Digital Commons Network^™

Beyond Policy: Overcoming Challenges In Prosecuting Gender Persecution At The International Criminal Court, Yvonne M. Dutton, Milena Sterio

FIU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Menstruation, Menopause, And The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, Marcy L. Karin, Deborah Widiss

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Some workplaces are extraordinarily inhospitable to menstruators, especially those in low-wage jobs. Workers have been denied restroom breaks and then harassed or fired after menstrual blood leaked onto their clothes or their employer’s property. Employers routinely refuse to provide accommodations for menopause symptoms or time off for menstruation-related medical care. The failure to support menstruators is a significant barrier to ensuring workplace equality. This Article explains how federal laws, including the landmark Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA), can—and should—be interpreted to help address these inequities. PWFA requires employers to provide “reasonable accommodations” for “pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.” Menstruation …

The Prosecutor Vacancy Crisis, Adam M. Gershowitz

BYU Law Review

There is a prosecutor vacancy crisis in the United States. Prosecutors are quitting in droves and there are few applicants to replace them. In Houston and Los Angeles, more than 15% of prosecutor positions are open. In Detroit, the vacancy rate exceeds 20%. In Alameda, 25% of prosecutor positions are empty. And in Miami, a staggering 33% of prosecutor positions are unfilled. The situation is equally dire in many large and small counties across the nation.

Drawing on data and interviews from more than two-dozen district attorney’s offices, this Article documents how low salaries, massive caseloads, lack of remote work …

Moral Panic And The First Amendment, Michael L. Smith

Buffalo Law Review

Debates over free speech in the United States frequently see advocates of strong, broad protections at odds with those who argue that unfettered free speech tends to harm society’s most vulnerable. Free speech advocates invoke the marketplace of ideas and argue that the antidote to false or harmful speech is more speech. In response, critics contend that speech itself causes harm and chills counter-speech— effectively excluding marginalized groups, including women and LGBTQ people, from discourse altogether. These critics support limitations on robust free speech doctrine targeting speech that harms marginalized communities.

This Article identifies a significant wrinkle in this narrative: …

Discrimination In Contractual Performance: Theory, Evidence, And Preliminary Policy Prescriptions, Meirav Furth-Matzkin

Washington Law Review

This Article examines the often-overlooked practice of “selective performance” of standard form consumer contracts—where sellers permit employees to exercise discretion by waiving or modifying contractual terms to maintain customer satisfaction. While such flexibility can benefit consumers, it raises serious concerns about discrimination. Through both theoretical analysis and empirical evidence, this Article demonstrates that discretionary performance can disproportionately favor certain consumer groups, particularly along racial and gender lines, leading to biased and inequitable outcomes. Drawing on examples from diverse sectors, including retail, insurance, and mortgage services, the Article highlights how marginalized communities, especially Black consumers, frequently face harsher treatment and greater …

Roger Williams University 2024 President's Report: A Message From President Miaoulis, Roger Williams University

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

"Legally Magic" Words: An Empirical Study Of The Accessibility Of Fifth Amendment Rights, Roseanna Sommers, Kate Weisburd

Northwestern University Law Review

Fifth Amendment case law (including Miranda v. Arizona) requires that individuals assert their right to counsel or silence using “explicit,” “clear,” and “unambiguous” statements—or, as some dissenting judges have lamented, using “legally magic” words. Through a survey of 1,718 members of the U.S. public, we investigate what ordinary people believe it takes to assert the right to counsel and the right to silence. We then compare their perceptions against prevailing legal standards governing invocation.

With respect to the right to counsel, the survey results indicate that members of the public have a uniformly lower threshold for invocation than do …

Abortion Access For Incarcerated People Post-Dobbs, Kate Bock

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has fundamentally altered the legal landscape regarding abortion access. Though abortion rights for all people across the United States have now been eliminated or are in jeopardy, incarcerated people are a particularly vulnerable group, given the way carceral institutions restrict autonomy and the drastic health implications of an unwanted pregnancy while confined. Before Dobbs, detained people retained the constitutional right to an elective abortion while incarcerated. To remedy violations of this right, women brought claims under the Fourteenth Amendment and the Eighth Amendment. In a post-Roe world, however, incarcerated folks denied abortion …

Rwu Law Alumni Newsletter November 2024, Roger Williams University School Of Law

RWU Law

No abstract provided.

The Common Law’S Resistance To Gender Violence, Victoria Frances Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Over twenty years ago, Congress developed a “mountain of evidence” that state criminal and civil remedies against sexual assault and battering were inadequate. The Supreme Court rejected that evidence in United States v. Morrison, striking down a federal civil rights remedy for sexual assault and battering. Since then, there have been many civil cases of sexual assault and battering against high-profile individuals, including the recent E. Jean Carroll lawsuit against a former President. This five-year study, surveying fifty states’ civil law, asks the question prompted by Morrison: Does the civil law today provide adequate remedies to survivors of sexual assault …

The Second Amendment’S Second Sex, Michael Ulrich

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay explores how the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment doctrine perpetuates gender hierarchies and a male monopoly on lethal self-defense. It critiques the narrow “true man” framing that ignores women’s experiences and advocates for a justice-centered framework that incorporates power and privilege into the gun-rights discourse.

