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Feminism

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Articles 31 - 54 of 54

Full-Text Articles in Legal History

Introduction (Excerpt) In Justice Bertha Wilson: One Woman's Difference, Kim Brooks Nov 2009

Introduction (Excerpt) In Justice Bertha Wilson: One Woman's Difference, Kim Brooks

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Bertha Wilson was the first woman to be appointed to Canada's Supreme Court in 1982. Her appointment capped off a career of firsts. She had been the first woman lawyer and partner at a prominent Toronto law firm and the first woman appointed to the Ontario Court of Appeal. Her career and passing in 2007 have provoked reflection on her contributions to Canadian society and caused many to reflect on the question she herself posed: what difference do women judges make? What follows is an excerpt from the introduction to the book. The chapters of the book explore a broad …


The Trial Of Susan B. Anthony For Illegal Voting, Douglas O. Linder Jan 2007

The Trial Of Susan B. Anthony For Illegal Voting, Douglas O. Linder

Faculty Works

More than any other woman of her generation, Susan B. Anthony saw that all of the legal disabilities faced by American women owed their existence to the simple fact that women lacked the vote. When Anthony, at age 32, attended her first woman's rights convention in Syracuse in 1852, she declared that the right which woman needed above every other, the one indeed which would secure to her all the others, was the right of suffrage. Anthony spent the next fifty-plus years of her life fighting for the right to vote. She would work tirelessly: giving speeches, petitioning Congress and …


The Feminist War On Crime, Aya Gruber Jan 2007

The Feminist War On Crime, Aya Gruber

Publications

One of the most celebrated successes of the feminist movement is its lasting impact on domestic violence criminal laws. Today, society has moved from discourse characterizing domestic abuse as legitimate or merely a private problem to a belief that battering is a heinous crime, more egregious than garden-variety assault. I know all too well how far the pendulum has swung, having practiced as a public defender in the District of Columbia domestic violence system. Day after day, prosecutors proceeded with cases against the wishes of victims, resulting in the mass incarceration of young black men. Could this have been the …


Book Review: Madam Secretary, Dru Stevenson Mar 2005

Book Review: Madam Secretary, Dru Stevenson

ExpressO

Review of Madeline Albright's Memoirs


Book Review: Decreeing Women's Equality: Using Women's History To Create Legal Parity, Denise D. J. Roy Jan 2003

Book Review: Decreeing Women's Equality: Using Women's History To Create Legal Parity, Denise D. J. Roy

Faculty Scholarship

This article critiques the feminist view Ute Gerhard offers in “Debating Women's Equality: Toward a Feminist Theory of Law from a European Perspective”. Throughout Debating Women's Equality, Gerhard appears to have three ambitious objectives in mind: (1) to decry the paucity of research into women's legal history while beginning to do the needed work, focusing primarily on Germany but also broadly exploring European trends, (2) to demonstrate that German/European women's legal history ultimately vindicates reliance on “equal rights” as a political strategy for women, and (3) to develop an understanding of legal equality that can serve as a meaningful tool …


A Brief History Of Gender Law Journals: The Heritage Of Myra Bradwell's Chicago Legal News, Richard H. Chused Jan 2003

A Brief History Of Gender Law Journals: The Heritage Of Myra Bradwell's Chicago Legal News, Richard H. Chused

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.


Because We Love You, Rosemary B. Quigley May 2000

Because We Love You, Rosemary B. Quigley

Michigan Law Review

I remember the impotence I felt on the eve of the Gulf War in January 1991. No one could have known at that moment what a brief conflict it would be. We had every reason to believe that the Middle East would be hurled into turmoil. And if protracted war ensued, a draft would surely follow. I watched my college boyfriend sink into despair, with the help of a Bob Mould CD, at the prospect of being called to give his life for his country. I remained uncharacteristically mute. In the face of this battle, our positions were too unequal …


Cracking Foundations As Feminist Method , Katharine T. Bartlett Jan 2000

Cracking Foundations As Feminist Method , Katharine T. Bartlett

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.


Cracking Foundations As Feminist Method , Katharine T. Bartlett Jan 2000

Cracking Foundations As Feminist Method , Katharine T. Bartlett

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.


