Law Commons^™

Keynote Address: The Difference "Difference" Makes, Deborah L. Rhode

Maine Law Review

Over the last two decades, we have witnessed a transformation for women in law, but not a transformation in leadership positions. Almost 30% of lawyers are women, but they represent only about 15% of federal judges and law firm partners, and about 10% of law school deans and general counsel positions at Fortune 500 companies. The same patterns are apparent in other leadership sectors, such as management and politics. Women are half the electorate but only 15% of Congress and 6% of state governors. They account for about half of managers but only 1% of the Chief Executive Officers of …

Foreword: Law, Labor And Gender, Jennifer B. Wriggins

Maine Law Review

The theme of the conference, Law, Labor, & Gender, came out of a working group comprised of law students, lawyers, a judge, and myself. We thought that a number of issues deserved attention, ranging from current jurisprudence on employment discrimination to more theoretical issues having to do with work/family dilemmas. Professor Deborah Rhode kindly accepted our invitation to be the keynote speaker, and various other academic speakers also agreed to present papers. The working group, and the editors of the Maine Law Review, drafted and sent out a call for papers to approximately 1600 law professors and others. The Law …

Today's Porn: Not A Constitutional Right; Not A Human Right, Patrick Trueman

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Red Lights: An Economic Approach To Appalachian Prostitution Laws, Kandi Spindler

DePaul Journal of Women, Gender and the Law

The legal discourse surrounding prostitution frequently drowns out the voices of sex workers themselves by focusing on questions of morality. But ignoring the voices of those affected by prostitution laws also ignores the driving force behind prostitution: economics. This Note departs from a traditional case study by using interviews with chiefly sex workers and brothel management to craft a more efficient and fair mode of regulating prostitution. By viewing prostitution for what it is—an industry driven by basic economic principles—business law becomes the clear choice for replacing the current, ineffective laws. Furthermore, reshaping prostitution laws to meet the monetary needs …

Meeting Of The Minds And Bodies: Contract Law And The Mutuality Of Sexual Exchanges, Kelly Jo Popkin

DePaul Journal of Women, Gender and the Law

Though it may seem like an obvious analogy, a comparison of consent to sex and consent to contract has rarely been explored in such detail. The legal concepts protecting bargainers to a contract can be applied to analyses of sexual coercion in consent to sexual encounters, thereby affording survivors with greater protection against instances of sexual violence that seem to consistently slip through the cracks of our criminal justice system. More importantly, this analysis has never before been applied to the Title IX campus sexual assault adjudication process and policies. As a procedure involving civil law, rather than criminal law, …

A Patient's Right Not To Hear: The Public Health Case For Challenging Pre-Abortion Ultrasound Description Mandates By Refocusing On The Listener, Juliana Shulman-Laniel

DePaul Journal of Women, Gender and the Law

This Article argues for a reframing of the discourse surrounding abortion-specific informed consent laws, calling for scholars and practitioners to focus not solely on the physician’s right against compelled speech, but also a patient’s right not to listen. Although this right has not been firmly recognized by the courts, a growing body of case law and scholarly papers has begun to acknowledge the potential for this right. This Article begins by examining how bridging the First Amendment rights of doctors-as-speakers and patients-as-listeners within the context of the unique doctor-patient relationship may help to establish a patient’s right not to hear. …

Pushback: Title Vii Takes On Hobby Lobby, Carole Okolowicz

DePaul Journal of Women, Gender and the Law

In Hobby Lobby, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that a for-profit corporation could avoid the requirement under the Affordable Care Act that it pay for coverage of female contraception in the employee health plan due to the employer’s religious objections to birth control. In so deciding, the Court allowed the employer to discriminate against its female employees in their employee benefits. Such a decision raises the possibility of a claim of sex discrimination by the corporation’s female employees under Title VII. This article explores the main issues and pitfalls in such a claim.

The two main issues with the possible …

Telling A Story, Changing The World: California Rural Legal Assistance, Jonathan J. Chavez

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This capstone project attempts to provide an in-depth view of how stories influence change in our lives as well as in the field of law.