Medical Consensus On Gender Affirming Care's Critical Impact On Incarcerated Black Transgender Women, John Parsi

Journal of Law and Health

In Kosilek v. Spencer the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit adopted The World Professional Association of Transgender Health Standards of Care (WPATH SOC) as medical consensus on gender affirming care and held that Michelle Kosilek could access gender affirming care but that she did not meet the criteria for gender affirming surgery. In Gibson v. Collier the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit with a sparse record and no expert testimony denied Vanessa Lynn Gibson access to gender affirming surgery and incorrectly claimed that Kosilek did not support the WPATH SOC as representing the medical …

Unshackled: Why Eliminating Health Disparities Requires That Our Criminal Justice System Set Incarcerated Mothers And Their Developing Children Free, Angela Dixon

Journal of Law and Health

Incarceration of pregnant nonviolent offenders takes not only the pregnant mother captive but also her unborn child. Kept in unnecessary captivity, these innocent children may experience adverse childhood experiences (“ACES”) or lifelong damage to their physical and mental health. The experiences may be the same for children born already to the mother, as they endure the suffering of parental separation during the mother’s absence. In terms of racial health disparities, such captivity presents at least a triple threat—harm to the health of the mother, harm to the health of the unborn fetus, and harm to the health of children born …

The Legal Landscape After Roe's Reversal, Rachel Rebouché

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Women On Death Row In The United States, Sandra Babcock, Nathalie Greenfield, Kathryn Adamson

Cardozo Law Review

This Article presents a comprehensive study of forty-eight persons sentenced to death between 1990 and 2022 who were legally recognized as women at the time of their trials. Our research is the first of its kind to conduct a holistic and intersectional analysis of the factors driving women’s death sentences. It reveals commonalities across women’s cases, delving into their experiences of motherhood, gender-based violence (“GBV”), and prior involvement with the criminal legal system. We also explore the nature of the women’s crimes of conviction, including the role of male codefendants and the state’s use of aggravating factors. Finally, we reveal …

Gendered Capital Punishment, Sandra Babcock

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

This Article, for the first time, grapples with the influence of gender on decision makers in women’s capital trials. Part I provides a brief overview of scholarship examining the experiences of women offenders in the criminal legal system. Part II explains how gender inflects the prosecutions of women charged with capital crimes, drawing on scholarly research as well as a data set comprised of the trial transcripts of every woman currently on death row in the United States. Part III explores how the gender of key decision makers could affect the quality of justice received by women capital defendants. I …

Gendered Capital Punishment, Sandra L. Babcock

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Article, for the first time, grapples with the influence of gender on decision makers in women’s capital trials. Part I provides a brief overview of scholarship examining the experiences of women offenders in the criminal legal system. Part II explains how gender inflects the prosecutions of women charged with capital crimes, drawing on scholarly research as well as a data set comprised of the trial transcripts of every woman currently on death row in the United States. Part III explores how the gender of key decision makers could affect the quality of justice received by women capital defendants. I …

Welcome To Texas: Home Of The Most Extreme Abortion Ban In The United States, Generating Vast Child Welfare Disparities, Bailey Harvey

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

This comment uncovers the harsh trickling effects of overturning Roe v. Wade through focusing on the statistical nexus between the Texas’ foster care system, the victims of system cycling, and the criminal justice system. We are witnesses to watching the Court in 1973 from first balancing State’s interest and women’s fundamental rights to having the subject be a topic of the political battlefield.

Examining precedent and the reasoning behind the United States Supreme Court’s decision is a science, and the statistics continue to prove Texas’ child welfare systems are failing the children of America. Juvenile delinquency directly correlates with low …

The Insufficiency Of Battered Women’S Syndrome Evidence And The Need For Resentencing Legislation For Criminalized Survivors Of Domestic Violence, Alice Samberg

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

University Of The District Of Columbia Law Review, University Of The District Of Columbia Law Review

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Nuremberg Woman And The Hague Academy, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

This article, which forms part of the journal's special review series marking the centenary of the Hague Academy of International Law, draws from the author's ongoing research into the roles that lawyers and other women professionals played at post-World War II trials. The article focuses on the life of one “Nuremberg woman,” Dr. Aline Chalufour, who attended the Academy in 1937 and again in 1957. In between, she worked in what is now Vietnam as a colonial schoolteacher, in Canada as a Free French propagandist for de Gaulle, at Nuremberg and Hamburg as a war crimes prosecutor, and in France …