History Unbecoming, Becoming History, Toni M. Massaro Jan 2000

History Unbecoming, Becoming History, Toni M. Massaro

Michigan Law Review

The last few decades have seen a torrent of legal commentary supporting gay equality and attacking the punishment, failure to protect, and refusal to affirm gay conduct and identity. William Eskridge, a prominent voice in this fin-de-siecle literature, now draws together and expands on his previous work in Gaylaw: Challenging the Apartheid of the Closet. Though far more successful in shaping the uses of the past than in showing the way to the future, the book instructs even where it fails. It augurs a century that could well witness the end of official discrimination against gay individuals, and the relegation …


Chapter 7 - Reflections On The Scholarship Of Elizabeth B. Clark, Kristin Olbertson, Carol Weisbrod, Christine Stansell, Martha Minow Jan 1998

Chapter 7 - Reflections On The Scholarship Of Elizabeth B. Clark, Kristin Olbertson, Carol Weisbrod, Christine Stansell, Martha Minow

Manuscript of Women, Church, and State: Religion and the Culture of Individual Rights in Nineteenth-Century America

Elizabeth Clark's essays on early nineteenth-century reform movements make a compelling case that abolitionists and feminists alike understood individual rights from a profoundly religious perspective. Clark also demonstrates how these reformers advocated the protection of so-called "natural rights" for enslaved African-Americans and white women in the vivid and fervently emotional language of evangelical revivalism. Broader cultural and intellectual trends of resistance to governmental and clerical authority, trends rooted in liberal and evangelical Protestantism, Clark argues, helped fuel attacks on slavery and gender inequality. Rejecting other historians' portrayals of the antebellum reformers as primarily secular in orientation, Clark makes the arresting, …


Injured Women Before Common Law Courts, 1860-1930, Margo Schlanger Jan 1998

Injured Women Before Common Law Courts, 1860-1930, Margo Schlanger

Articles

How did early American tort law treat women? How were they expected to behave, and how were others expected to behave towards them? What gender differences mattered, and how did courts deal with those differences? These are the issues this Article explores. My aim is to illuminate the common law of torts and its relation to and with ideas about gender difference, by focusing on three sets of cases involving injured women, spanning the time between approximately 1860 and 1930. My conclusions run counter to two approaches scholars have frequently taken in analyzing gender and the common law of torts. …


Straying From The Path Of The Law After One Hundred Years, The, Tracy E. Higgins Jan 1996

Straying From The Path Of The Law After One Hundred Years, The, Tracy E. Higgins

Faculty Scholarship

What common ground can be found between modern feminist legal theory and a century-old essay advocating understanding the law from the perspective of the "bad man"? The question admits of no simple answer. Feminists, including myself, might agree with some irony that "[i]f you want to know the law and nothing else, you must look at it as a bad man" but would add that this is precisely the problem. Of course, Holmes does not use the concept of the bad man in a feminist sense to suggest that the law empowers the bad man at the expense of women. …


Feminist Jurisprudence: Why Law Must Consider Women's Perspectives, Ann Juergens Jan 1991

Feminist Jurisprudence: Why Law Must Consider Women's Perspectives, Ann Juergens

Faculty Scholarship

A growing number of scholars are asking how the law would be different if it took women's points of view and experiences into account. Feminist Jurisprudence argues that we must look at the norms embedded in our legal system and rethink the law. It is about being inclusive of women, and of all people who differ from the norms of the law as it is today. The endeavor will necessarily shake up established relations between family, the workplace and the state. Lawyers, judges, and legislators should get ready for the changes.


Chapter 5 - Matrimonial Bonds: Slavery And Divorce In Nineteenth-Century America (Previously Published Article), Elizabeth B. Clark Apr 1990

Chapter 5 - Matrimonial Bonds: Slavery And Divorce In Nineteenth-Century America (Previously Published Article), Elizabeth B. Clark

Manuscript of Women, Church, and State: Religion and the Culture of Individual Rights in Nineteenth-Century America

In the covenant of marriage, woman is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master -- the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement. He has so framed the law of divorce . . . as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women -- the law, in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands.


Matrimonial Bonds: Slavery And Divorce In Nineteenth-Century America, Elizabeth B. Clark Apr 1990

Matrimonial Bonds: Slavery And Divorce In Nineteenth-Century America, Elizabeth B. Clark

Publications

In the covenant of marriage, woman is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master -- the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement. He has so framed the law of divorce . . . as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women -- the law, in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands.


Feminism's Search For The Feminine: Essentialism, Utopianism, And Community, Susan H. Williams Jan 1990

Feminism's Search For The Feminine: Essentialism, Utopianism, And Community, Susan H. Williams

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.


