Law Commons^™

Towards A Feminist Theory Of The Public Domain, Or The Gendered Scope Of United States’ Copyrightable And Patentable Subject Matter, Malla Pollack

Malla Pollack

Feminism does not speak with a single voice. Each voice tells a different story. These stories include attacks on the gendered scope of United States copyrightable and patentable subject matter. The first wave of feminism, liberal feminism, argued that women were as rational and competent as men. It complained about the objective exclusion of women from opportunity. This feminist view might applaud the expansion of copyright and the greater ease of its availability (due to the end of formalities pursuant to the Berne Implementation Act). Liberal feminism, however, finds unacceptable copyright’s exclusion of traditional women’s work: food and clothing. Essentialist …

Legal Interpretations Of The Right To Divorce And Polygamy And The Egyptian Feminist Movement, Mozn A Hassan

Archived Theses and Dissertations

This essay aims to analyze the project of the Egyptian feminist movement in the legal arena to achieve equality for women under the Egyptian laws focusing on the right of divorce and polygamy. lt seeks to examine the most liberal interpretations towards these two questions. The essay assesses many of the methodologies used differently from feminist groups and its focal point were the lslamic legal interpretations according to the Egyptian legal system. The essay provides an innovative classification for feminist movement in Egypt. This classification is based on criticism of other available classifications and their legal tools every group have …

Still, At The Margins, Emily Houh

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

An anthology by Austin Sarat is reviewed from a critical race perspective. The book's agenda is to show how the law seeks to work in the world, particularly when, why, and how legal decisions respond to social characteristics of those making them as well as those who are subject to them. Also emphasized are the complex relations among the law's various parts (e.g., judges and jurors, police and prosecutors, appellate and trial courts). The book is organized around the law's paradoxes, purposes of the law which can be somewhat mutually exclusive. Many of the leading voices in the law and …

Defense Of Others And Defenseless "Others", Amy J. Sepinwall

Amy J. Sepinwall

Recent efforts at fetal protection transgress the nation's most fundamental political commitments. These efforts notably include the enactment of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (UVVA) in 2004 and, in 2002, a doctrinal development that presaged the potentially illiberal effects of the UVVA when a Michigan court recognized a woman's right to use deadly force to protect her fetus even as it denied her right to self-defense. This Article adopts a theory of political liberalism that can be traced from the Founders to contemporary political theorists, and argues that the UVVA, as well as the extension of defense of others …

Book Review: Legal Tenderness, Martha M. Ertman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

To Err Is Human: Art Mix-Ups - A Labor-Based, Relational Proposal, Leslie Bender

College of Law - Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Feminist Legal Theory And Human Trafficking In The United States: Towards A New Framework, Cynthia L. Wolken

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Fair Use And The Fairer Sex: Gender, Feminism, And Copyright Law, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

Copyright laws are written and enforced to help certain groups of people assert and retain control over the resources generated by creative productivity. Because those people are predominantly male, the copyright infrastructure plays a role, largely unexamined by legal scholars, in helping to sustain the material and economic inequality between women and men. This essay considers some of the ways in which gender issues and copyright laws intersect, proposes a feminist critique of the copyright legal regime which advocates low levels of copyright protections, and asserts the importance of considering the social and economic disparities between women and men when …

“Hands Off”: Sex, Feminism, Affirmative Consent, And The Law Of Foreplay, Dan Subotnik

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Feminists, Angels, Poets, And Revolutionaries: What I'Ve Learned From Ruthann Robson And Nicole Brossard On What It Means To Be A Law Teacher, Kim Brooks

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This short piece was written as a tribute to the contributions Ruthann Robson has made to legal pedagogy, and was presented at a Symposium in her honor held at CUNY.

The Rise, Development And Future Directions Of Critical Race Theory And Related Scholarship, Athena D. Mutua

Journal Articles

This essay tells the story of the rise, development and future directions of critical race theory and related scholarship. In telling the story, I suggest that critical race theory (CRT) rises, in part, as a challenge to the emergence of colorblind ideology in law, a major theme of the scholarship. I also contend that conflict, as a process of intellectual and institutional growth, marks the development of critical race theory and provides concrete and experiential examples of some of its key insights and themes. These conflicts are waged in various institutional settings over the structural and discursive meanings of race …

Porn In Their Words: Female Leaders In The Adult Entertainment Industry Address Free Speech, Censorship, Feminism, Culture And The Mainstreaming Of Adult Content, Clay Calvert, Robert D. Richards

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Part I provides brief biographical information about each of the five women interviewed for this article. Part II then describes the interview and editing processes used by the authors, including details about when and where the interviews took place and the transcription process of the tapes used to record them. Next, Part III--the heart of the article--sets forth the views, opinions and comments of each of the five women, divided into three theme-based sections: 1) free speech and censorship of sexual content; 2) feminism and victimization; and 3) mainstreaming of adult entertainment and shifts of cultural mores. Finally, Part IV …

