Law Commons^™

Narratives Of Reproductive Control In The American Eugenics Movement, Cassandra M. Provost

Honors Theses

In this paper, I will explore the eugenics movement as a pseudo-scientific political, social, and legal phenomenon which had a devastating historical impact on America’s most vulnerable women, as well as briefly discuss its residual effects on contemporary reproductive rights conversations, through the lens of literature. Using an interdisciplinary discourse and narrative analysis approach, I identify two distinct themes within the explored narratives: (1) the importance of a government’s attempt to override a person’s autonomy by destroying the person’s ability to reproduce, and (2) the impropriety of actions based on a negative attitude toward disabled or undesirable persons. In my …

The Current Status Of Women In Morocco And How It Can Be Improved, Amanda Maia

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

My paper will explore the conditions of gender minorities in Morocco through representation, NGOs, social structures, and resources therein to support the progress of acquiring more rights for these demographics. With an emphasis on the status of women in Morocco. My main questions as it stands are: What are the living conditions for women in Morocco and how can they be improved? What progress has been and still can be made to improve the quality of life and foster joy for these demographics in Morocco? Since the 1990s, there has been significant progress in Morocco to improve Family Law and …

Introduction To Oxford Handbook Of Feminism And Law In The U.S., Deborah L. Brake, Martha Chamallas, Verna L. Williams

Book Chapters

Combining analyses of feminist legal theory, legal doctrine and feminist social movements, this Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of U.S. legal feminism. Contributions by leading feminist thinkers trace the impacts of legal feminism on legal claims and defenses and demonstrate how feminism has altered and transformed understandings of basic legal concepts, from sexual harassment and gender equity in sports to new conceptions of consent and motherhood. It connects legal feminism to adjacent intellectual discourses, such as masculinities theory and queer theory, and scrutinizes criticisms and backlash to feminism from all sides of the political spectrum. Its examination of the prominent …

An Analysis Of University Students’ Self-Labeling And Perception Of Feminism, Emilie Seibert

Honors Projects

This project investigates students’ perceptions of feminism, whether or not they identify as feminist, and how closely their ideals align with basic feminist ideals. There is currently no research that investigates self-labeling as a feminist among the current generation of college students in the United States. Despite the immense benefits to holding a feminist identification, it is estimated that only about 21% of the United States population identifies as feminist (Swirsky & Angelone, 2014, p. 230). Understanding the perspectives of current students is important as they have the potential to become activists and impact the future of the feminist movement. …

Oral Interview: Contextualizing The Women's Rights Movement In Tunisia Through Family History, Walid Zarrad

Papers, Posters, and Presentations

In their path towards emancipation and equal rights, Tunisian women have gone through a number of phases that seem to be directly linked to legal changes and cultural factors. In fact, the Code of Personal Status (CPS) of 1956 seems to be a milestone in the women’s movement, and its following amendments continued on this path. However, it is a lot more complex than that. A piece of legislation officially passing is not a simple determinant of the state of Women’s Rights in a country.

Through Dorra Mahfoudh Draoui’s “Report on Gender and Marriage in Tunisian Society” and my interview …

The Changing Landscape Of Women’S Rights Activism In China: The Continued Legacy Of The Beijing Conference, Rangita De Silva De Alwis, Katherine A. Schroeder

All Faculty Scholarship

The Beijing Conference was a watershed moment in the history of the global women’s movement and had an unprecedented impact in the Global North and South on lawmaking, institution building, and movement building. This Article details the development of women’s activism in China since the Beijing Conference and how a changing legal landscape impacts this activism. While its progress is emblematic of the inconsistencies in the progression of women’s rights activism since the Beijing Conference, China’s efforts have been significant and varied and represent a model for other countries seeking to reform women’s rights legislation. This Article identifies important lines …

Is This A Christian Nation?: Virtual Symposium September 25, 2020, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

From The Ulama To The Legislature: Hermeneutics & Morocco’S Family Code, Rachel Olick-Gibson

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This study examines the role that Islamic law has played thus far in reforming the Moroccan Family Code, also known as the Moudawana. When King Mohammed VI reformed this law in 2004, Morocco received immediate international praise for its liberal strides towards gender equality. Through this study I investigated the hermeneutical tools and methods of ijtihad employed both by the drafters of the Moudawana and by activists leading up to the 2004 reforms. I then investigate impediments to the implementation of this Code in providing substantive legal rights to Moroccan women and the role that interpretation of Islamic law plays …

Empowered Women Empower Women, Anne S. Douds

Public Policy Faculty Publications

Good afternoon and thank you for your determination to hold this important event today regardless of the weather. When Jenny said that we would go forward rain, sleet, or snow, I did not anticipate that we would have all three in the same day!

