either as strategic tools to short-circuit legislative gridlock or to underscore and complement presidential policy measures pending in Congress. Executive orders can also serve to promote projects of special interest groups. Finally, knowing that their directives can be powerfully symbolic, presidents can be particularly effective in the use of executive action to underscore the gulf between the Democratic Party …

Presidential Legitimacy Through The Anti-Discrimination Lens, Catherine Y. Kim

Chicago-Kent Law Review

The Obama administration’s deferred action programs granting temporary relief from deportation to undocumented immigrants have focused attention to questions regarding the legitimacy of presidential lawmaking. Immigration, though, is not the only context in which the president has exercised policymaking authority. This essay examines parallel instances of executive lawmaking in the anti-discrimination area. Presidential policies relating to workplace discrimination, environmental justice, and affirmative action share some of the key features troubling critics of deferred action yet have been spared from serious constitutional challenge. These examples underscore the unique challenges to assessing the validity of actions targeting traditionally disenfranchised groups—be they noncitizens, …

The "Rabbi's Daughter" And The "Jewish Jane Addams": Jewish Women, Legal Aid, And The Fluidity Of Identity, 1890-1930, Felice Batlan

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The "Rabbi's Daughter" And The "Jewish Jane Addams": Jewish Women, Legal Aid, And The Fluidity Of Identity, 1890-1930, Felice Batlan

All Faculty Scholarship

This symposium article discusses an unexamined area of legal aid and legal history—the role that late nineteenth and early twentieth century Jewish women played in the delivery of legal aid as social workers, lawyers, and, importantly, as cultural and legal brokers. It presents two such women who represented different types and models of legal aid—Minnie Low of the Chicago Bureau of Personal Service, a Jewish social welfare organization, and Rosalie Loew of the Legal Aid Society of New York. I interrogate how these women negotiated their identities as Jewish professional women, what role being Jewish and female played in shaping …

Contact That Can Kill: Orders Of Protection, Caller Id Spoofing And Domestic Violence, Gabriella Sneeringer

Chicago-Kent Law Review

The Illinois Domestic Violence Act (IDVA) was created as a means of providing protection and remedies to domestic violence victims through orders of protection. The orders of protection can insulate victims from abusers through a variety of ways such as mandating that the abuser be prohibited from contacting the victim by any means. Under the IDVA, any violation of the order is a crime. As technology advances, abusers begin using more and more technology as a means to circumscribe orders of protection. One such technology, Caller ID spoofing, is particularly problematic. This technology enables abusers to easily contact, stalk and …

Towards An Outcrit Pedagogy Of Anti-Subordination In The Classroom, Sheila I. Velez Martinez

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This Article discusses how traditional teaching practices can reinforce systemic discrimination, exclusion, subordination and oppression within the classroom in particular detriment to women and students of color. The Article traces the discussions about pedagogy in Outcrit literature and proposes that Outcrit scholars teaching techniques within the classroom should reflect anti-subordination praxis in teaching. Drawing from the work of Paulo Freire, Derrick Bell and others, the Article proposes that teaching from an anti-subordination perspective requires a praxis of collaborative, non-hierarchical teaching that calls for an epistemological shift. A pedagogy that frees the student to think independently and leads to an experience …

The Need To Criminalize Revenge Porn: How A Law Protecting Victims Can Avoid Running Afoul Of The First Amendment, Adrienne N. Kitchen

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Revenge porn occurs when someone posts sexually explicit images of their former paramour on the web, often with contact information for the victim’s work and home. There are thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of victims. Victims lose or quit their jobs; they are harassed by strangers; some change their name or alter their appearance. Some victims resort to suicide; others are stalked, assaulted, or killed. Civil suits fail to remove the images or deter perpetrators. Current criminal laws are insufficient in several common instances. These shortcomings mean there is a need to criminalize revenge porn.

