Law Commons^™

Breaking The Federal/State Impasse Over Medical Marijuana: A Proposal, Marsha N. Cohen

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

California's Proposition 215 legalizes the medical use of marijuana. Since its passage, the State of California and the federal government have been engaged in legal skirmishing over its implementation. In this policy commentary, Professor Cohen describes the current legal status of medical marijuana and the current scientific views about its efficacy for various medical purposes. She appeals to California's Governor Gray Davis to break the costly legal impasse between federal and state governments over medical marijuana. She proposes that the Governor support the scientific efforts needed to determine whether, and for what, marijuana is good medicine. Further, the Governor should …

When Service With A Smile Invites More Than Satisfied Customers: Third-Party Sexual Harassment And The Implications Of Charges Against Safeway, Sarah L. Ream

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

Sexual harassment in the workplace, a form of sex discrimination, has received substantial legislative and judicial attention in the past several decades. Courts have recognized that harassment may arise from supervisor or co-worker conduct. Increasingly, courts are also acknowledging harassment by third-parties, such as independent contractors or customers. This note examines the law of such "third-party sexual harassment" with regard to harassment perpetrated by customers. Particular attention is given to the implications of charges filed against a major super market chain alleging harassment by customers due to the implementation of a customer service policy.

Foreword, Cary Elizabeth Zuk

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

No abstract provided.

Law And The Biology Of Rape: Reflections On Transitions, Owen D. Jones

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

The effectiveness of the legal system in preventing rape depends, in part, on the accuracy of the model of rape behavior on which it relies. To date, most models of rape reflect the disciplinary isolation of their proponents. In this article, Professor Jones argues that integrating life science and social science perspectives on sexual aggression can improve law's model of rape behavior and further our efforts to reduce the .incidence of rape. Extending his prior work on law, biology, and sexual aggression, Professor Jones addresses both why law's model of rape behavior can usefully incorporate insights from biobehavioral science in …

Clara Shortridge Foltz: Angel And Revolutionary, Deborah H. King

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

Clara Shortridge Foltz has been described in many different ways. "Lady lawyer," "massive egotist" and "representative heroine" are just a few of the labels she has worn. This note attempts to find yet another label for Foltz by exploring her culture and the roles she chose to play within that culture. When Foltz is viewed in the context of her time it becomes apparent that her proper label lies somewhere between lady lawyer and feminist. She was a complex woman with varied responses to the Victorian notions that men and women occupied different spheres, which is referred to as separate …

Persecution On Account Of Gender: A Need For Refugee Law Reform, Bret Thiele

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

Reacting to the horrors committed during World War II and the subsequent mass migration of individuals across State boundaries, the international community in 1951 agreed to a definition of refugee. This definition is still in use internationally and reflected in U.S. domestic law. This article illustrates how the current definition of refugee is limited and therefore inadequate to protect millions of persons, namely those persecuted or facing persecution on account of gender. Likewise, recent developments in refugee law do not sufficiently provide protection to individuals facing gender-specific forms of persecution. This article argues for the addition of a gender category …

Revisiting Poor Joshua: State-Created Danger Theory In The Foster Care Context, Michele Miller

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

The Supreme Court's decision in DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services declared that abused children in the legal custody of the state (but residing with their natural parent) have no private cause of action against the state for substantive due process violations. Since the decision, many courts have attempted to circumvent DeShaney by using a "state-created danger theory," by which a state may be liable, under negligence principles, for removing a child from foster care and returning him/her to a parent, despite clear indications that future abuse will occur. This note examines the application of the state-created danger …

Knowledge, Identity, And The Politics Of Law, Margaret Davies, Nan Seuffert

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

As indicated by the title, our primary question concerns the relationship of situated knowledges, identity politics and the political dimension of law. The term "situated knowledges" refers broadly to issues raised in feminist epistemology: how do oppressed groups experience the world differently to the dominant perspective, what is the relationship between different knowledge bases and what is the epistemological significance of "the view from below?" "Identity politics" is a term which has been used to describe political coalitions formed primarily around politically-charged identities. It has been used to indicate, for instance, that identification as a "feminist" or as a "lesbian" …

All Things Being Equal: Affirmative Action And Candidate Selection From A Scottish Perspective, Kirsteen Davidson, Rhona Smith, Ruth Webster, Nicole Busby

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

This article examines some of the issues surrounding attempts to increase the participation of women in formal political structures. Although prominent on the international agenda, only Scandinavia comes close to a true gender balance. Within an international political and legal context, this article examines the remarkable improvement in female representation which has occurred in Scotland since 1997. Scotland is an ideal case study with recent elections to the Local Councils, the Scottish Parliament, the national Westminster Parliament and the European Parliament. In some instances, different techniques of affirmative action or reverse discrimination were employed. Each of these elections will be …

Still Cloudy, With Little Chance Of Clearing: Fda's Proposed Rule On Structure/Function Claims For Dietary Supplements, Michele Simon

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

The FDA's proposed rule regarding structure/function claims for dietary supplements is intended to give consumers more information about dietary supplements. While "disease claims" are prohibited under the rule, claims that a product affects a structure or function of the body are permissible. However, the distinction between a "disease claim" and a "structure/function claim" ignores the reasons why many consumers turn to dietary supplements. Rather than dispelling confusion surrounding dietary supplements, the proposed rule will only add to it.

