Digital Commons Network^™

Talking About Black Lives Matter And #Metoo, Linda S. Greene, Lolita Buckner Inniss, Bridget J. Crawford, Mehrsa Baradaran, Noa Ben-Asher, I. Bennett Capers, Osamudia James, Keisha Lindsay

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This essay explores the apparent differences and similarities between the Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo movements. In April 2019, the Wisconsin Journal of Gender, Law and Society hosted a symposium entitled “Race-Ing Justice, En-Gendering Power: Black Lives Matter and the Role of Intersectional Legal Analysis in the Twenty-First Century.” That program facilitated examination of the historical antecedents, cultural contexts, methods, and goals of these linked equality movements. Conversations continued among the symposium participants long after the end of the official program. In this essay, the symposium’s speakers memorialize their robust conversations and also dive more deeply into the phenomena, …

There Isn't Any Dumpster, Jill C. Engle

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

From Governess To Governance: Advancing Gender Equity In Corporate Leadership, Kellye Y. Testy

Articles

Even as corporate influence on every aspect of life continues to grow, women (overall, and especially women of color) remain woefully underrepresented in corporate governance roles, particularly on boards of directors. This lack of gender diversity in the corporate boardroom is prevalent not only in more established companies but also persists—often at even higher levels— in new ventures as well. This Essay details the persistent lack of progress over more than a half century in diversifying leadership in corporate governance. This progress is especially concerning given that the benefits of diversity for sound decisionmaking and overall corporate welfare have been …

Overcoming Institutional And Legal Barriers That Prevent Abused Females From Accessing Justice In Fragile Nigerian Regions, Valentina Okaru-Bisant

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Defenseless Against Rape: Outdated Laws And A Proposed Legal Solution, David E. Missirian, Marianne D. Kulow

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Immunity Incorporated: All The Injustice That Jeffrey Epstein Can Buy, Janice G. Raymond

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Global Carceral Feminism And Domestic Violence: What The West Can Learn From Reconciliation In Uganda, Aparna Polavarapu

Scholarly Works

Around the world, policies and laws emphasizing criminal justice have dominated domestic violence interventions for decades. In the United States, certain feminist advocates worked with state actors to develop a primarily criminal justice response to domestic violence. Western influence in the international human rights movement has spread this approach around the world, leading it to become the key means of addressing violence against women. However, critics argue that the overreliance on the criminal justice system is a key failure of the anti-domestic-violence movement, with some referring to the strain of feminism promoting prosecution as "carceral feminism. " The carceral approach …

#Metoo As Catalyst: A Glimpse Into 21st Century Activism, Jamillah Bowman Williams, Lisa O. Singh, Naomi Mezey

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Twitter hashtag #MeToo has provided an accessible medium for users to share their personal experiences and make public the prevalence of sexual harassment, assault, and violence against women. This online phenomenon, which has largely involved posting on Twitter and “retweeting” to share other’s posts has revealed crucial information about the scope and nature of sexual harassment and misconduct. More specifically, social media has served as a central forum for this unprecedented global conversation, where previously silenced voices have been amplified, supporters around the world have been united, and resistance has gained steam.

This Essay discusses the #MeToo movement within …

Discounting Women: Doubting Domestic Violence Survivors’ Credibility And Dismissing Their Experiences, Deborah Epstein, Lisa A. Goodman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In recent months, we’ve seen an unprecedented wave of testimonials about the serious harms women all too frequently endure. The #MeToo moment, the #WhyIStayed campaign, and the Larry Nassar sentencing hearings have raised public awareness not only about workplace harassment, domestic violence, and sexual abuse, but also about how routinely women survivors face a Gaslight-style gauntlet of doubt, disbelief, and outright dismissal of their stories. This pattern is particularly disturbing in the justice system, where women face a legal twilight zone: laws meant to protect them and deter further abuse often fail to achieve their purpose, because women telling stories …

Diverse Originalism, Christina Mulligan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

"I Wanted Them To Be Punished Or At Least Ask Us For Forgiveness”: Justice Interests Of Female Victim-Survivors Of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence And Their Experiences With Gacaca, Judith Rafferty

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Survivors of human rights abuses need to experience a sense of justice to support their individual recovery. Women who have experienced conflict-related sexual violence have specific justice interests that are distinct from those of survivors of other abuses. This article focuses on justice interests of Rwandan women who experienced sexual violence during the genocide in Rwanda and who had their cases tried in gacaca community courts between 2008 and 2012. The article discusses two justice interests that emerged during interviews with 23 Rwandan women about their gacaca experience. These interests include the punishment of perpetrators and perpetrators taking responsibility for …

Exited Prostitution Survivor Policy Platform, Marian Hatcher, Alisa L. Bernard, Allison Franklin, Audrey Morrissey, Beth Jacobs, Cherie Jimenez, Kathi Hardy, Marlene Carson, Nikki Bell, Rebecca Bender, Rebekah Charleston, Shamere Mckenzie, Vednita Carter

