Jurisprudence Commons^™

Interview With Professor Martha Albertson Fineman, Linnéa Wegerstad, Niklas Selberg

Linnéa Wegerstad

No abstract provided.

Nordisk Workshop I Straffrätt, Helsingfors 2011, Linnéa Wegerstad

Linnéa Wegerstad

Sexualbrottens sexualitet: Hur konstrueras ett ofredande?

Requirements Of A Valid Islamic Marriage Vis-À-Vis Requirements Of A Valid Customary Marriage In Nigeria, Olanike Sekinat Odewale Mrs

Olanike Sekinat Adelakun

Interview With Professor Martha Albertson Fineman, Linnéa Wegerstad, Niklas Selberg

Niklas Selberg

No abstract provided.

The Case For Repeal Of India's Sodomy Law, Yuvraj Joshi

Yuvraj Joshi

This Article surveys some of the arguments for and against the repeal of India’s sodomy law. The first part analyses s.377 of the Indian Penal Code and considers its consequences for India's gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, hijra and kothi persons. The second part provides an overview of the various theoretical and political positions taken in the sodomy law debate. The third part examines the rights-based arguments that have been made in support of repealing or reading down s.377, and the feminist and queer critiques of these arguments. The fourth part considers the arguments against the repeal that have been put …

Comment On James Boyd White's Book "Living Speech" (Princeton 2006), Yofi Tirosh

Yofi Tirosh

Professor White introduces a new way for thinking about speech; a new measure for assessing it. He invites us to use speech carefully and responsibly, in what he calls “living speech.” Caring about the value of speech is not merely an aesthetic endeavor. As meaning making creatures, as “centers of meaning,” we should know how to recognize the speech that is essential to our humanness. Because living speech is “what enables any of us to be a person in the first place” (16).

How can we recognize living speech? The short answer that White gives us, which is indeed poetic …

A Name Of One's Own: Gender And Symbolic Legal Personhood In The European Court Of Human Rights, Yofi Tirosh

Yofi Tirosh

Legal regulation of surnames provides a fascinating venue for examining how women negotiate their interests of autonomy and of stable personhood vis a vis a patriarchal naming structure. This is a study of 25 years of adjudication of surnames and personal status at the European Court of Human Rights. It explores the intricate ways in which legal norms governing surnames (and their judicial interpretation) sustain, shape, and reify social institutions such as gender, family, and citizenship.

As a pan European court, the adjudication of the ECHR operates within the framework of human rights. The universal characteristics of human rights principles …

Collaborative Community-Based Natural Resource Management, Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

This article analyzes the importance of increasing civil society actor access to and influence in international legal and policy negotiations, drawing from academic scholarship on governance, conservation and environmental sustainability, natural resource management, observations of civil society actors, and the authors’ experiences as participants in international environmental negotiations.

Teaching The Tensions, Angela P. Harris

Angela P Harris

No abstract provided.

Gay And Lesbian Elders: History, Law, And Identity Politics In The United States, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

The approximately two million gay and lesbian elders in the United States are an underserved and understudied population. At a time when gay men and lesbians enjoy an unprecedented degree of social acceptance and legal protection, many elders face the daily challenges of aging isolated from family, detached from the larger gay and lesbian community, and ignored by mainstream aging initiatives. Drawing on materials from law, history, and social theory, this book integrates practical proposals for reform with larger issues of sexuality and identity. Beginning with a summary of existing demographic data and offering a historical overview of pre-Stonewall views …

How Embedded Knowledge Structures Affect Judicial Decision Making: An Analysis Of Metaphor, Narrative, And Imagination In Child Custody Disputes, Linda L. Berger

Linda L. Berger

We live in a time of radically changing conceptions of family and of the relationships possible between children and parents. Though undergoing “a sea-change,” family law remains tethered to culturally embedded stories and symbols. While so bound, family law will fail to serve individual families and a society whose family structures diverge sharply by education, race, class, and income. This article advances a critical rhetorical analysis of the interaction of metaphor and narrative within the specific context of child custody disputes. Its goal is to begin to examine how these embedded knowledge structures affect judicial decision making generally; more specifically, …

Legal Storytelling: The Theory And The Practice - Reflective Writing Across The Curriculum, Nancy Levit

