Law and Gender Commons^™

Shades Of Life In Indian Abortion Law, Gauri Pillai

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This case comment analyses the recent Kerala High Court decision in Cry of Life Society v Union of India, where a petition was filed to declare India's law on abortion unconstitutional for violating the right to life of the foetus. The High Court dismissed the petition, upholding the constitutionality of the legislation as protecting women's right to life. The author discusses the High Court's order, narrowing in on the right to life argument used by the Court, and the right to life argument that the Court missed. This analysis distills and responds to the 'shades of life' underlying abortion law …

A Continuing Constitutional Conversation: Locating Nitisha, Gauri Pillai

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In April 2021, the Supreme Court of India decided Nitisha v Union of India, holding that the gender neutral hiring procedure adopted by the Indian Army indirectly discriminated against women officers by disproportionately excluding them from promotion. This effect was experienced due to systemic discrimination against women built into the appointment criteria. To redress systemic discrimination, the State was required not only to abstain from direct or indirect discrimination but also to positively act to bring in structural change. Nitisha makes significant contributions to developing the constitutional understanding of non-discrimination. It identifies the essential nature of discrimination as systemic rather …

Mary Lou Graves, Nolen Breedlove, And The Nineteenth Amendment, Ellen D. Katz

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This close examination of two cases is part of a larger ongoing project to provide a distinct account of the Nineteenth Amendment. In 1921, the Alabama Supreme Court held the Nineteenth Amendment required that any poll tax be imposed equally on men and women. Sixteen years later, the Supreme Court disagreed. Juxtaposing these two cases, and telling their story in rich context, captures my larger claim that—contrary to the general understanding in the scholarly literature—the Nineteenth Amendment was deliberately crafted as a highly circumscribed measure that would eliminate only the exclusively male franchise while serving steadfastly to preserve and promote …

Bostock: An Inevitable Guarantee Of Heightened Scrutiny For Sexual Orientation And Transgender Classifications, Kaleb Byars

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n June 2020, the Supreme Court decided Bostock v. Clayton County. In Bostock, the Court held that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and transgender status per se constitutes discrimination "because of sex" for purposes of Title VIL But Bostock inspires the question of whether its holding and reasoning apply in other contexts, including the Equal Protection Clause context. While the Supreme Court has held intermediate scrutiny applies to sex classifications analyzed under the Equal Protection Clause, the Court has yet to elucidate the level of scrutiny that applies to LGBTQ classifications. Meanwhile, state and federal courts …

Critical Tax Theory: Insights From The Us And Opportunities For All, Anthony C. Infanti, Bridget J. Crawford

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At a moment when Australia -- and the world -- finds itself at a "critical juncture" as it reckons with a global pandemic as well as the inequalities that COVID-19 has laid bare, voicing -- and listening to -- critical tax perspectives has become more vital than ever. The economic impact of COVID-19 has precipitated talk of tax reform as nations consider how to pay for aid distributed during the pandemic and how to restart their economies. But more than just a time of crisis, the pandemic can be seen as an unexpected opportunity to break with a past plagued …

When Teachers Misgender: The Free Speech Claims Of Public School Teachers, Caroline Mala Corbin

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No abstract provided.

The New Abortion Battleground, David S. Cohen, Greer Donley, Rachel Rebouché

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This Article examines the paradigm shift that is occurring now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade. Returning abortion law to the states has spawned perplexing legal conflicts across state borders and between states and the federal government. This article emphasizes how these issues intersect with innovations in the delivery of abortion, which can now occur entirely online and transcend state boundaries. The interjurisdictional abortion wars are coming, and this Article is the first to provide the roadmap for the immediate aftermath of Roe’s reversal and what lies ahead.

Judges and scholars, and most recently the Supreme …

Medication Abortion Exceptionalism, Greer Donley

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Restrictive state abortion laws garner a large amount of attention in the national conversation and legal scholarship, but less known is a federal abortion policy that significantly curtails access to early abortion in all fifty states. The policy limits the distribution of mifepristone, the only drug approved to terminate a pregnancy so long as it is within the first ten weeks. Unlike most drugs, which can be prescribed by licensed healthcare providers and picked up at most pharmacies, the Food and Drug Administration only allows certified providers to prescribe mifepristone, and only allows those providers to distribute the drug to …

Racialized, Judaized, Feminized: Identity-Based Attacks On The Press, Lili Levi

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No abstract provided.

Abortion, Pregnancy Loss, & Subjective Fetal Personhood, Greer Donley, Jill Wieber Lens

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Longstanding dogma dictates that recognizing pregnancy loss threatens abortion rights—acknowledging that miscarriage and stillbirth involve a loss, the theory goes, creates a slippery slope to fetal personhood. For decades, anti-abortion advocates have capitalized on this tension and weaponized the grief that can accompany pregnancy loss in their efforts to legislate personhood and end abortion rights. In response, abortion rights advocates have at times fought legislative efforts to support those experiencing pregnancy loss, and more recently, remained silent, alienating those who suffer a miscarriage or stillbirth.

This Article is the first to argue that this perceived tension can be reconciled through …

Re-Thinking Strategy After Roe, David S. Cohen, Greer Donley, Rachel Rebouché

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The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturns nearly fifty years of precedent and radically changes abortion law, throwing both sides of the debate into uncharted territory. This essay, published in the immediate aftermath of Dobbs, offers some initial thoughts about what the changed legal landscape means for abortion rights legal advocacy. Our focus in recent writings has been to identify concrete measures federal and state actors can take to secure abortion access after Dobbs. Here, we investigate a more overarching concern: what fundamental values and strategies should govern the abortion rights movement going …

Theory Matters—And Ten More Things I Learned From Martha Chamallas About Feminism, Law, And Gender, Deborah L. Brake

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This Festschrift article celebrates the scholarship of Martha Chamallas, Distinguished University Professor and Robert J. Lynn Chair in Law Emeritus of the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, and one of the most impactful scholars of feminist legal theory and employment discrimination of her generation. Mining the insights of Chamallas’s body of work, the article identifies ten core “lessons” relating to feminism and law drawn from her scholarship and academic career. It then weaves in summaries and synthesis of her published works with discussion of subsequent legal and social developments since their publication. These lessons (e.g., feminism is plural; …