Law and Gender Commons^™

Theorizing The More Responsive State: Transcending The National Boundaries Of Law, Laura Spitz

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Literature theorizing the state typically focuses on the nation-state as the locus of state power and authority, bounded by territorial and/or geopolitical borders. Within legal scholarship, an even narrower focus is common: the state as adjudicatory apparatus. Yet it may be more productive to shift the conceptual lens to embrace a wider and less vertical conception of state power. Thus, this chapter takes Fineman’s invitation to begin the task of theorizing a “more responsive state” in the US, by looking beyond the US, and putting two groups of scholars in conversation with one another: feminist legal theorists on the one …