Law Commons^™

Instructions In Inequality: Development, Human Rights, Capabilities, And Gender Violence In School, Erika George

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article argues that the international community's gender equality targets will not be realized by 2015 because the problems associated with sexual violence against girls in schools are situated at an intersection of contested conceptual divides between human rights (civil and political liberties) and development aims (social and economic needs). Cracks in the conceptual foundations of both the liberal and utilitarian theories of justice and equality, which support traditional human rights advocacy and economic development plans, respectively render each approach inadequate to fully identify and address the grave danger sexual violence and harassment in schools pose to educational equality. In …

Pornography As Trafficking, Catharine A. Mackinnon

Michigan Journal of International Law

In material reality, pornography is one way women and children are trafficked for sex. To make visual pornography, the bulk of the industry's products, real women and children, and some men, are rented out for use in commercial sex acts. In the resulting materials, these people are then conveyed and sold for a buyer's sexual use. Obscenity laws, the traditional legal approach to the problem, do not care about these realities at all. The morality of what is said and shown remains their focus and concern. The injuries inflicted on real people to make the materials, or because they are …

Domestic Violence And Mediation: Responding To The Challenges Of Crafting Effective Screens, Jane C. Murphy, Robert Rubinson

All Faculty Scholarship

Over the last two decades, mediation of family law cases has become well-established in American courts. As mediation has grown, experts have recognized that power imbalances between couples may interfere with mediation. This imbalance is particularly evident where one partner has been abusive to the other. Widespread consensus has developed that decisions about whether mediation is appropriate are particularly crucial and delicate when domestic violence is present. Despite this consensus, there is evidence that courts are still ordering couples who have experienced domestic violence to mediate their family law disputes with little or not particularized examination of the couples' circumstances. …

Legal Images Of Fatherhood: Welfare Reform, Child Support Enforcement, And Fatherless Children, Jane C. Murphy

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article analyzes the issue of paternity disestablishment, an issue courts and legislatures have been struggling with over the last several years. For a variety of reasons explored in this Article, an increasing number of fathers have filed requests to set aside paternity orders seeking to be relieved of the legal obligations of fatherhood. As a result families have been destabilized and children are becoming fatherless. The implications for the future of the family are profound. Although some scholars have examined this phenomenon, none have addressed the link between paternity disestablishment and welfare reform.

This Article explores the law's evolving …