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Articles 1 - 18 of 18
Full-Text Articles in Law
Introduction To The Symposium On Feminist Approaches To International Law Thirty Years On: Still Alienating Oscar?, Catherine Powell, Adrien K. Wing
Introduction To The Symposium On Feminist Approaches To International Law Thirty Years On: Still Alienating Oscar?, Catherine Powell, Adrien K. Wing
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Environmental Justice Reimagined Through Human Security And Post-Modern Ecological Feminism: A Neglected Perspective On Climate Change, Linda A. Malone
Environmental Justice Reimagined Through Human Security And Post-Modern Ecological Feminism: A Neglected Perspective On Climate Change, Linda A. Malone
Fordham International Law Journal
The modern feminist and environmental movements were given birth in the same decade, and both reached a critical developmental stage in the 1980s. The full extent of their relevance to each other was briefly explored in the 1990s in very limited legal literature, consisting primarily of three articles that began to explore the concept of ecological feminism, or “ecofeminism.” Since the mid-1990s, however, ecofeminism has largely been left to examination and study by sociologists with virtually no contribution from legal academics or environmental professionals. The point of this study is to demonstrate that it would be a missed opportunity not …
Feminism As Liberalism: A Tribute To The Work Of Martha Nussbaum Symposium: Honoring The Contributions Of Professor Martha Nussbaum To The Scholarship And Practice Of Gender And Sexuality Law: Feminism And Liberalism, Tracy E. Higgins
Faculty Scholarship
In this essay, I revisit and expand an argument I have made with respect to the limited usefulness of liberalism in defining an agenda for guaranteeing women's rights and improving women's conditions. After laying out this case, I discuss Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach to fundamental rights and human development and acknowledge that her approach addresses to a significant degree many of the objections I and other feminist scholars have raised. I then turn to fieldwork that I have done in South Africa on the issue of custom and women's choices with regard to marriage and divorce. Applying Professor Nussbaum's capabilities …
Why The Model Penal Code's Sexual Offense Provisions Should Be Pulled And Replaced, Deborah W. Denno
Why The Model Penal Code's Sexual Offense Provisions Should Be Pulled And Replaced, Deborah W. Denno
Faculty Scholarship
By all accounts, the Model Penal Code is enormously respected and influential. Yet, relatively soon after the Code's 1962 publication, the Code's sexual offense provisions and even its 1980 revised Commentaries were already considered outdated. The rapid onslaught of the sexual and feminist revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s brought an intense momentum to change rape laws that the Code had, in part, either mirrored or inspired. Only because of the passage of time, the Code's sexual offense provisions and Commentaries now misrepresent the progressive thinking of the Code's reporters. For these reasons, I think the Model Penal Code's sexual …
Feminist Legal Theory, Feminist Lawmaking, And The Legal Profession, Cynthia Grant Bowman, Elizabeth M. Schneider
Feminist Legal Theory, Feminist Lawmaking, And The Legal Profession, Cynthia Grant Bowman, Elizabeth M. Schneider
Fordham Law Review
No abstract provided.
Regarding Rights: An Essay Honoring The Fiftieth Anniversary Of The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights Introduction: Locating Culture, Identity, And Human Rights Symposium In Celebration Of The Fiftieth Anniversary Of The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights, Tracy E. Higgins
Faculty Scholarship
The half-century since the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights' has been famously heralded as the "Age of Rights" and the concept of human rights described as "the only political-moral idea that has gained universal acceptance." During the same period, however, both terms defining the subject-human and rights-have become increasingly contested. Informed by the emergence of identity-based political movements, critics have attacked the category human has as bearing the baggage of Western Enlightenment assumptions about personhood and community, inherently racist, sexist, and classist. Theorists across the political spectrum have criticized the concept of rights as indeterminate, destructive of …
Straying From The Path Of The Law After One Hundred Years, The, Tracy E. Higgins
Straying From The Path Of The Law After One Hundred Years, The, Tracy E. Higgins
Faculty Scholarship
What common ground can be found between modern feminist legal theory and a century-old essay advocating understanding the law from the perspective of the "bad man"? The question admits of no simple answer. Feminists, including myself, might agree with some irony that "[i]f you want to know the law and nothing else, you must look at it as a bad man" but would add that this is precisely the problem. Of course, Holmes does not use the concept of the bad man in a feminist sense to suggest that the law empowers the bad man at the expense of women. …
Anti-Essentialism, Relativism, And Human Rights , Tracy E. Higgins
Anti-Essentialism, Relativism, And Human Rights , Tracy E. Higgins
Faculty Scholarship
Confronted with the challenge of cultural relativism, feminism faces divergent paths, neither of which seems to lead out of the woods of patriarchy. The first path, leading to simple tolerance of cultural difference, is too broad. To follow it would require feminists to ignore pervasive limits on women's freedom in the name of an autonomy that exists for women in theory only. The other path, leading to objective condemnation of cultural practices, is too narrow. To follow it would require feminists to dismiss the culturally distinct experiences of women as false consciousness. Yet to forge an alternative path is difficult, …
Getting Civilized, Carol Gilligan
Hearing Women Not Being Heard: On Carol Gilligan's Getting Civilized And The Complexity Of Voice, Elizabeth M. Schneider
Hearing Women Not Being Heard: On Carol Gilligan's Getting Civilized And The Complexity Of Voice, Elizabeth M. Schneider
Fordham Law Review
No abstract provided.
