Law Commons^™

Sometimes They Don't Die: Can Criminal Justice Reform Measures Help Halt Police Sexual Assault On Black Women?, Michelle S. Jacobs

UF Law Faculty Publications

In the eighteen months between March 2019 and August 2020, at least eight Black women were murdered by the police. Breonna Taylor was one of them. Officer Brett Hankison, one of the three officers who murdered Breonna Taylor, was eventually discharged from the Louisville Police Department. In the memo discharging him, the police chief cited behavior that amounted to an extreme indifference to the value of human life: Hankison blindly fired ten rounds into the home of Ms. Taylor's neighbor. Additionally, in the aftermath of Ms. Taylor's death, two women came forward and accused Hankison of sexually assaulting them while …

Children's Equality: Strategizing A New Deal For Children, Nancy E. Dowd

UF Law Faculty Publications

It is the ultimate gift to have one’s work trigger feedback, critique and challenge that expands and deepens the project. Professors Cooper, Huntington, McGinley, Silbaugh, and Woodhouse all have been sources of inspiration for me; their Articles and Essays in response to Reimagining Equality contribute both to my thinking and to the core focus of the book, the well-being, development and equality of all children, but also to the broad focus of this special issue on children and poverty. I am particularly grateful for their challenges and critiques, and their shared focus on the strategies I explore in the book, …

Children's Equality: The Centrality Of Race, Gender, And Class, Nancy E. Dowd

UF Law Faculty Publications

Hierarchies among children dramatically impact their development. Beginning before birth, and continuing during their progression to adulthood from birth to age 18, structural and cultural barriers separate and subordinate some children, while they privilege others. The hierarchies replicate patterns of inequality along familiar lines, particularly those of race, gender, and class, and the intersections of those identities. These barriers, and co-occurring support of privilege for other children, emanate from policies, practices, and structures of the state, including education, health, policing and juvenile justice, and limited social welfare. Reimagining Equality: A New Deal for Children of Color takes on the task …

The Politics Of Pregnancy Accommodation, Stephanie Bornstein

UF Law Faculty Publications

How can antidiscrimination law treat men and women “equally” when it comes to the issue of pregnancy? The development of U.S. law on pregnancy accommodation in the workplace tells a story of both legal disagreements about the meaning of “equality” and political disagreements about how best to achieve “equality” at work for women. Federal law has prohibited sex discrimination in the workplace for over five decades. Yet, due to long held gender stereotypes separating work and motherhood, the idea that prohibiting sex discrimination requires a duty to accommodate pregnant workers is a relatively recent phenomenon—and still only partially required by …

The Statutory Public Interest In Closing The Pay Gap, Stephanie Bornstein

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Essay explores the role that the statutory public interest should play in the enforcement of rights under the Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA). Current data shows that, even fifty-five years after the enactment of federal law outlawing sex based pay discrimination, the gender pay gap inflicts huge costs on women, their families, and the U.S. economy, echoing the public concerns that led to the statute’s original passage. That Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) and EPA rights cannot be waived by an employee calls into question two common employer pay-setting practices often excused under federal law: setting …

Equal Work, Stephanie Bornstein

UF Law Faculty Publications

Most Americans have heard of the gender pay gap and the statistic that, today, women earn on average eighty cents to every dollar men earn. Far less discussed, there is an even greater racial pay gap. Black and Latino men average only seventy-one cents to the dollar of white men. Compounding these gaps is the “polluting” impact of status characteristics on pay: as women and racial minorities enter occupations formerly dominated by white men, the pay for those occupations goes down. Improvement in the gender pay gap has been stalled for nearly two decades; the racial pay gap is actually …

The Violent State: Black Women's Invisible Struggle Against Police Violence, Michelle S. Jacobs

UF Law Faculty Publications

Black women have a very specific history with the state and law enforcement that is not replicated among other women’s communities, and it is that unique situation that is the focus of this Article. Part I of this Article explores the historical roots of Black women’s interaction with the state. Part II of this Article is broken into two sections. The first will cover police killings of Black women. The second part of the section will explore the conditions under which Black women are physically assaulted by the police. Part III of the Article seeks to highlight when the police …

The Case For Trauma-Informed, Gender-Specific Prevention/Early Intervention Programming In Reducing Female Juvenile Delinquency In Florida, Joan D. Flocks, Emily Calvin, Simone Chriss, Marina Prado-Steiman

UF Law Faculty Publications

This article describes the statutory recognition of the need for prevention/early intervention juvenile services in Florida that are both trauma-informed and gender-specific. It examines how childhood trauma can impact at-risk children and the gendered aspects of such trauma. The article then describes the PACE Center for Girls, a Florida-based school, currently undergoing a comprehensive evaluation, which attempts to incorporate elements that fulfill statutory recommendations into its programming.