Maybe your determination derives from the residual spirit of a group of women who gathered here 100 years ago, also determined, but that time they were determined to ensure that their community acknowledged their right to vote. They were empowered, excited, and ready to act because, five years prior, in 1915, Katherine Wentworth of the Pennsylvania …

I’M Not Convinced That The Celebratory ‘We’Re Having A Feminist Moment’ Helps Feminism, Sharon Crozier-De Rosa

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

It hurts to say this on International Women’s Day. The IWD2019 website says: ‘From grassroots activism to worldwide action, we are entering an exciting period of history where the world expects balance.’ I want to join in the celebrations while remaining mindful of the work that has yet to be done to reach this year’s aspirational theme of #BalanceforBetter. But one thing stops me – the relationship between notions of ‘waves’, ‘turns’, ‘moments’, ‘phases’ and memory.

We’Ve Come A Long Way (Baby)! Or Have We? Evolving Intellectual Freedom Issues In The Us And Florida, L. Bryan Cooper, A.D. Beman-Cavallaro

Works of the FIU Libraries

This paper analyzes a shifting landscape of intellectual freedom (IF) in and outside Florida for children, adolescents, teens and adults. National ideals stand in tension with local and state developments, as new threats are visible in historical, legal, and technological context. Examples include doctrinal shifts, legislative bills, electronic surveillance and recent attempts to censor books, classroom texts, and reading lists.

Privacy rights for minors in Florida are increasingly unstable. New assertions of parental rights are part of a larger conservative animus. Proponents of IF can identify a lessening of ideals and standards that began after doctrinal fruition in the 1960s …

Caption This: Police In Pussyhats, White Ladies, And Carceral Psychology Under Trump, Alison R. Reed

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Female Autonomy: An Analysis Of Privacy And Equality Doctrine For Reproductive Rights, Elizabeth Levi

Political Science Honors Projects

What is the constitutional basis for women’s equality? Recently, scholars have suggested that as the right to privacy has floundered against the political undoing of women's access to abortion, equal protection arguments have grown stronger. This thesis investigates the feminist utility and limits of the equality and privacy arguments. Taking liberal feminism and feminist legal theory as analytical lenses, I offer interpretations of gender discrimination, reproductive rights, and marriage equality case law. By this framework, I argue that while an equality argument is less inherently oppressive towards women than the privacy doctrine, equality doctrine has been constructed thus far to …

Feminism And Economic Inequality, Katharine T. Bartlett

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

'Such Slow Murder': Feminism, Moral Panic And Homicidal Women, Katherine Biber, Arlie Loughnan, Julia Quilter

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Maternal infanticide is an issue of perennial interest to sociohistorical scholars, criminologists and feminist researchers. In this wide-ranging book, Annie Cossins argues that infanticide is a uniquely ‘feminine’ form of criminality insofar as it draws social and legal attention to women’s bodies.

Feminism And Art: Unexpected Encounters, Susan (Su) Ballard, Agnieszka Golda

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Since the revolutions of the 1960s, feminism and art have created spaces for thinking and rethinking the links between gender and creativity. Art has been challenged both within and without the frame, as artists and feminists disrupt and complicate pre-established modes of production and representation.

Intersectionality And Title Vii: A Brief (Pre-)History, Serena Mayeri

All Faculty Scholarship

Title VII was twenty-five years old when Kimberlé Crenshaw published her path-breaking article introducing “intersectionality” to critical legal scholarship. By the time the Civil Rights Act of 1964 reached its thirtieth birthday, the intersectionality critique had come of age, generating a sophisticated subfield and producing many articles that remain classics in the field of anti-discrimination law and beyond. Employment discrimination law was not the only target of intersectionality critics, but Title VII’s failure to capture and ameliorate the particular experiences of women of color loomed large in this early legal literature. Courts proved especially reluctant to recognize multi-dimensional discrimination against …

Perhaps Tea And Scones Are Ok: The Cwa And Feminism Today, Sharon Crozier-De Rosa

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Next month the Country Women’s Association (CWA) of New South Wales will vote whether or not to put one of their most valuable assets, their Potts Point headquarters, up for sale. The prospect of the sale has caused concern among some members that the CWA is signalling it is a dying institution. It seems a good time, then, to reflect on the history of the CWA and how it fits in with the modern world of feminism.

Feminism And The Nation-State In Japan, Vera C. Mackie

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The first Japanese edition of the book appeared at the height of debates about the interpretation of the Asia-Pacific War, debates which were also linked to conflicts about how the past should be represented in school textbooks.2 Much of this controversy revolved around the issue of enforced military prostitution/military sexual slavery.3 In 1991 Kim Hak-Sun (1924–1997) was one of the few women to come out in public in her own name to narrate her experiences in the enforced military prostitution system and demand an apology and compensation from the Japanese government. She was soon joined by survivors from Korea and …

Underneath Her Pantsuit: A Reflection On Hanna Rosin's The End Of Men, Aziza Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

In her book, The End of Men, ¹ Hanna Rosin argues that women have “surpassed” men. This new reality necessitates a reevaluation of marriage, family, sex, and gender roles.² To further her claim, Rosin dedicates a chapter of her book to the topic of violence committed by women. She argues that women are becoming more violent³ :

The new [trope] taps into a fear that as they gain more power, women will use violence and their new specialized skills to get what they want. Singular and exotic though these cases may be, they raise the broader unsettling possibility …

