Law and Gender Commons^™

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 …

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

Working Paper Series

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, …

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.

Clinton, Ginsburg, And Centrist Federalism, Russell A. Miller

Scholarly Articles

Politics' and pathology have converged to heighten speculation that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's tenure on the Supreme Court is nearing its end. Even if the imminence of her retirement is greatly exaggerated, the time to reflect on Justice Ginsburg's lasting contribution to American constitutional law has arrived. Justice Ginsburg is best known for her long campaign to promote gender equality. Her successful advocacy on that issue before the Supreme Court throughout the 1970s led President Clinton to conclude, when announcing her nomination to fill Justice Byron White's vacated seat on the high court, that she is to the women's movement …

Converging Queer And Feminist Legal Theories: Family Feuds And Family Ties, Elaine Craig

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The notion that queer theory and feminism are inevitably in tension with one another has been well developed both by queer and feminist theorists. Queer theorists have critiqued feminist theories for being anti-sex, overly moralistic, essentialist, and statist. Feminist theorists have rejected queer theory as being un-critically pro-sex and dangerously protective of the private sphere. Unfortunately these reductionist accounts of what constitutes a plethora of diverse, eclectic and overlapping theoretical approaches to issues of sex, gender, and sexuality, often fail to account for the circumstances where these methodological approaches converge on legal projects aimed at advancing the complex justice interests …

Shift Happens: The U.S. Supreme Court's Shifting Antidiscrimination Rhetoric, Theresa M. Beiner

Faculty Scholarship

The United States Supreme Court’s discourse on discrimination affects how fundamental civil rights - such as the right to be free from gender and race discrimination - are adjudicated and conceptualized in this country. Shortly after Congress passed Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Court established precedent that assumed discrimination, absent some other compelling explanation for employer conduct. While the Court was more reluctant to presume such discrimination by governmental actors, it was deferent to Congress’s ability to set standards that would presume discrimination. Over time, however, that presumption and the Court’s deference to Congress has …

Converging Queer And Feminist Legal Theories: Family Feuds And Family Ties, Elaine Craig

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The notion that queer theory and feminism are inevitably in tension with one another has been well developed both by queer and feminist theorists. Queer theorists have critiqued feminist theories for being anti-sex, overly moralistic, essentialist, and statist. Feminist theorists have rejected queer theory as being un-critically pro-sex and dangerously protective of the private sphere. Unfortunately these reductionist accounts of what constitutes a plethora of diverse, eclectic and overlapping theoretical approaches to issues of sex, gender, and sexuality, often fail to account for the circumstances where these methodological approaches converge on legal projects aimed at advancing the complex justice interests …

It's The Hard Luck Life: Women's Moral Luck And Eucatastrophe In Child Custody Allocation, Lolita Buckner Inniss

Publications

No abstract provided.

Close Encounters Of Three Kinds: On Teaching Dominance Feminism And Intersectionality, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw

Faculty Scholarship

I am pleased to be a part of this symposium honoring Catharine MacKinnon's groundbreaking work as a feminist theorist, legal advocate, and global activist. This invitation not only presents the opportunity to examine the interface between dominance theory and intersectionality, but also the occasion to delve further into the vexed rhetorical politics surrounding feminism and antiracism.

By now the fact that there has been a contested relationship between antiracism and feminism is almost axiomatic.1 Yet as with most things that have become matters of common knowledge, there is a risk that generalizations can metastasize into hardened conclusions that obscure rather …

Converging Trajectories: Interest Convergence, Justice Kennedy, And Jeannie Suk's "The Trajectory Of Trauma", Jennifer S. Hendricks

Publications

This essay responds to Jeannie Suk's recent article in the Columbia Law Review, The Trajectory of Trauma: Bodies and Minds of Abortion Discourse. Suk argues that feminists are responsible for legitimizing a paternalistic attitude towards women that came home to roost in Gonzales v. Carhart. This essay argues that Suk's critique of feminist paternalism needs to be supplemented with a discussion of traditional paternalism and its influence on how feminist advocacy enters the law. In particular, it suggests that Derrick Bell's theory of interest convergence provides a useful framework for understanding the cultural, legal, and rhetorical evidence adduced …

Inter-American System, Claudia Martin

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Inter-American System, Diego Rodriguez-Pinzon

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Negotiating The Situation: The Reasonable Person In Context, Lu-In Wang

Articles

This Essay argues that our understanding of the reasonable person in economic transactions should take into account an individual’s race, gender, or other group-based identity characteristics - not necessarily because persons differ on account of those characteristics, but because of how those characteristics influence the situations a person must negotiate. That is, individuals’ social identities constitute features not just of themselves, but also of the situations they inhabit. In economic transactions that involve social interaction, such as face-to-face negotiations, the actor’s race, gender, or other social identity can affect both an individual actor and those who interact with him or …

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 …