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Survivors of prostitution propose a policy reform platform including three main pillars of priority: criminal justice reforms, fair employment, and standards of care. The sexual exploitation of prostituted individuals has lasting effects which can carry over into many aspects of life. In order to remedy these effects and give survivors the opportunity to live a full and free life, we must use a survivor-centered approach to each of these pillars to create change. First, reform is necessary in the criminal justice system to recognize survivors as victims of crime and not perpetrators, while holding those who exploited them fully responsible. …

Demanding Accountability In Domestic Violence Courts, Johnna Pike

Violence Against Women conference

This presentation explores whether specialized domestic violence courts are achieving their stated objective of abuser accountability. Domestic violence emerged from the private realm of family life into the public consciousness during the 1970s. Since then, there has been a largely successful movement to reframe domestic violence as a “real” social problem necessitating meaningful criminal justice intervention. Within the criminal justice system, victim and feminist groups have mostly prevailed in controlling the discourse around domestic violence as a gender-based offense. As a result, a criminal court model aimed at empowering victims and at holding abusers accountable has emerged. However, the efficacy …

Dear Colleague: Due Process Is Not Under Attack At Colleges And Universities, As Shown Through A Comparative Analysis Of College Disciplinary Committees And American Juries, Mara Emory Shingleton

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Trans-Cending The Medicalization Of Gender: Improving Legal Protections For People Who Are Transgender And Incarcerated, Lindsey Ruff

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

People who are transgender and incarcerated face a unique set of human rights challenges. Courts have made progress protecting transgender people who are incarcerated by relying on the psychiatric diagnosis, Gender Dysphoria (GD), as grounds for legal protections. However, reliance on a medical model of gender has practical limitations and adverse social consequences. This model fails to protect the most vulnerable people of trans experience and contributes to stigma against the transgender community overall. The social and legal interests of people who are transgender and incarcerated would be better served if their rights were protected on alternate legal grounds.

Part …

Planning For A Post Neoliberal Future, Sonia Lawrence

Articles & Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Centering Women In Prisoners' Rights Litigation, Amber Baylor

Faculty Scholarship

This Article consciously employs both a dignity rights-based framing and methodology. Dignity rights are those rights that are based on the Kantian assertion of “inalienable human worth.”29 This framework for defining rights spans across a number of disciplines, including medicine and human rights law.30 Disciplinary sanctions like solitary confinement or forced medication might be described as anathema to human dignity because of their degrading effect on an individual’s emotional and social well-being.

This Article relies on first-person oral histories where possible. Bioethics scholar Claire Hooker argues that including narratives in work on dignity rights “is both a moral and an …

Protecting Women's Rights? Prospects Under The Un Human Rights Treaty System: A Case Study On India 2005-2017, Deepali

LLM Theses

The establishment of the United Nations Treaty System was the fundamental step for the protection and enforcement of women’s rights. The system is designed to monitor the human rights standards in countries that have ratified the treaties, called state parties. However, the system is facing several challenges that have compromised its effective working for the protection and enforcement of women’s rights. The thesis seeks to explain the challenges to the effective working of the system, that is, why the system does not work as designed in protecting women’s rights against three specific issues: domestic violence, sexual trafficking, and reproductive rights. …

The Invisible Voices Of The Movement To End Violence Against Women: Immigrant Survivors With Criminal Convictions, Leoni Fred

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

No abstract provided.

Getting It Right: Title Ix's Role In Adjudicating Sexual Assault Claims, Meg Penrose

Faculty Scholarship

Article Extract:

I want to start with a very important point: sexual assault is a crime. We have a serious issue in the United States with sexual assault and sexual harassment. We are seeing this play out right now, and I think the “Me Too” campaign has brought important attention to this issue. An issue that impacts not only our college residence halls, but, as we have seen, the halls of Congress. Serious people are not debating whether sexual assault and sexual harassment pose a societal problem. Rather, serious people are debating how to adequately address these issues without compromising …

Gender And Terrorism: A Homeland Security Perspective, Diana Rosa Rodriguez-Spahia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

While scholars have been studying the growing trend of female terrorists for several years, their research has not permeated politics or the media to help inform our Homeland Security policies. The findings from this body of research indicate that there is hesitance on behalf of the public (especially politicians and law enforcement) to acknowledge that women can be terrorists due to deeply engrained gender norms and expectations about gender roles. Terrorist groups are exploiting this unwillingness by recruiting more women to perpetrate terrorist acts (Lele, 2014; Bloom, 2011). Against the backdrop of the changes in gender norms and expectations that …

Babies Having Babies: Advocating For A Different Standard For Minor Parents In Abuse And Neglect Cases, Emily Barry

