Law and Gender Commons^™

Constitutional Law—State Employees Have Private Cause Of Action Against Employers Under Family And Medical Leave Act—Nevada Department Of Human Resources V. Hibbs, 538 U.S. 721 (2003)., Gabriel H. Teninbaum

ExpressO

The Eleventh Amendment of the United States Constitution provides that non-consenting states are not subject to suit in federal court. Congress may, however, abrogate the states’ sovereign immunity by enacting legislation to enforce the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment. In Nevada Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs, the Supreme Court of the United States considered whether Congress acted within its constitutional authority by abrogating sovereign immunity under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which allows private causes of action against state employers to enforce the FMLA’s family-leave provision. The Court held abrogation was proper under the FMLA and state …

The Best Interest Standard: How Broad Judicial Discretion And Influences Of Social And Political Suggestion Have Led To An Abandonment Of The Rule’S Primary Purpose In Child Custody Decisions, Lakeisha J. Johnson

ExpressO

The vital questions in child custody disputes all concern that which is in the best interest of the child. Historically, interpretations of the “best interest” standard have been founded upon presumptions steeped in the notion of natural rights and duties based largely upon a mix of scientific and subjective conclusions regarding gender-based parenting roles and the need to sustain them. My research demonstrates that, as courts attempt to avoid the decisions of the past and submit to the societal will of the present, the modern application of the “best interest of the child” standard has led unexpectedly to an abandonment …

Toward A National Research Agenda On Violence Against Women: Continuing The Dialogue On Research And Practice [Part Two], Carol E. Jordan

Office for Policy Studies on Violence Against Women Publications

No abstract provided.

Intimate Partner Violence And The Justice System: An Examination Of The Interface, Carol E. Jordan

Office for Policy Studies on Violence Against Women Publications

Women entering the court system face a challenging experience, in part, because a courtroom can be an intimidating and difficult place for any person, and in part because women victimized by crimes in which the offender is known to them face distinctive difficulties when they seek the court’s remedies. The interface is also made more challenging for women as the literature offers disparate findings as to the efficacy of criminal justice responses and civil remedies. This article briefly explores the unique characteristics of intimate partner violence cases that influence the interface of these victims with the court system.Areviewis provided of …

Toward A National Research Agenda On Violence Against Women: Continuing The Dialogue On Research And Practice [Part One], Carol E. Jordan

Office for Policy Studies on Violence Against Women Publications

No abstract provided.

Twin Pillars Of Judicial Philosophy: The Impact Of The Ginsburg Collegiality And Gender Discrimination Principles On Her Separate Opinions Involving Gender Discrimination, Rebecca L. Barnhart, Deborah Zalesne

City University of New York Law Review

No abstract provided.

Performing Racial And Ethnic Identity: Discrimination By Proxy And The Future Of Title Vii, Camille Gear Rich

Camille Gear Rich

No abstract provided.

Designing A Pre-Apprenticeship Model For Women Entering And Succeeding In The Construction Trades, Susan Moir Scd, Elizabeth Skidmore

Labor Studies Faculty Publication Series

It has been over a quarter century since the Carter administration set a goal of increasing the number of women working in the construction industry to 6.9% of the workforce. It is often overlooked that the stated intent of this policy initiative was for women to make up 25% of construction workers by the year 2000 (Eisenberg, 1999). While some isolated projects have met or exceeded the 6.9% target, the number of women working in the construction trades nationally increased in the first few years after 1979, but leveled off at under 3% in the early 1980’s and has stayed …

Article 81 Enactment And Its Impact On The Aging Women Population, Jennifer G. Flannery

Buffalo Women's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Double Edged Sword: An Examination Of The Global Positioning System, Enhanced 911, And The Internet And Their Relationships To The Lives Of Domestic Violence Victims And Their Abusers, Laura Silverstein

Buffalo Women's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Jurisprudence: Due Process Concerns For The Underrepresented Domestic Violence Victim, Rebecca Fialk, Tamara Mitchel

Buffalo Women's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Beecher Sisters As Nineteenth-Century Feminist Icons Of The Sameness-Difference Debate, Tracy A. Thomas

Akron Law Faculty Publications

This essay reviews the recent book, The Beecher Sisters by Barbara White, through the lens of feminist theory. It argues that each of the three great women chronicled in the book – Catharine Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Isabella Beecher Hooker – serve as icons for each of the distinct strands of modern feminist thought. Barbara White, a professor emeritus of women’s studies at the University of New Hampshire, has given the field of women’s legal history a boost with her interdisciplinary contribution to the social and legal history of women. In The Beecher Sisters, White introduces us to each …