Glocalizing Women's Health And Safety: Migration, Work, And Labor, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

Worldwide, women's equality remains elusive in the social, political, civil, economic and cultural spheres. Such reality presents a challenge in the movement of persons across state borders because, globally, the world is experiencing a feminization of migration. In turn, the feminization of migration effects threats to the health and safety of migrant women, whose well-being is in peril at all stages of the migration journey – from the country of origin, to the transit states, to the receiving state – from smugglers and official actors alike. Because the globalization discourses exclude the movement of persons and focus on the movement …

Work Wives, Laura A. Rosenbury

UF Law Faculty Publications

Traditional notions of male and female roles remain tenacious at home and work even in the face of gender-neutral family laws and robust employment discrimination laws. This Article analyzes the challenge of gender tenacity through the lens of the “work wife.” The continued use of the marriage metaphor at work reveals that the dynamics of marriage flow between home and work, creating a feedback loop that inserts gender into both domains in multiple ways. This phenomenon may reinforce gender stereotypes, hindering the potential of law to achieve gender equality. But such gender tenacity need not always lead to subordination. The …

Revisiting Mothering? – A Mother's Thoughts: A Response To Darren Rosenblum's Unsex Mothering: Toward A Culture Of New Parenting, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

I came to motherhood (“am2”?) late in life. Mothering is the most complex, difficult, challenging work in which I have ever engaged. It also is the most rewarding, exciting, frightening, all consuming work that I will ever do. I would not trade this life for anything.

The night before this essay was due, I was up late (well, late for me, the mother of a seven-year-old boy Nikolai and six-month-old twins Natalia Luz and Nadal Sergio) working on the last set of edits — putting the finishing touches, if you will — on the draft of my musings on Rosenblum’s …

Mixed Messages: The Intersection Of Prenatal Genetic Testing And Abortion, Rachel Rebouché, Karen Rothenberg

UF Law Faculty Publications

This article, prepared for the 2011 Wiley A. Branton Symposium at Howard Law School, provides a snapshot of how current law and practice generate mixed messages about prenatal genetic testing and abortion. The ability to screen and to test for genetic conditions prenatally is expanding, not only because of technological innovations but also because of increased legal and financial incentives. At the same time that prenatal genetic testing is expanding, abortion – one option pregnant women have after testing – is contracting. Federal and state legislation restricts abortion services, for example, by reducing or prohibiting funding; banning the types or …

Comparative Pragmatism, Rachel Rebouché

UF Law Faculty Publications

Although several commentators have previously suggested that the United States and Germany now share more commonalities than differences, this Article challenges the conventional wisdom by suggesting that the United States and Germany have moved in the opposite direction on a spectrum of available abortion services. In the United States, the constitutional right to an abortion is unrealizable for many women due to restrictive state and federal laws and the absence of providers in many areas. In Germany, by contrast, despite the country’s formal recognition of fetal rights, early abortion is widely available and often funded by the government. In short, …

The Law Of Gender Stereotyping And The Work-Family Conflicts Of Men, Stephanie Bornstein

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article looks back to the early equal protection jurisprudence of the 1970s and Ruth Bader Ginsburg's litigation strategy of using men as plaintiffs in sex discrimination cases to cast a renewed focus on antidiscrimination law as a means to redress the work-family conflicts of men. From the beginning of her litigation strategy as the head of the ACLU Women's Rights Project, Ginsburg defined sex discrimination as the detrimental effects of gender stereotypes that constrained both men and women from living their lives as they wished-not solely the minority status of women. The same sex-based stereotypes that kept women out …

Parental Involvement Laws And New Governance, Rachel Rebouché

UF Law Faculty Publications

The stated objectives of parental involvement laws are to protect the health and well-being of minors and to encourage dialogue between parents and adolescents about pregnancy options. Yet decades of studies urge that parental involvement laws do not meet these purposes. Adding to this research, a new ethnography of professionals who implement parental involvement statutes seeks to demonstrate how notice and consent laws and the judicial bypass work in practice. Over the last two years, a non-profit organization, the National Partnership for Women & Families, interviewed 155 lawyers, advocates, judges, health care providers, and court clerks who assist minors in …