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Legal Fempire?: Women In Complex Civil Litigation, Brooke D. Coleman

Indiana Law Journal

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made headlines when she said that she would be satisfied with the number of women on the Supreme Court “when there are nine.” But why should that answer have been so remarkable? After all, there were nine men on the Court for nearly all of its history. Yet, Justice Ginsburg’s statement was met with amusement—or from some quarters—disdain. What answer would have been considered more appropriate coming from a groundbreaking feminist litigator? Would four have been an acceptable answer? Would five have been presumptuous? This episode reflects our cramped view of how much representation women can …

Rape By Fraud: Eluding Washington Rape Statutes, Michael Mullen

Seattle University Law Review

Existing Washington law does not sufficiently safeguard its citizens from “rape by fraud,” an action whereby a person obtains sexual consent and has sexual intercourse of any type by fraud, deception, misrepresentation, or impersonation. Rape by fraud is a form of sexual predation not always prosecutable under existing Washington law. In recent years, twelve states have adopted expanded rape by fraud statutory provisions. Presently, Washington’s rape statutes lack the expansive rape by fraud statutory language adopted by these twelve states. A recent sexual scam in Seattle has revealed holes in Washington’s rape statutes. This Note examines the history of rape …

Prosecuting U.N. Peacekeepers For Sexual And Gender-Based Violence In The Central African Republic, Sophia Genovese

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Women and children living in armed conflict are amongst the most vulnerable populations at-risk of sexual and gender-based violence. When U.N. peacekeepers arrive to help dispel conflict; these populations believe that the soldiers in blue helmets will protect them. Instead; hundreds of women and children in the Central African Republic have reported being raped and sexually violated by U.N. peacekeepers. Despite compelling evidence to validate these claims; U.N. peacekeepers who commit these crimes are seldom held accountable. This Note discusses how to hold U.N. peacekeepers accountable for their human rights violations. This Note argues that troop-contributing countries should retain responsibility …

"Playing It Safe" With Empirical Evidence: Selective Use Of Social Science In Supreme Court Cases About Racial Justice And Marriage Equality, Russell K. Robinson, David M. Frost

Northwestern University Law Review

This Essay seeks to draw connections between race, sexual orientation, and social science in Supreme Court litigation. In some respects, advocates for racial minorities and sexual minorities face divergent trajectories. Among those asserting civil rights claims, LGBT rights claimants have been uniquely successful at the Court ever since Romer v. Evans in the mid-1990s. During this period, advocates for racial minorities have fought to preserve earlier victories in cases such as Regents of the University of California v. Bakke and have failed to overturn precedents that strictly limit equal protection possibilities, such as McCleskey v. Kemp. Nonetheless, we argue …

Equal Protection Under The Carceral State, Aya Gruber

Northwestern University Law Review

McCleskey v. Kemp, the case that upheld the death penalty despite undeniable evidence of its racially disparate impact, is indelibly marked by Justice William Brennan’s phrase, “a fear of too much justice.” The popular interpretation of this phrase is that the Supreme Court harbored what I call a “disparity-claim fear,” dreading a future docket of racial discrimination claims and erecting an impossibly high bar for proving an equal protection violation. A related interpretation is that the majority had a “color-consciousness fear” of remedying discrimination through race-remedial policies. In contrast to these conventional views, I argue that the primary anxiety …

Trans Women In Incarceration: Housing, Healthcare, And Humanity, Stanislaw Bielous

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

This paper seeks to analyze the experience of male-to-female transgender inmates housed in men’s prisons and to propose housing and healthcare policies with humanity and safety for all in mind. To do this, the paper examines gender dysphoria and its treatments, transgender prisoners’ increased risk of victimization, current housing placement policies, and lastly, transgender prison healthcare practices. Ultimately, this paper proposes the use of fair and adequately trained panel-based placement teams, the provision of comprehensive mental and physical health care and the establishment of impartial grievance procedures.

Cruel & Unusual Pathways To Crime: A Call For Gender- And Trauma-Informed Correctional Care, Emily Frances Musson

Journal of Law and Policy

Many female inmates have suffered trauma by way of interpersonal violence, which often precipitates mental health issues as well as criminal behavior later in life. Eighth Amendment jurisprudence dictates that they are entitled to adequate mental health treatment while incarcerated. Despite an influx of female inmates and the number of those requiring treatment, mental health programs in penal institutions have been designed to serve the needs of incarcerated men. Meanwhile, psychosocial scholarship has determined that mental health treatment needs to be informed by offenders’ common experiences as women and victims of gender-based violence (gender-responsive), as well as survivors of trauma …

The Invisible Victims Of The School-To-Prison Pipeline: Understanding Black Girls, School Push-Out, And The Impact Of The Every Student Succeeds Act, Bianca A. White

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.