The Beecher Sisters As Nineteenth-Century Feminist Icons Of The Sameness-Difference Debate, Tracy A. Thomas

Tracy A. Thomas

This essay reviews the recent book, The Beecher Sisters by Barbara White, through the lens of feminist theory. It argues that each of the three great women chronicled in the book – Catharine Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Isabella Beecher Hooker – serve as icons for each of the distinct strands of modern feminist thought. Barbara White, a professor emeritus of women’s studies at the University of New Hampshire, has given the field of women’s legal history a boost with her interdisciplinary contribution to the social and legal history of women. In The Beecher Sisters, White introduces us to each …

Paradoxes Of Health And Equality: When A Boy Becomes A Girl, Noa Ben-Asher

ExpressO

This paper is about an unusual child custody dispute between the parents of a six-year-old child and the child welfare services of Franklin County, Ohio. The conflict emerged when the child’s parents complied with their male child’s professed desire to be treated as a girl by attempting to enroll the child in the first grade as a girl. The paper treats this case as an exemplary test-case of contemporary co-dependence between scientific-medical discourse and liberal-rights discourse. The paper analyzes the positions of the two sides of the custody dispute according to the classic modern distinction between mind and body. On …

The Duchess' Privy Chamber: Early Modern Marriage Law And The Eviction Of Women From The Public Sphere In John Webster's "Duchess Of Malfi" , Carla Spivack

ExpressO

The Duchess’ Privy Chamber: Early Modern Marriage Law and the Eviction of Women from the Public Sphere in The Duchess of Malfi (argues that the symbolism in Webster’s Duchess of Malfi systemically undoes the iconography of Elizabethan power; that images taken from the legal descriptions of marriage work in the play to replace the image of woman as political ruler in the public sphere with woman as wife sequestered in the private sphere).

Textual Harassment: A New Historicist Reappraisal With Gender In Mind, Hila Keren

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

The Alley Behind First Street, Northeast: Criminal Abortion In The Nation's Capital 1873-1973, Douglas R. Miller

ExpressO

The thirtieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade found our country no less divided over abortion than it was during the era of its prohibition. As the bitter struggle over judicial nominations throughout the present administration suggests, abortion’s future remains at the forefront of American political debate.

In their push for increased limitations, abortion opponents generally overlook the historical consequences of prohibition. Abortion rights proponents often invoke history in their opposition to new restrictions, but tend to do so superficially, and only in a manner that supports their position.

This article attempts a more complex study of criminal abortion’s legal and …

Achieving Batterer Accountability In The Child Protection System, Leigh Goodmark

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

“Hard Work To Make Ends Meet”: Voices Of Maine’S Working-Class Women In The Late Nineteenth Century, Carol Toner

Maine History

In 1887 the Maine legislature responded to pressures from the Knights of Labor and an increasingly agitated industrial labor force by instituting the Bureau of Industrial and Labor Statistics. The bureau’s job was to examine the state's workplaces and provide information to guide the legislature in making labor law. Reflecting the ideals of the popular Knights of Labor, the bureau initially focused its investigations on female as well as male workers. When the bureau requested that workers fill out questionnaires about their work, hundreds of women responded, leaving a rare first-hand account of women’s attitudes toward their working and living …

Textual Harassment: A New Historicist Reappraisal, Hila Keren

ExpressO

This year marks the four hundredth anniversary of the Parol Evidence Rule, the rule that dictates that the interpretation of a written contract should be determined solely according to its text and not influenced by prior contradictory external information. This article uses the occasion to offer a fresh interdisciplinary view of the Rule. The analysis presents a unique contribution to the heated debate regarding the desired levels of formalism and textualism in present-day contract law, by using New-Historicist tools.

Unexplored aspects of the roots of the Rule are illuminated through an in-depth investigation of the first case of the contractual …

From Petticoats To Briefs: History Of Women At The University Of Missouri-Kansas City School Of Law, Robert C. Downs, Brooke Grant, Elizabeth Sterling

Faculty Works

The story of women in American society has largely been defined and recorded by men and the institutions that men have dominated for most of the past two hundred-odd years. Women have been denied access to education, employment, political power and other benefits of social intercourse by exclusion, intimidation, ridicule and patronization. The experience of women in law school is one part of that experience. Law school is an arduous undertaking whether one is male or female. Gaining admission to modern law schools requires talent and demonstrated academic performance in a competitive environment. But in the nineteenth century, the foremost …