The Politics Of God And The Woman's Vote: Religion In The American Suffrage Movement, 1848-1895, Elizabeth B. Clark Oct 1989

The Politics Of God And The Woman's Vote: Religion In The American Suffrage Movement, 1848-1895, Elizabeth B. Clark

Publications

This thesis examines the role of religion— both liberal and evangelical Protestantism— in the development of a feminist political theory in America during the nineteenth century and how that feminist theory in turn helped to transform American liberalism. Chapter 1 looks for the genesis of women's rights language, not in the republican rhetoric of the Founding Fathers, but in the teachings of liberal Protestantism and its links with laissez-faire economic theory. The antebellum understanding of rights is shown to have encompassed social and civil rights alike, and to have arisen from a vision of the mutual benefits that derived from …


Chapter 4 - Self-Ownership And The Political Theory Of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (Previously Published Article), Elizabeth B. Clark Jan 1989

Chapter 4 - Self-Ownership And The Political Theory Of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (Previously Published Article), Elizabeth B. Clark

Manuscript of Women, Church, and State: Religion and the Culture of Individual Rights in Nineteenth-Century America

The emphasis on freedom or enslavement of the body, and the issues that sprang from that focus, were feminists' contribution to nineteenth-century American liberalism, as well as their link to radical thought. Elizabeth Cady Stanton drew arguments from the realm of political liberty and religious tolerance to make the case for choice in private life. But the vision of individual autonomy in sexual and domestic matters served also as the basis for her definition of citizenship and as a paradigm for relations among citizens and between citizens and the state. Self-ownership was the unifying theme that ran through Stanton's political …


Self-Ownership And The Political Theory Of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Elizabeth B. Clark Jan 1989

Self-Ownership And The Political Theory Of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Elizabeth B. Clark

Publications

The emphasis on freedom or enslavement of the body, and the issues that sprang from that focus, were feminists' contribution to nineteenth-century American liberalism, as well as their link to radical thought. Elizabeth Cady Stanton drew arguments from the realm of political liberty and religious tolerance to make the case for choice in private life. But the vision of individual autonomy in sexual and domestic matters served also as the basis for her definition of citizenship and as a paradigm for relations among citizens and between citizens and the state. Self-ownership was the unifying theme that ran through Stanton's political …


Chapter 3 - Religion, Rights And Difference In The Early Woman's Rights Movement (Previously Published Article), Elizabeth B. Clark Jan 1987

Chapter 3 - Religion, Rights And Difference In The Early Woman's Rights Movement (Previously Published Article), Elizabeth B. Clark

Manuscript of Women, Church, and State: Religion and the Culture of Individual Rights in Nineteenth-Century America

The meeting of feminists at Seneca Falls in July of 1848 marked the nominal beginning of the movement which in the nineteenth century was labeled "woman's rights." For us that term has become commonly interchangeable with "suffrage," and we often assume that "woman's rights" describes a seventy-odd year campaign to gain civil and political power and protection from a government which -- although it had perpetrated outrages against women and blacks -- had an unquestioned legitimacy as the guarantor and enforcer of rights.


Religion, Rights And Difference In The Early Woman's Rights Movement, Elizabeth B. Clark Jan 1987

Religion, Rights And Difference In The Early Woman's Rights Movement, Elizabeth B. Clark

Publications

The meeting of feminists at Seneca Falls in July of 1848 marked the nominal beginning of the movement which in the nineteenth century was labeled "woman's rights." For us that term has become commonly interchangeable with "suffrage," and we often assume that "woman's rights" describes a seventy-odd year campaign to gain civil and political power and protection from a government which -- although it had perpetrated outrages against women and blacks -- had an unquestioned legitimacy as the guarantor and enforcer of rights.


From False Paternalism To False Equality: Judicial Assaults On Feminist Community, Illinois 1869-1895, Frances Olsen Jun 1986

From False Paternalism To False Equality: Judicial Assaults On Feminist Community, Illinois 1869-1895, Frances Olsen

Michigan Law Review

This essay will examine the "equal treatment" versus "special treatment" for women issue as it arose in Illinois in the late nineteenth century. In 1869 the Illinois Supreme Court barred Myra Bradwell from the practice of law on the basis that she was a married woman, and in 1870 it reaffirmed its exclusion of women in In re Bradwell, the state decision the United States Supreme Court upheld in Bradwell v. Illinois. This denial of equal treatment to women, especially the concurring opinion by United States Supreme Court Justice Bradley, appears to many to represent paternalism at its …


Two Hundred Years Later?, Yvonne Stam Apr 1974

Two Hundred Years Later?, Yvonne Stam

IUSTITIA

The revival of feminism is in many ways different from its earlier stage, although this may in large part be due to what the early feminists accomplished. They were more concerned with substantive legal change-property rights, child custody, divorce, suffrage, and others. In addition to filling in some of the substantive right gaps, we today are more concerned with social attitudes and the exercise of legal rights. Although modern-day feminists have advocated the passage of some reform legislation particularly, the Equal Rights Amendment, much of the focus of the movement is on social and cultural changes.