Female Autonomy: An Analysis Of Privacy And Equality Doctrine For Reproductive Rights, Elizabeth Levi

Political Science Honors Projects

What is the constitutional basis for women’s equality? Recently, scholars have suggested that as the right to privacy has floundered against the political undoing of women's access to abortion, equal protection arguments have grown stronger. This thesis investigates the feminist utility and limits of the equality and privacy arguments. Taking liberal feminism and feminist legal theory as analytical lenses, I offer interpretations of gender discrimination, reproductive rights, and marriage equality case law. By this framework, I argue that while an equality argument is less inherently oppressive towards women than the privacy doctrine, equality doctrine has been constructed thus far to …

New Hampshire Juvenile Sex Trafficking Survivor Urges Representatives To Vote Against Decriminalized Prostitution, Darlene Pawlik, Donna M. Hughes Dr.

Donna M. Hughes

Sex Industry Advocates Aim To Decriminalize Prostitution In New Hampshire, Kelly Roy-Williams, Lisa Thompson, Donna M. Hughes Dr.

Donna M. Hughes

A Call For Limiting Absolute Privilege: How Victims Of Domestic Violence, Suffering With Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Are Discriminated Against By The U.S. Judicial System, Jerrell Dayton King, Donna J. King

DePaul Journal of Women, Gender and the Law

The U.S. court system often traumatizes victims of domestic violence (“DV”) through institutional gender discrimination, which has plagued women throughout the United States since colonial American times. In many ways the court system becomes a participant in re-victimizing and continuing the abuse of the DV victim. Abusive power and control of women exposes them to DV in alarming numbers; this causes many DV victims to experience severe trauma that results in psychological injuries such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (“PTSD”). In the court system, the DV abuser enters the legal process with an advantage over his victim who suffers from PTSD. …

Refugee Roulette: A Comparative Analysis Of Gender-Related Persecution In Asylum Law, Joanna J. Kallinosis

DePaul Journal of Women, Gender and the Law

From the moment Rodi Alvarado Pena married a Guatemalan army officer at the age of 16, she was subjected to intensive abuse, and all her efforts to get help where unsuccessful. Her husband raped and sodimized her repeatedly, attempted to abort their child by violently kicking her in the spine, dislocated her jaw, attempted to cut her hands off with a machete, kicked her in her genitals and used her head to break windows. He terrified her by bragging about his power to kill innocent civilians with impunity and all of Rodi’s pleas for help from the Guatemalan government were …

Egg Freezing On Company Dollars: Making Biological Clock Irrelevant?, Madhumita Datta

DePaul Journal of Women, Gender and the Law

In an attempt to boost gender diversity, two of the technology giants of Silicon Valley, Apple and Facebook, announced in October 2014 that they would cover the costs of freezing eggs, so that women employees who want to pursue both motherhood and a serious career could conveniently ‘time’ their pregnancy. Intel followed suit in October 2015. Unlike other reproductive benefits aiming to cure a biological deficiency such as infertility, employers promote egg freezing as an investment towards women employees’ career success. Women employees may take advantage of this benefit for non-medical reasons to delay pregnancy and childbirth because of the …

A Problem Of Competing Interests: A Detailed Look At Transgender Children In Schools, Corinne Cundiff

DePaul Journal of Women, Gender and the Law

Discrimination of transgender students is an area of the law that is rapidly developing. Unfortunately for schools trying to find guidance in the law, there are conflicts regarding how schools are to work with their transgender students when it comes to access to gender specific spaces, including bathrooms and locker rooms. There is currently a disagreement among federal agencies, the courts, and the legislature regarding the protection gender identity should receive in the law. The difference of opinion among the various branches of the government equates to problems for schools that are trying to navigate this area of the law. …

Campus Misconduct, Sexual Harm And Appropriate Process: The Essential Sexuality Of It All, Katharine Baker

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Women, Migration, And Prostitution In Europe: Not A Sex Work Story, Anna Zobnina

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Campus Misconduct, Sexual Harm And Appropriate Process: The Essential Sexuality Of It All, Katharine K. Baker

Katharine K. Baker

No abstract provided.