Law Commons^™

Feminism For Men: Legal Ideology And The Construction Of Maleness, Nancy Levit

Faculty Works

It may seem a little odd to suggest that feminist theory has overlooked men. Yet, in several important respects, apart from the role of culprit, men have been largely omitted from feminism. Feminist legal theorists have paid mild attention to the "Can men be feminists?" question but this issue is usually relegated to footnotes. The negative effect gender role stereotypes have on men is typically subsidiary to the main focus of feminist legal literature, which has concentrated on documenting the patterns of subordination of women and on questions of feminist ideology.

The primary purpose of this article is to suggest …

Defining Cutting Edge Scholarship: Feminism And Criteria Of Rationality, Nancy Levit

Faculty Works

All too often, attempts to define or evaluate good scholarship develop criteria of meritocracy that reinforce existing hierarchies. Some of the efforts are quantitative. They involve cataloguing articles as measured by overall citation rates, ranking law reviews by citation counts, or classifying articles on a "greatest hits" list. Or they may count citations to construct a list of articles most-often-cited in fancy publications. Other efforts to describe quality scholarship involve the construction of criteria of merit, often for purposes of pronouncing what sorts of scholarship qualify for tenure, and for disqualifying nontraditional ideas and forms of writing as unworthy. The …