“Which One Of You Did It?” Criminal Liability For “Causing Or Allowing” The Death Of A Child, Lissa Griffin

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

No More Waiting For Revolution: Japan Should Take Positive Action To Implement The Convention On The Elimination Of All Forms Of Discrimination Against Women, M. Christina Luera

Washington International Law Journal

In 1985, Japan ratified the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women ("CEDAW"), which requires the eradication of all legal, political, social and cultural structures that prevent women from enjoying full equality with men. Under CEDAW, Japan is legally obligated to strive for actual, not just formal, equality between men and women. CEDAW also requires States Parties to take positive action to achieve gender equality. Despite the Japanese government's apparent efforts to comply with CEDAW over the last two decades, gender equality remains a distant reality. On July 8, 2003, the Committee on the …

Profitable Proposals: Explaining And Addressing The Mail-Order Bride Industry Through International Human Rights Law, Vanessa Brocato

San Diego International Law Journal

This Article looks at the MOBI in the United States through the lens of international human rights. Part II will describe the MOBI. Part III will evaluate the MOBI within an international human rights framework. Part IV will examine current U.S. legislation relating to the MOBI. Part V suggests strategies for addressing the MOBI. Nations will not be able to solve the problem independently because the MOBI is a transnational phenomenon. Conducting a critique of marriage brokers in a human rights context can help place problems caused by the MOBI at the forefront of international debate. Applying current human rights …

Tribal Jurisdiction And Domestic Violence: The Need For Non-Indian Accountability On The Reservation, Amy Radon

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Domestic violence is a severe problem for tribes across the nation, as their female members are victimized at highly disproportionate rates compared to members of dominant society. Many tribes have sophisticated domestic violence codes to combat the problem, but they are powerless to prosecute the majority of those who will abuse Indian women: non-Indian men. In 1978 the Supreme Court stripped tribes of their power to prosecute non-Indians in criminal matters, which not only damaged tribal sovereignty but also meant the difference between a life free from abuse and one with constant fear, intimidation, and pain for Indian women.

The …

Untying The Knot: An Analysis Of The English Divorce And Matrimonial Causes Court Records, 1858-1966, Danaya C. Wright

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Are Single-Sex Schools Inherently Unequal?, Michael Heise

Michigan Law Review

In chess, a "fork" occurs when a player, in a single move, attacks two or more of an opponent's pieces simultaneously, forcing a necessary choice between unappealing outcomes. Similar to the potentially devastating chess move, single-sex public schooling forks many constitutionalists and feminists. Constitutionalists are forced to reexamine the "separate but equal" doctrine's efficacy, this time through the prism of gender. Although the doctrine - forged in the crucible of race and overcome in the monumental triumph we know as Brown v. Board of Education - rested dormant for generations, persistent (and increasing) single-sex education options are forcing scholars to …

If Women Don't Ask: Implications For Bargaining Encounters, The Equal Pay Act, And Title Vii, Charles B. Craver

Michigan Law Review

Last spring, Jennifer and Richard graduated from the same law school with similar backgrounds. Both were offered associate positions with the same law firm and a $75,000 starting salary. Jennifer enthusiastically accepted the firm's offer, but Richard was hesitant. He informed the hiring partner that comparable firms in this area were paying new associates $80,000 per year. The partner offered Richard a starting salary of $80,000, which he accepted. Felicia and Harold manage similar departments for an e-commerce business. They have similar backgrounds, and have been with this firm for the same number of years. When Harold meets with the …

Battered Non-Wives And Unequal Protection Order Coverage: A Call For Reform, Judith A. Smith

ExpressO

Civil protection orders are effective, yet under-used weapons in the battle against domestic violence. In New York and in other states as well, civil orders of protection provide unique benefits and remedies to domestic violence victims that are in addition to, or that are in place of, the benefits the criminal system offers. They are under used in part because they are not available to all victims. In every state, the availability of civil protection orders is limited to those victims who are in certain defined relationships. While many states have expanded their definitions of the types of relationships that …

International Child Abductions: The Challenges Facing America , Charles F. Hall

ExpressO

International child abductors often escape domestic law enforcement and disappear without consequence or resolution. International child abductions occur too frequently; in the United States alone, the number of children abducted abroad every year has risen to over 1,000. Currently, 11,000 American children live abroad with their abductors. These abductions occur despite international treaties and the Congressional resolutions that have significantly stiffened the penalties for those caught. Effectively combating international child abductions requires drafting resolutions that are acceptable across the diverse societies and cultures of the international community. Without such resolutions to fill the gaps of current treaties this problem will …