Civil Rights Reform And The Body, Tobias Barrington Wolff

All Faculty Scholarship

Discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression has emerged as a major focus of civil rights reform. Opponents of these reforms have structured their opposition around one dominant image: the bathroom. With striking consistency, opponents have invoked anxiety over the bathroom -- who uses bathrooms, what happens in bathrooms, and what traumas one might experience while occupying a bathroom -- as the reason to permit discrimination in the workplace, housing, and places of public accommodation. This rhetoric of the bathroom in the debate over gender-identity protections seeks to exploit an underlying anxiety that has played a role in …

Intuition And Feminist Constitutionalism, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

In any constitutional system, we must ask, as a foundational inquiry, when and why a government may distinguish between groups of constituents for purposes of allocating benefits or imposing penalties. For feminists and others with a stake in challenging inequalities, the rationales that a society deems acceptable for justifying these classifications are centrally important. Heightened scrutiny jurisprudence for sex-based and other distinctions may help capture some of the rationales that rest on stereotypes and outmoded biases. However, at the end of the day, whatever level of scrutiny is applied, the critical question at any level of review is whether, according …

When Men Are Harmed: Feminism, Queer Theory, And Torture At Abu Ghraib, Aziza Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

In this Article I explore the assertions of "anti-imperialist" feminist scholars who critique "imperial feminism" for its support of the war on terror (WOT). I bring into this analysis the proposition by queer theorists that feminist reliance on male/ female subordination has the potential to not only obscure harm in times of war but also to perpetuate it. As a case study, I focus on the Abu Ghraib prison photos that depict, in part, female soldiers torturing male Iraqi prisoners. In conducting this analysis, I reveal the analytical limitations of dominance and cultural feminists, particularly with regard to male harm …

Feminism, Power, And Sex Work In The Context Of Hiv/Aids: Consequences For Women's Health, Aziza Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines the involvement of feminists in approaches to sex work in the context of HIV/AIDS. The paper focuses on two moments where feminist disagreement produced results in favor of an "anti-trafficking" approach to addressing the vulnerability of sex workers in the context of HIV. The first is the UNAIDS Guidance Note on Sex Work and the second is the "anti-prostitution pledge" found in the Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. This article also examines the anti-sex work position articulated by abolitionist feminists and demonstrates the unintended consequences of the abolitionist position on women's health. By examining the actual …

Race, Sex, And Rulemaking: Administrative Constitutionalism And The Workplace, 1960 To The Present, Sophia Z. Lee

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article uses the history of equal employment rulemaking at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Power Commission (FPC) to document and analyze, for the first time, how administrative agencies interpret the Constitution. Although it is widely recognized that administrators must implement policy with an eye on the Constitution, neither constitutional nor administrative law scholarship has examined how administrators approach constitutional interpretation. Indeed, there is limited understanding of agencies’ core task of interpreting statutes, let alone of their constitutional practice. During the 1960s and 1970s, officials at the FCC relied on a strikingly broad and affirmative interpretation of …

Review Essay: Janet Halley, Split Decisions: How And Why To Take A Break From Feminism, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] “My overarching reaction to Janet Halley's recent book, Split Decisions: How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism, can be summarized with a one sentence cliché: The perfect is the enemy of the good.' She holds feminism to a standard of perfection no human endeavor could possibly meet, and then heartily criticizes it for falling short. Though Halley's myriad observations about feminism occasionally resonated with my own views and experiences, ultimately I remain unconvinced that taking a break from feminism would, for me, be either justified or productive. But I did (mostly) enjoy reading it. Halley is well …

Bare Justice: A Feminist Theory Of Justice And Its Application To Post-Genocide Rwanda, Megan M. Carpenter

Law Faculty Scholarship

Within this Article I seek to develop a feminist legal theory of justice, by questioning the ability of traditional legal strategies to facilitate justice and identifying underlying principles that contribute to a more inclusive and holistic form of justice. Secondly, I apply this theory to the situation of women victims of sexual violence in post-genocide Rwanda, in an effort to explore how these principles can contribute to a realization of justice that empowers women.

In Part II of this Article, I seek to develop a set of principles underlying a feminist reconceptualization of justice. This endeavour is a three-step process: …

Some Dumb Girl Syndrome: Challenging And Subverting Destructive Stereotypes Of Female Attorneys, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

This Essay considers ways in which female attorneys confront sexism and stereotyping in the legal profession and in life, and strongly endorses embracing feminism, and wearing comfortable shoes.

Speaking Volumes: Musings On The Issues Of The Day, Inspired By The Memory Of Mary Joe Frug, Regina Austin, Elizabeth M. Schneider

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Exploring Feminism Globally To Achieve Global Feminism, Anna M. Han

Faculty Publications

Edited Speech delivered on October 6, 2000 at the University of San Diego Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues Conference on Intersectionality and Critical Race Feminism.

In writing this article, I kept thinking of the various stories that I heard during the workshops in Beijing and again I was struck by the commonality of the underlying issues facing women from around the world. While there may be dramatic political, cultural, linguistic and economic differences, I posit that there were more similarities than there were differences.