Revenge porn is obscene and …

Women And Justice For The Poor: A History Of Legal Aid, 1863–1945, Felice J. Batlan

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Legal History And The Politics Of Inclusion, Felice J. Batlan

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Females On The Fringe: Considering Gender In Payday Lending Policy, Amy J. Schmitz

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Payday lending may provide a much-needed safety net for some consumers in need of quick cash for emergencies. However, data suggest that most payday loan borrowers become repeat users caught in a cycle of high-cost debt. Furthermore, empirical evidence indicates consistent overrepresentation of women, including many single mothers, among payday loan borrowers. This takes a toll not only on these women and their families, but also on society as a whole. Indeed, context matters in payday lending debates. It is thus time to think creatively and consider contextualized programs that aim to increase women’s and all consumers’ safe borrowing options, …

Women Lawyers And Women's Legal Equality: Reflections On Women Lawyers At The 1893 World's Columbian Exposition In Chicago, Mary Jane Mossman

Chicago-Kent Law Review

In Chicago in 1893, for the first time in history, women lawyers were invited to participate with male lawyers and judges at the Congress on Jurisprudence and Law Reform, one of a number of Congresses organized in conjunction with the World's Columbian Exposition. By the 1890s, women lawyers had achieved considerable success for at least two decades in gaining admission to state bars in the United States, and their success provided important precedents for women who wished to become lawyers in other parts of the world. Yet, as Nancy Cott explained, although women's admission to the professions had been seen …

Puerto Rican Women Nationalist Vs. U.S. Colonialism: An Exploration Of Their Conditions And Struggles In Jail And Court, Margaret Pour

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This article examines the legal ramifications experienced by several women members of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party as a result of their militant opposition to U.S. colonialism in Puerto Rico. These women participated in the 1950 uprising in Puerto Rico or, in the case of Lolita Lebrón, the Nationalist Party's 1954 attack on the U.S. Congress. The article explores their sentences and conditions in prison from a gendered perspective. It also suggests that several of the women were tortured while in prison. The article concludes that the women drew strength from their political commitment to Puerto Rican independence and their …

The Possibility Of Compromise: Antiabortion Moderates After Roe V. Wade, 1973–1980, Mary Ziegler

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Leading studies argue that Roe itself radicalized debate and marginalized antiabortion moderates, either by issuing a sweeping decision before adequate public support had developed or by framing the opinion in terms of moral absolutes. The polarization narrative on which leading studies rely obscures important actors and arguments that defined the antiabortion movement of the 1970s. First, contrary to what the polarization narrative suggests, self-identified moderates played a significant role in the mainstream antiabortion movement, shaping policies on issues like the treatment of unwed mothers or the Equal Rights Amendment. Working in organizations like Feminists for Life (FFL) or American Citizens …

Adultery By Doctor: Artificial Insemination, 1890–1945, Kara W. Swanson

Chicago-Kent Law Review

In 1945, American judges decided the first court cases involving assisted conception. The challenges posed by assisted reproductive technologies to law and society made national news then, and have continued to do so into the twenty-first century. This article considers the first technique of assisted conception, artificial insemination, from the late nineteenth century to 1945, the period in which doctors and their patients worked to transform it from a curiosity into an accepted medical technique, a transformation that also changed a largely clandestine medical practice into one of the most pressing medicolegal problems of the mid-twentieth century. Doctors and lawyers …

Women And Poisons In 17th Century France, Benedetta Faedi Duramy

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This article examines the involvement of the Marquise de Brinvilliers, Catherine La Voisin, and the Marquise de Montespan, in the scandal "Affair of the Poisons," during the seventeenth century in France. Through such investigation, this article interrogates the discourse surrounding gender and crime in history, deepening the understanding of women's motivation to commit murder and the strategies they adopted. Moreover, the article examines how the legal system addressed women's crime, differentiated responses based on their class and social rank, and held women accountable for poisoning the country, thus failing to acknowledge the actual shortcomings of the French monarchy, the decline …

Finding Women In Early Modern English Courts: Evidence From Peter King's Manuscript Reports, Lloyd Bonfield

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This article constitutes a preliminary report on cases involving women that appear in a manuscript authored by Chief Justice Peter King during the first seven years of his tenure as Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas in early eighteenth century England. While the 327 cases he reported in the manuscript run the gamut of the procedural and substantive matters that vexed early modem Englishmen, the cases isolated and discussed hereinafter are the fifty-five cases in which women were a party to the litigation observed. By so doing, isolating cases in which women appeared as litigants, we may catalog …

Law, Land, Identity: The Case Of Lady Anne Clifford, Carla Spivack

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This article presents the case history of Lady Anne Clifford, a seventeenth century Englishwoman who spent most of her adult life fighting to regain her ancestral estates, which she felt her father had unjustly left to her uncle instead of to her. Although, as the article explains, she had the better of the legal argument, that was no match for the combined forces of her two husbands and of King James I, who sought to deprive her of her land. Finally, however, because Clifford outlived her uncle's son, the last male heir, she did inherit the estates.