Working Relationships, Laura A. Rosenbury

UF Law Faculty Publications

In this Essay written for the symposium on "For Love or Money? Defining Relationships in Law and Life," I extend my previous consideration of friendship to the specific context of the workplace, analyzing friendship through the lens of the ties that arise at work instead of those assumed to arise within the home. Many adults spend half or more of their waking hours at work, in the process forming relationships with supervisors, co-workers, subordinates, customers, and other third parties. Although such relationships are at times primarily transactional, at other times they take on intimate qualities similar to those of family …

The Limits Of Reproductive Rights In Improving Women's Health, Rachel Rebouché

UF Law Faculty Publications

South Africa's Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act (CTOPA) is heralded as one of the most progressive abortion laws in the world. The law permits unfettered access to government-funded abortion services for all women through the twelfth week of gestation, stating in its preamble that "every woman [has] the right to choose whether to have an early, safe and legal termination of pregnancy according to her individual beliefs." Despite increased availability of legal abortions' (and the inclusion of rights to reproductive health care and decision-making in South Africa's Constitution), the number of illegal terminations in South Africa does not appear …

Asking The Man Question: Masculinities Analysis And Feminist Theory, Nancy E. Dowd

UF Law Faculty Publications

Masculinities scholarship is an essential piece of feminist analysis and of critical equality analysis. It requires that we "ask the man question" to further unravel inequalities. This symposium marks one of several movements toward examining and considering what masculinities scholarship can offer. In this introduction, I suggest a framework of masculinities analysis and describe its relationship to feminist theory. First, I consider why we should ask the "man question," and how we should ask it. Second, I explore how masculinities analysis might be useful in our examination of the "man question." Masculinities work can be used to understand more clearly …

Sex In And Out Of Intimacy, Laura A. Rosenbury, Jennifer E. Rothman

UF Law Faculty Publications

The state has long attempted to regulate sexual activity by channeling sex into various forms of state-supported intimacy. Although commentators and legal scholars of diverse political perspectives generally believe such regulation is declining, the freedom to engage in diverse sexual activities has not been established as a matter of law. Instead, courts have extended legal protection to consensual sexual acts only to the extent such acts support other state interests, most often marriage and procreation. Although Lawrence v. Texas altered some aspects of that vision, it reinscribed others by suggesting that sexual activity should be protected from state interference only …

Health And Reproductive Rights In The Protocol To The African Charter: Competing Influences And Unsettling Questions, Rachel Rebouché

UF Law Faculty Publications

In 2005, the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (the Protocol) came into force. Since that time, the Protocol has received scant attention in legal scholarship. Where the Protocol has been mentioned, by and large it has received praise as a major step forward for women's rights on the continent. Much of that praise is merited. The Protocol includes broad rights to non-discrimination, equality, and dignity, and it addresses a variety of areas such as labor and employment, marriage and the family, the legal system, the political process and …

The Gender Bend: Culture, Sex, And Sexuality – A Latcritical Human Rights Map Of Latina/O Border Crossings, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

In the course of studying and theorizing about Latinas/os and their location in law and culture, critical theory has been simultaneously liberating and restraining, confining, and coercive. Critical theorists have made substantial inroads in recognizing the intersectionality, multidimensionality, multiplicity, and interconnectivities of the intersections of race and sex. These paradigms are central to an analysis of the Latina/o condition within the Estados Unidos (United States). However, much work remains to be done in other areas - such as culture, language, sexuality, and class - that are key to Latinas'/os' self-determination and full citizenship.

Cognizant of, and notwithstanding such limitations, this …

Sex And Globalization, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

For some time now, I have focused on a mission to bring together the separate discourses of the human rights and trade fields -- certainly not to blend them, but to raise awareness of their myriad interconnections. Indeed, human rights and trade are interlocking pieces of the puzzle we call international law and cannot possibly remain sequestered in the "splendid isolation" in which they have existed since their inception as disciplines. In any study of globalization, especially if one endeavors to pursue its benefits for all persons, not just the elite around the world, one must be aware of and …

Friends With Benefits, Laura A. Rosenbury

UF Law Faculty Publications

Family law has long been intensely interested in certain adult intimate relationships, namely marriage and marriage-like relationships, and silent about other adult intimate relationships, namely friendship. This Article examines the effects of that focus, illustrating how it frustrates one of the goals embraced by most family law scholars over the past forty years: the achievement of gender equality, within the family and without.