Nancy Levit

This article concentrates on the theory of narrative or storytelling and addresses the reasons it is vital to encourage in law schools in non-clinical or primarily doctrinal courses. Section I traces the advent of storytelling in legal theory and practice: while lawyers have long recognized that part of their job is to tell their clients' stories, the legal academy was, for many years, resistant to narrative methodologies. Section II examines the current applications of Writing Across the Curriculum in law schools. Most exploratory writing tasks in law school come in clinical courses, although a few adventurous professors are adding reflective …

Theorizing And Litigating The Rights Of Sexual Minorities, Nancy Levit

Nancy Levit

One of the best measures of a society is how it treats its vulnerable groups. A central idea in Professor Martha Nussbaum's writings is that all humans "are of equal dignity and worth, no matter where they are situated in society." The strategic challenge in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) rights litigation is how to get courts to see sexual minorities as people worthy of equal dignity and respect. This article focuses on the roles of a positive emotion - love - and a procedural method of proof - science - in the shaping of laws defining the rights …

What Is Due To Others: Speaking And Signifying Subject(S) Of Rape Law, Penelope Pether

Penelope J Pether

Australian journalist Paul Sheehan's representation of the alleged and convicted immigrant Muslim/Arab rapists he demonises in Girls Like You, like his representation of the rape survivors in that text, has much to tell us about the law's production of rape law's speaking and signifying subjects, "real rape" victims and survivors, false accusers and perpetrators. This article uses a variety of texts, including Girls Like You, recent Australian rape law jurisprudence and legislative reform, texts involving two controversial recent US rape cases — one from Maryland and one from Nebraska — and a recent UK study on attrition in rape prosecutions, …

Paper Till Nordisk Konferens Om Kön Och Rätt, Tromsø 2009, Linnéa Wegerstad

Linnéa Wegerstad

Sexualbrottens sexualitet(er) - om den straffrättsliga konstruktionen av sexualitet

Under de senaste trettio åren har sexualbrottslagstiftningen varit föremål för omfattande kritik, särskilt utifrån feministiska argument. Dessa argument, bestående i att sexuellt våld betraktas som ett uttryck för bristande jämställdhet mellan könen, har tagits upp i flera statliga utredningar. I första hand har utformningen av våldtäktsparagrafen diskuterats och ifrågasatts. Dock har förekomsten av en särskild brottskategori benämnd sexualbrott inte utmanats nämnvärt. Genom att ta avstamp i den enkla frågan ”Vad är ett sexualbrott?” syftar mitt avhandlingsprojekt till att utforska den straffrättsliga konstruktionen av sexualitet.

Fokus för projektet är den straffrättsliga gränsdragningen …

Happy Law Students, Happy Lawyers, Nancy Levit, Douglas Linder

Nancy Levit

This article draws on research into the science of happiness and asks a series of interrelated questions: Whether law schools can make law students happier? Whether making happier law students will translate into making them happier lawyers, and the accompanying question of whether making law students happier would create better lawyers? After covering the limitations of genetic determinants of happiness and happiness set-points, the article addresses those qualities that happiness research indicates are paramount in creating satisfaction: control, connections, creative challenge (or flow), and comparisons (preferably downward). Those qualities are then applied to legal education, while addressing the larger philosophical …

Mega-Cases, Diversity, And The Elusive Goal Of Workplace Reform, Nancy Levit

Nancy Levit

Employment discrimination class action suits are part of a new wave of structural reform litigation. Like their predecessors - the school desegregation cases in the 1950s, the housing and voting inequalities cases in the 1960s, prison conditions suits in the 1970s, and environmental lawsuits since then - these are systemic challenges to major institutions affecting large segments of the public. This article explores the effectiveness of various employment discrimination remedies in reforming workplace cultures, promoting corporate accountability, and implementing real diversity.

Reviewing the architecture and aftermath of consent decrees in five major employment discrimination cases - the cases against Shoney's, …

La Cesión De Derechos En El Código Civil Peruano, Edward Ivan Cueva

Edward Ivan Cueva

La Cesión de Derechos en el Código Civil Peruano

Algunos Apuntes En Torno A La Prescripción Extintiva Y La Caducidad, Edward Ivan Cueva

Edward Ivan Cueva

No abstract provided.

