Law Commons^™

Three Observations About Justice Alito's Draft Opinion In Dobbs - Commentary, John M. Greabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] "There is much to say about Justice Samuel Alito's draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which was leaked from the United States Supreme Court on May 2 [2022].

Obviously, the most significant direct consequence of the proposed decision, which overrules Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) while upholding the constitutionality of a Mississippi law that outlaws most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, would be the restriction or elimination of abortion services throughout much of the nation. This will have all sorts of attendant consequences, large and smaller, many of which …

Barbie In Bondage: What Orly Lobel's Book "You Don't Own Me: How Mattel V. Mga Entertainment Exposed Barbie's Dark Side" Tells Us About The Commoditization Of The Female Body, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

[excerpt] "This review essay reflects upon two of the central claims of [Orly Lobel's book] You Don't Own Me: first, that when companies put their energy and resources into intellectual property litigation rather than innovation, it is a strategy that is likely to fail; and second, that Barbie is a 'lead icon' in the disconnect between women pushing for general equality and those who prefer traditional gender roles for women."

Why New Hampshire Must Update Rape Shield Laws, Amy Vorenberg

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] “Recent research indicates that New Hampshire has some of the highest rates of sexual assault in the nation; nearly one in four New Hampshire women and one in 20 New Hampshire men will experience sexual assault. Although reporting a crime can be hard for anyone, sexual assault victims have particular reasons for not reporting. After an assault, a rape victim typically feels embarrassment, shame and fears reprisal (most of these crimes are committed by an acquaintance). The deeply personal nature of rape makes it uniquely traumatizing and confusing.”

The Results Of Deliberation, Maggie Wittlin

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

When evaluating whether to sue, prosecute, settle, or plead, trial lawyers must predict the future—they need to estimate how likely they are to win a given case in a given jurisdiction. Social scientists have used mock juror studies to produce a vast body of literature showing how different variables influence juror decision making. But few of these studies account for jury deliberation, so they present an impoverished picture of how these effects play out in trials and are of limited usefulness.

This Article helps lawyers better predict the future by presenting a novel computer model that extrapolates findings about jurors …

Contraceptive Sabotage, Leah A. Plunkett

Law Faculty Scholarship

This Article responds to the alarm recently sounded by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists over “birth control sabotage”—the “active interference [by one partner] with [the other] partner’s contraceptive methods in an attempt to promote pregnancy.” Currently, sabotage is not a crime, and existing categories of criminal offenses fail to capture the essence of the injury it does to victims. This Article argues that sabotage should be a separate crime—but only when perpetrated against those partners who can and do get pregnant as a result of having sabotaged sex. Using the principle of self-possession—understood as a person’s basic right …

Bare Justice: A Feminist Theory Of Justice And Its Application To Post-Genocide Rwanda, Megan M. Carpenter

Law Faculty Scholarship

Within this Article I seek to develop a feminist legal theory of justice, by questioning the ability of traditional legal strategies to facilitate justice and identifying underlying principles that contribute to a more inclusive and holistic form of justice. Secondly, I apply this theory to the situation of women victims of sexual violence in post-genocide Rwanda, in an effort to explore how these principles can contribute to a realization of justice that empowers women.

In Part II of this Article, I seek to develop a set of principles underlying a feminist reconceptualization of justice. This endeavour is a three-step process: …

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 …

Protecting Parent-Child Relationships: Determining Parental Rights Of Same-Sex Parents Consistently Despite Varying Recognition Of Their Relationship, Linda S. Anderson

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “The family and parental relationship appears secure as long as the members of the family stay within the borders of the states that recognize their relationship. What happens, though, when the family ventures beyond the borders of Vermont, Massachusetts, California, and Connecticut, has yet to be determined. Legislation in almost every other state has addressed whether each state will recognize the couples’ relationship,27 but no state has determined how it will treat the legal relationship between the children of these couples and their parents.28 This article will focus on the fragile legal relationship between same-sex parents and their children …