Ending Male Privilege: Beyond The Reasonable Woman, Stephanie M. Wildman

Michigan Law Review

A Law of Her Own: The Reasonable Woman as a Measure of Man by Caroline A. Forell and Donna M. Matthews aspires to provide a solution for an enigmatic jurisprudential problem - the systemic failure of the legal order to recognize and to redress the injuries that women experience. Feminist scholars have agreed that, for women, the legal separation of public and private spheres often insulates from legal review behavior that harms women. But even in the so-called public sphere, women suffer harms that remain invisible and unnamed. The authors identify four legal arenas in which the "spectrum of violence …

The Reasonable Woman And The "Warrior Code", Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky

UF Law Faculty Publications

In the provocative book A Law of Her Own: The Reasonable Woman as a Measure of Man, Caroline Forell and Donna Matthews argue that existing law systematically undervalues women's experiences of sexual harassment and sexual violence. In essence, the authors contend that law is a "warrior code" that is unduly forgiving of sexual aggression and violence, and they support this contention by showing how "male-centered values" permeate the law of sexual harassment, stalking, domestic violence, and rape. This critique alone would make this work worthy of serious consideration by anyone concerned with the law's treatment of women.

The Difference In Women’S Hedonic Lives: A Phenomenological Critique Of Feminist Legal Theory, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Part One of this article provides a phenomenological and hedonic critique of the conception of the human - and thus the female - that underlies liberal legal feminism. Part Two presents a phenomenological critique of the conception of the human - and thus the female - which underlies radical feminist legal criticism. Again, I will argue that in both cases the theory does not pay enough attention to feminism: liberal feminist legal theory owes more to liberalism than to feminism and radical feminist legal theory owes more to radicalism than it does to feminism. Both models accept a depiction of …

The "Normal" Successes And Failures Of Feminism And The Criminal Law, Victoria Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

To write of feminist reform in the criminal law is to write of simultaneous success and failure. We have seen marked changes in the doctrines and the practice of rape law, domestic violence law, and the law of self-defense. There is not a criminal law casebook in America today, nor a state statute book, that does not tell this story. Yet for all of this success, we also live in a world in which reform seems to suffer routine failures. Many believe, for example, that feminist reforms have rid rape law of the resistance requirement; however, recent scholarship makes it …

Private Remedies For Public Wrongs Under Section 5 (Symposium: New Directions In Federalism), Evan H. Caminker

Articles

The Supreme Court has ushered in the new millennium with a renewed emphasis on federalism-based limits to Congress's regulatory authority in general, and Congress's Section 5 power to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment in particular. In a recent string of cases, the Court has refined and narrowed Section 5's enforcement power in two significant ways.1 First, the Court made clear that Congress lacks the authority to interpret the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment's substantive provisions themselves, and may only "enforce" the judiciary's definition of Fourteenth Amendment violations. 2 Second, the Court embraced a relatively stringent requirement concerning the relationship between means …

Personal Harms And Political Inequities, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

When we think back to where the legal battle for gender equality and the rights of gay people stood a century ago, we see that, in fact, there was not much of a battle. Indeed, advocates for change were seldom triumphant. A survey in 1900 would have shown that American women were twenty years away from obtaining the right to vote, were unfit to be lawyers according to the U.S. Supreme Court, and were nowhere near being eligible-let alone required-to serve on juries. The survey would also have revealed a wide-ranging web of federal and state laws and policies that …

Civilizing The Natives: Marriage In Post-Apartheid South Africa, David L. Chambers

Articles

South Africa is a land of many cultures. For several hundred years, British and Afrikaaner whites controlled the country, systematically manipulating black people to the whites' advantage. For the most part, however, whites tolerated the continuation within black communities of traditional marriage practices that white Christians considered uncivilized. In 1994, South Africa changed governments. A black majority Parliament came to power, adopting a consitution dedicated to equality and human dignity. Four years later, Parliament adopted a new marriage law that, though permitting some of the external trappings of the traditional marriage system to continue, eliminated by law much of the …

Equality Trouble: Sameness And Difference In Twentieth-Century Race Law, Angela Harris

Angela P Harris

No abstract provided.

"Culturing" Survival : Afro-Caribbean Migrant Culture And The Human Rights Of Women Under Globalization, Hope Lewis

Hope Lewis

These remarks were delivered at the 93rd Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law (24-27 March 1999, Washington, DC) for a panel on the rule of law vs. cultural authority. The reality for working-class Afro-Caribbean women migrants (called "lionheart gals" by one Caribbean feminist organization) is that both "the rule of law" and "cultural authority" can enhance, or undermine, the protection of fundamental human rights. For lionheart gals, the choice is not between a liberating rule of law and a static, cocoonlike cultural authority. For them, the primary imperative is to use law and culture in a creative …

Gender Violence, Race, And Criminal Justice, Angela P. Harris

Angela P Harris

No abstract provided.

Revisiting Gay Rights Coalition Of Georgetown Law Center V. Georgetown University A Decade Later: Free Exercise Challenges And The Nondiscrimination Laws Protecting Homosexuals, Matthew J. Parlow

Matthew Parlow