Calling For Stories, Nancy Levit, Allen Rostron

Nancy Levit

Storytelling is a fundamental part of legal practice, teaching, and thought. Telling stories as a method of practicing law reaches back to the days of the classical Greek orators. Before legal education became an academic matter, the apprenticeship system for training lawyers consisted of mentoring and telling war stories. As the law and literature movement evolved, it sorted itself into three strands: law in literature, law as literature, and storytelling. The storytelling branch blossomed.

Over the last few decades, storytelling became a subject of enormous interest and controversy within the world of legal scholarship. Law review articles appeared in the …

From "The Art Of War" To "Being Peace": Mindfulness And Community Lawyering In A Neoliberal Age, Angela P. Harris, Jeffrey Selbin, Margaretta Lin

Angela P Harris

No abstract provided.

Weighty Speech: Addressing Body Size In The Classroom, Yofi Tirosh

Yofi Tirosh

The politics of body size has been the topic of intriguing feminist work. Although in my view this issue is still undertheorized, I have long sought for a way to bring what does exist in the literature into my academic activities. The opportunity arose when, as a graduate student at the University of Michigan in 2001, I taught an undergraduate mini-course in the women's studies program, which I named Weight as a Cultural Question.

This essay discusses two pedagogical challenges I faced while teaching a class. Both questions deal with the extent to which it is productive to talk about …

Confronting Conventional Thinking: The Heuristics Problem In Feminist Legal Theory, Nancy Levit

Nancy Levit

The thesis of The Heuristics Problem is that the societal problems about which identity theorists are most concerned often spring from and are reinforced by thinking riddled with heuristic errors. This article first investigates the ways heuristic errors influence popular perceptions of feminist issues. Feminists and critical race theorists have explored the cognitive bias of stereotyping, but have not examined the ways probabilistic errors can have gendered consequences. Second, The Heuristics Problem traces some of the ways cognitive errors have influenced the development of laws relating to gender issues. It explores instances in judicial decisions in which courts commit heuristic …

Embracing Segregation: The Jurisprudence Of Choice And Diversity In Race And Sex Separatism In Schools, Nancy Levit

Nancy Levit

Fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, segregation based on race and sex is sweeping the nation's educational systems. Courts are rapidly dismantling desegregation orders, and when those desegregation orders end, school districts racially resegregate. At precisely the same time this end to racial desegregation is occurring, the government is beginning to sponsor sex segregation in schools as well. The No Child Left Behind Act provides over $400 million in federal funds for experiments in education, such as single-sex schools and classes. Embracing Segregation draws connections between the end of racial desegregation and the beginning of government-sponsored sex segregation …

Manual De Derecho Procesal Civil, Edward Ivan Cueva

Edward Ivan Cueva

No abstract provided.

Science, Identity, And The Construction Of The Gay Political Narrative, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

This Article contends that the current debate over gay civil rights is, at base, a dispute over the nature of same-sex desire. Pro-gay forces advocate an ethnic or identity model of homosexuality based on the conviction that sexual orientation is an immutable, unchosen, and benign characteristic. The assertion that, in essence, gays are "born that way," has produced a gay political narrative that rests on claims of shared identity (i.e., homosexuals are a blameless minority) and arguments of equivalence (i.e., as a blameless minority, homosexuals deserve equal treatment and protection against discrimination). The pro-family counter-narrative is based on a behavioral …

Subject Unrest, Angela Harris, Frank Valdes, Jerome Culp

Angela P Harris

No abstract provided.

Gender, Genes, And Choice: A Comparative Look At Feminism, Evolution, And Economics, Katharine K. Baker

Katharine K. Baker

Theorizing The Connections Among Systems Of Subordination, Nancy Levit

Nancy Levit

Theorizing the Connections Among Systems of Subordination introduces a symposium that addresses issues on the leading edge of identity theory, race theory, and critical social theory. It explains the concepts of anti-essentialism, intersectionality, multiple consciousness, multi-dimensionality, and post-intersectionality. It investigates the ways specific types of oppression - such as racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia - support and feed off of one another. It explores the dynamics of subordination that make different forms of subordination connected to each other - the mechanisms by which subordinating systems buttress each other. Where one sees sexism, one frequently can find racism; where classism exists, …

Teoría General De La Prueba Judicial, Edward Ivan Cueva

Edward Ivan Cueva

No abstract provided.