Law Commons^™

Gender Dimorphism In The United States Legal System: A "Post-Feminist" And Comparative Critique, James Wilets

Faculty Scholarship

There has been extensive jurisprudential literature positing that the structure, values and processes of the American legal and educational system, focusing heavily on adversarial battle among parties in court, and competition in law school, are fundamentally "male-centered." This "male-female" construct suggests that there is an essential dichotomy between the two genders with respect to resolving disputes that is reflected in the legal system, and that this male-female dichotomy is harmful to all participants and perhaps to justice itself.

This article expands upon this literature by arguing that many of the dysfunctional characteristics of the American legal system labeled "male" in …

Traveling Concepts: Substantive Equality On The Road, Susanne Baer

Articles

Ideas travel. Even legal concepts migrate on the globe. However, it is a contested issue whether migration is a good idea. We may enjoy traveling ourselves, but many people in the world of law are somewhat worried if we take legal baggage along. Some claim that legal baggage never arrives at its destination and challenge the very possibility of what some call a legal transplant. Others claim that we already live in transnational legal contexts, while still others claim that migration occurs, and that modifies each legal concept on the road in rather significant ways, which may render the project …

Go West Young Woman!: The Mercer Girls And Legal Historiography, Kristin Collins

Faculty Scholarship

This essay is a response to Professor Kerry Abrams’s article The Hidden Dimension of Nineteenth-Century Immigration Law, published in Vanderbilt Law Review. The Hidden Dimension tells the story of Washington Territory’s entrepreneurial Asa Shinn Mercer, who endeavored to bring hundreds of young women from the East Coast to the tiny frontier town of Seattle as prospective brides for white men who had settled there. Abrams locates the story of the Mercer Girls, as they were called, in the history of American immigration law. My response locates The Hidden Dimension in American legal historiography, both that branch of American legal historiography …