The article examines …

Globalization And The Re-Establishment Of Women's Land Rights In Nigeria: The Role Of Legal History, Adetoun Ilumoka

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Much has been written on women's limited legal rights to land in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa, which is often attributed to custom and customary law. Persisting biases against women in legal regimes governing land ownership, allocation and use, result in a situation in which women, in all age groups, are vulnerable to dispossession and to abuse by male relatives in increasingly patriarchal family and community governance structures.

This paper raises questions about the genesis of ideas about women's rights to land in Nigeria today. It is an analysis of two court cases from South Western Nigeria in the early …

The Global "Parliament Of Mothers": History, The Revolutionary Tradition, And International Law In The Pre-War Women's Movement, Susan Hinely

Chicago-Kent Law Review

In spite of recent literature that examines late nineteenth and early twentieth century transnational movements in innovative ways, the largest transnational movement of that period, the women's movement, remains lodged in academic and popular memory as the "suffrage movement," a single-issue campaign waged by privileged Victorian women, a foregone development in the march of electoral progress that ended in victory with postwar enfranchisement. A fresh approach to the suffrage archive reveals instead a far more radical movement than conventional history suggests, one that explicitly linked its cause with both the revolutionary democratic tradition and with anti-colonial activism. Like the non-Western …

Women's Rights, Public Defense, And The Chicago World's Fair, Barbara Babcock

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Women were an important part of the great public meetings held in connection with the Chicago World's Fair. One of these "Congresses," as they were called, was devoted to the achievements of nineteenth century women, and brought together suffragists, club women, society ladies, and activists of all stripes from around the world. The Congress of Jurisprudence and Law Reform featured two American women lawyers holding their own on a platform with leading professors, judges and advocates. With an extraordinary speech based largely on her own experience in the courts, Clara Foltz launched the public defender movement.

Engendering The History Of Race And International Relations: The Career Of Edith Sampson, 1927–1978, Gwen Jordan

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Edith Sampson was one of the leading black women lawyers in Chicago for over fifty years. She was admitted to the bar in 1927 and achieved a number of firsts in her career: the first black woman judge in Illinois, the first African American delegate to the United Nations, and the first African American appointed to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Sampson was also a pro-democracy, international spokesperson for the U.S. government during the Cold War, a position that earned her scorn from more radical African Americans, contributed to a misinterpretation of her activism, and resulted in her relative obscurity …

Portia's Deal, Karen M. Tani

Chicago-Kent Law Review

The New Deal, one of the greatest expansions of government in U.S. history, was a "lawyers' deal": it relied heavily on lawyers' skills and reflected lawyers' values. Was it exclusively a "male lawyers' deal"? This Essay argues that the New Deal offered important opportunities to women lawyers at a time when they were just beginning to graduate from law school in significant numbers. Agencies associated with social welfare policy, a traditionally "maternalist" enterprise, seem to have been particularly hospitable. Through these agencies, women lawyers helped to administer, interpret, and create the law of a new era. Using government records and …

It's Complicated: Privacy And Domestic Violence, Kimberly D. Bailey

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article challenges the notion that there is no role for privacy in the domestic violence context. Privacy is a complicated concept that has both positive and negative aspects, and this Article examines the value that more privacy could provide for domestic violence victims. While privacy was historically used as a shield for batterers, more privacy for domestic violence victims could protect their personhood, ensuring that they are treated with dignity and respect. In addition, current mandatory criminal justice policies have become so intrusive in many victims’ lives that limitations are needed to prevent the threat of state abuse. These …