Some Abcs Of Feminist Sex Education (In Light Of The Sexuality Critique Of Legal Feminism), Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

This essay offers some ABCs for a framework for sex education informed by feminist and liberal principles, in contrast to the conservative sexual economy underlying abstinence-only sex education. It embraces affirmative governmental responsibility to foster sexual and reproductive agency and responsibility and stresses the aims of capacity, equality, and responsibility. An adequate program of sex education should also address how gender role expectations and stereotypes may stand in the way of adolescents developing capacities for responsible self-government and acquiring a sense of personal agency with respect to intimacy and sexuality. The Essay then evaluates such a feminist project in light …

The Obstacles In Women's Pathway To Principalship, Mahshid Pirouznia

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The research problem is to investigate the obstacles of women seeking the principalship in public education; and also to explore major changes of different obstacles to women's principalship because women's roles have changed over time. Different obstacles in women's pathway to principalship are: low self-image; lack of encouragement; myths about women's work; sex stereotyping; lack of aspiration; role conflict; low self-esteem; family responsibilities; lack of mobility; and hiring and promoting practices. The research questions are: 1. what are the barriers for women who did not obtain a principalship or assistant principalship. 2. what are the barriers for women who obtained …

Toward Praxis, Emily Houh

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This Essay, written for a 2005 symposium issue of the U.C. Davis Law Review, responds to an important question posed by the symposium organizers: What is the future of critical race feminism? In this Essay, I use a common law contractual good faith antidiscrimination claim, developed and proposed by me in a series of previously written articles, to help answer that question. While, in the past, my proposed good faith claim aimed principally to operationalize some recurring and foundational insights of critical race theory, such as the race crits' critique of the intentionality requirement in conventional antidiscrimination law, the Davis …

Confronting Barriers To The Courtroom For Animal Advocates: Linking Cultural And Legal Transitions, Taimie Bryant, Una Chaudhuri, Dale Jamieson, Laura Ireland Moore, David J. Wolfson

Animal Law Review

Panelists: Taimie Bryant, Una Chaudhuri, and Dale Jamieson

Moderators: Laura Ireland Moore and David J. Wolfson

In this discussion, panelists explore the many viewpoints society holds with respect to nonhuman animals. The discussion broadly covers ethics and what constitutes ethical behavior in this regard. The question dealt with is, largely, what is the appropriate ethical model to use when arguing that animals deserve better treatment and expanded rights? Unlike parallel movements for human civil rights or women’s equality, the animal rights movement has much greater hurdles to overcome when it comes to arguing that animals deserve equal treatment under the …

Newfound Religion: Mothers, God, And Infanticide, Susan Ayres

Faculty Scholarship

This essay focuses on cultural constructions of infanticide and psychosis, especially cases in which the mother heard delusional commands to kill her children. Part I examines the background of the Yates, Laney, and Diaz cases. Part II explores whether these mothers can be seen paradoxically as feminist subjects of empowerment rather than as victims. This essay argues that psychotic mothers have been disempowered and silenced, so their acts cannot be seen as subversive feminist gestures. Part III, however, arguest that the legal trials of Laney and Diaz demonstrate a possible subversion through trial strategy. These two trials more fully told …

Intersectionality And Identity: Revisiting A Wrinkle In Title Vii, Brad Areheart

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

This article revisits intersectionality, a way of postulating legal identity. Simply put, intersectionality acknowledges that one person's identity can never be reduced to solely one characteristic, such as religion or sex. Rather, each person's identity is constructed of the various intersections of ways one might describe oneself.In the legal context, intersectionality has typically arisen in cases of employment discrimination, where those who theoretically could file a claim under more than protected category are forced to choose only one for their claim - for example, parsing one's identity as either race or sex, even though a statute like Title VII provides …

“This Woman’S Work” In A "Man's World": A Feminist Analysis Of The Farm Security And Rural Investment Act Of 2002, Nick J. Sciullo

Nick J. Sciullo

This paper will discuss the background of the 2002 Farm Bill and its origins in the Federal Agricultural Improvement and Reform Act of 1996 (hereinafter the 1996 Farm Bill). Secondly, a basic discussion of feminist international relations and more generally, feminist legal theory will be invoked to provide a theoretical beacon for the rest of the journey. Thirdly, specific arguments about ecofeminsim and postcolonial feminism are teased out in order to critically investigate the direct and indirect consequences of United States farm policy. Fourthly, the 2002 Farm Bill's disparate impact on international womyn will be discussed and theories about the …