Rethinking Emotional Distress Law: Prenatal Malpractice And Feminist Theory, Carolyn A. Goodzeit
Rethinking Emotional Distress Law: Prenatal Malpractice And Feminist Theory, Carolyn A. Goodzeit
Fordham Law Review
No abstract provided.
Men, Women And Rape, Donald Dripps, Linda Fairstein, Robin West, Deborah W. Denno
Men, Women And Rape, Donald Dripps, Linda Fairstein, Robin West, Deborah W. Denno
Fordham Law Review
No abstract provided.
Gender And Professional Roles, Deborah L. Rhode
Gender And Professional Roles, Deborah L. Rhode
Fordham Law Review
No abstract provided.
Questioning The Use Of Race-Specific And Gender-Specific Economic Data In Tort Litigation: A Constitutional Argument, Martha Chamallas
Questioning The Use Of Race-Specific And Gender-Specific Economic Data In Tort Litigation: A Constitutional Argument, Martha Chamallas
Fordham Law Review
No abstract provided.
Dispelling The Myths About The "Battered Woman's Defense:" Towards A New Understanding, Michael Dowd
Dispelling The Myths About The "Battered Woman's Defense:" Towards A New Understanding, Michael Dowd
Fordham Urban Law Journal
This essay explores the growth of the use of self-defense by battered women from a historical perspective in order to explain the magnitude of the prejudices these defendants face. The essay suggests that a redefinition of Battered Woman's Syndrome will ease much of the criticism from feminists and eliminate the confusion in the legal profession surrounding the use of self-defense by battered women. The essay also pushes for a redefinition of the concept of "imminence" to encompass the realities of a battered woman's life.
Giving Women The Benefit Of Equality: A Response To Wirenius, Tracy Higgins
Giving Women The Benefit Of Equality: A Response To Wirenius, Tracy Higgins
Fordham Urban Law Journal
This essay offers a feminist response to Mr. Wirenius’s provocative critique of Professor MacKinnon. Whether supporting or opposing pornography regulation, feminist legal scholars tend to approach the issue from neither of the traditional positions – First Amendment absolutist or moral censor. Rather, a feminist approach to pornography is informed by an understanding of the profound harm that pornography can and does inflict upon women. Consequently, even for feminists who many oppose pornographic regulation, the choice is not an obvious one, as it seems to be for Mr. Wirenius, between the good of civil libertarianism and the evil of totalitarianism. An …
Giving The Devil The Benefit Of Law: Pornographers, The Feminist Attack On Free Speech, And The First Amendment, John F. Wirenius
Giving The Devil The Benefit Of Law: Pornographers, The Feminist Attack On Free Speech, And The First Amendment, John F. Wirenius
Fordham Urban Law Journal
The battle lines over the censorship of “pornographic” materials have been shifted by a faction of the women’s movement following the publication of Andrea Dworkin’s Pornography: Men Possessing Women. With Dworkin, Catharine A. MacKinnon, a vocal and influential female advocate, co-authored a prototypical ordinance to protect against the degradation of individuals, mainly women, in pornography. To these advocates, pornography causes direct harm to individuals coerced into sexual activity and indirect harm by inculcating society with the chauvinistic norms of the pornographic world. While Wirenius agrees with MacKinnon and Dworkin about the importance of pornography in First Amendment jurisprudence, he disagrees …
The Minneapolis Anti-Pornography Ordinance: A Valid Assertion Of Civil Rights?, Winifred Ann Sandler
The Minneapolis Anti-Pornography Ordinance: A Valid Assertion Of Civil Rights?, Winifred Ann Sandler
Fordham Urban Law Journal
The author of this student note examines a recent Minneapolis city ordinance that declares pornography to be both subordination of and a form of sex discrimination towards women. First Amendment proponents challenged the ordinance as unconstitutional. The author considers whether the state has a compelling interest in protecting its citizens from civil rights violations, and whether that interest can overcome first amendment rights. The author concludes that pornography is neither a civil rights violation, nor a category of unprotected speech.