Part I examines the current scope of family law doctrine and scholarship, highlighting the ways that the home is still the organizing structure for family. Despite calls for increased legal recognition of diverse families, few scholars have …

The Legacy Of Colonialism: Law And Women's Rights In India, Varsha Chitnis, Danaya C. Wright

UF Law Faculty Publications

The relationship between nineteenth century England and colonial India was complex in terms of negotiating the different constituencies that claimed an interest in the economic and moral development of the colonies. After India became subject to the sovereignty of the English Monarchy in 1858, its future became indelibly linked with that of England's, yet India's own unique history and culture meant that many of the reforms the colonialists set out to undertake worked out differently than they anticipated. In particular, the colonial ambition of civilizing the barbaric native Indian male underlay many of the legal reforms attempted in the nearly …

Loyalty's Reward — A Felony Conviction: Recent Prosecutions Of High-Status Female Offenders, Michelle S. Jacobs

UF Law Faculty Publications

Between 2001 and 2004, six high-status women were charged with crimes in connection with corporate criminal cases. The public is familiar with some of them, although not all of their cases have been covered equally in the press. With the exception of an occasional article now and then mentioning the exploding rates of female incarceration, women's crime tends to be invisible to the public eye. The statistical data the government collects and analyzes on women and crime will be discussed. This article will focus on the prosecution of the individual cases of Lea Fastow, Betty Vinson, and Martha Stewart. Their …

Sexual Labor And Human Rights, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol, Jane E. Larson

UF Law Faculty Publications

In this Article, we engage the current human rights debate that dichotomizes prostitution either as a modern form of slavery or as the exercise of the right to work. This framework effectively sets up a coercion/consent polarity. These poles raise fundamental human rights issues; both the prohibition against slavery and the right to work are matters addressed by and central to the international human rights paradigm. Yet we argue in this Article that the human rights issues raised by prostitution cannot properly be studied nor moved towards meaningful resolution in the context of the prevailing polarity. Prostitution in its current …

Fathers And The Supreme Court: Founding Fathers And Nuturing Fathers, Nancy E. Dowd

UF Law Faculty Publications

This article critiques the Supreme Court's negative, stereotypic views of fatherhood, especially unmarried fatherhood, and argues that the Court should reconsider and refine its definition of fatherhood around nurture. The corrective for the Court's current view is not to revert to a status-based definition of fatherhood, but rather to reinforce and recast its prior fathers' rights decisions to establish a definition grounded on relationship and care. What should be discarded are outdated stereotypes about men as incapable, incompetent caregivers, as well as patriarchal norms of status and ownership based in genetic and economic fatherhood recognized exclusively within marriage. Instead, fatherhood …

Law Is Not Enough, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

In 1995, the United Nations reported “in no society today do women enjoy the same opportunities as men.” The condition and status of women worldwide was one of social, political, educational, legal, and economic inequality. Ten years later, women's economic disparities persist. In Gender Injustice: An International Comparative Analysis of Equality in Employment, Dr. Anne-Marie Mooney Cotter focuses on women's global inequality in employment. The book's in-depth examination of women's second-class, subordinated status in the workplace around the world provides invaluable insights into the complexities of gender inequality.

Two Ways To End A Marriage: Divorce Or Death, Laura A. Rosenbury

UF Law Faculty Publications

Default rules governing property distribution at divorce and death are often identified as one of the primary benefits of marriage. This Article examines these default rules in all fifty states, exposing the ways property distribution differs depending on whether the marriage ends by divorce or death. The result is often counter-intuitive: in most states, a spouse is likely to receive more property if her marriage ends by divorce than if the marriage lasts until "death do us part." This difference can be explained in part by the choices of feminist activists over the past thirty-five years: feminists played a large …

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

UF Law Faculty Publications

Historians of Anglo-American family law consider 1857 as a turning point in the development of modern family law and the first big step in the breakdown of coverture and the recognition of women's legal rights. In 1857, The United Kingdom Parliament ("Parliament") created a new civil court to handle all divorce and matrimonial causes, removing the jurisdiction of: the ecclesiastical courts over marital validity; the Chancery over custody of children and separate estates; the royal courts over marital property; and Parliament over full divorce. The new Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Court, a wing of the admiralty and probate courts, would …