Searching For Justice: Moving Towards A Trans Inclusive Model Of Access To Justice In Canada, Evan Vipond, Pierre Cloutier De Repentigny

Dalhousie Law Journal

Access to justice literature has paid little attention to the role of gender identity and gender expression as barriers to justice that must be addressed. As a marginalized and disenfranchised population, trans and gender nonconforming people experience specific barriers to justice that cisgender people typically do not. This paper seeks to address the gap in access to justice literature by attending to specific barriers to justice that trans people face in Canada. These barriers include socioeconomic inequalities; exclusion from the legal system; sex/gender certification and bigenderism within the legal system; and transphobia and cissexism within the legal system. Calling for …

A Model For Understanding Cedaw’S Impact On Implementing Gender Equality Reforms: Lessons From Canada And India, Amanda L. Stephens

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article provides a model for examining the impact of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (“CEDAW”) on implementing gender equality reforms using Canada and India, two CEDAW State Parties, as case studies. It also explores the influence of heteropatriarchy, deeply-rooted cultural norms perpetuating gender inequality, on hindering CEDAW’s ratification in the United States, as well as CEDAW’s effectiveness in implementing reforms in Canada and India. The analysis showcases how non-governmental organizations (“NGOs”) in these countries have nevertheless achieved limited successes through their mobilization of CEDAW to address specific gender injustices, such as gender …

Should Racially Vulnerable Victims Show Mercy?, Ekow N. Yankah

Articles

On June 17, 2015, twenty-one-year-old Dylann Roof entered the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, sat, and prayed with nine congregants for at least an hour before pulling out a handgun and killing Cynthia Hurd, Susan Jackson, Ethel Lance, DePayne Middleton-Doctor, State Senator Rev. Clementa Pinckney, Tywanza Sanders, Rev. Daniel Simmons, Sharonda Singleton, and Myra Thompson.' He left three survivors, explicitly so they could "tell the story" of his killings. Roof did so for his own demented reasons; his racist rage was laid out publicly in an online manifesto, and he hoped his murders would begin a …

The Awareness Of Missing And Murdered Indigenous Women And Girls (Mmiwg): Policy Steps Toward Addressing The Crisis, Meenakshi P. Richardson, Kimberly Klein, Stephany Runninghawk Johnson

American Indian Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Women Rebuilding Their Lives Post Incarceration: The Obstacles Of Housing And Employment, Sydney Ward

English Undergraduate Honors Theses

According to a report from The Sentencing Project, "the female incarcerated population stands nearly five times higher than in 1980" and this trend has continued, which means that "at the national level, 47 out of every 100,000 women were in prison in 2020" (“Incarcerated Women and Girls.”). This means that women are leaving prison and beginning their reentry process into society every day, which is much easier said than done. With this reentry process, there are various barriers that each woman must overcome to reestablish their lives. When women are released from incarceration, the first thing they must do is …

Use Of Force In Policing: Do Female Police Officers Use Unjustifiable Force As Often As Male Officers?, Carma Dobson

Theses

Use of force (UOF) is a common practice in policing. My study focuses on the disposition of the use of unjustifiable force in policing. Utilization of pre-existing data with 5,771 use of force incidents from the New Orleans, Louisiana police department in the years of 2016-2021 produces an answer to the research question: Do female police officers use unjustifiable force as often as male officers? The chi-square test of independence results in my study indicates that there is no statistical difference between males and females.

Amdip Annual Meeting Of Law School Diversity Professionals: Hosted By Roger Williams University School Of Law: April 23-25, 2024, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Survival Labor, Yvette Butler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Article makes one simple, novel claim: crime is labor when it generates income, allows individuals to pursue self-sufficiency, or allows them to fulfill societal expectations of providing for or caring for dependents. When individuals engage in survival crimes, instead of seeing them as criminals, we should see them as workers engaged in survival labor.

The carceral system continues to disproportionately harm racial minorities and people living in poverty. The foundations of many laws regulating racialized bodies and the policing of those bodies has created a culture where blackness is equivalent to criminality. While a penal abolitionist framework is helpful …

A Legacy Of Feminism And Advocacy: An Interview With Dr. Lenore Walker, Brandi Diaz

Trauma Counseling and Resilience

Dr. Lenore Walker is a pioneer in feminism and trauma counseling. Her contribution to these fields is vast, including topics of gender violence, battered woman syndrome, child abuse and trauma, false confessions of battered women, sex and human trafficking, and psychology and the law. Her theories and conceptualizations have shaped how providers approach trauma-informed care and the assessment of trauma survivors. Moreover, her work has spanned a variety of functions such as a clinician, researcher, educator, advocate, leader, consultant, and mentor. For the purposes of this article, Dr. Walker engaged in an interview to discuss her career, contributions, legacy, and …