Law Commons^™

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Wise Legal Giant, Thomas A. Schweitzer

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

After Suffrage: The Unfinished Business Of Feminist Legal Advocacy, Serena Mayeri

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

This Essay considers post-suffrage women’s citizenship through the eyes of Pauli Murray, a key figure at the intersection of the twentieth-century movements for racial justice and feminism. Murray drew critical lessons from the woman suffrage movement and the Reconstruction-era disintegration of an abolitionist-feminist alliance to craft legal and constitutional strategies that continue to shape equality law and advocacy today. Murray placed African American women at the center of a vision of universal human rights that relied upon interracial and intergenerational alliances and anticipated what scholars later named intersectionality. As Murray foresaw, women of color formed a feminist vanguard in ...

Faith-Based Emergency Powers, Noa Ben-Asher

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article explores an expanding phenomenon that it calls Faith-Based Emergency Powers. In the twenty-first century, conservatives have come to rely heavily on Faith-Based Emergency Powers as a legal strategy in the culture wars. This typically involves carving faith-based exceptions to rights of women and LGBT people. The novel concept of Faith-Based Emergency Powers is developed in this Article through an analogy to “traditional” emergency powers. In the war-on-terror, conservatives have argued that judges, legislators and the public must defer to the President and the executive branch in matters involving national security. As scholars have shown, this position has three ...

Personhood Under The Fourteenth Amendment, Vincent J. Samar

Marquette Law Review

This Article examines recent claims that the fetus be afforded the status of a person under the Fourteenth Amendment. It shows that such claims do not carry the necessary objectivity to operate reasonably in a pluralistic society. It then goes on to afford what a better view of personhood that could so operate might actually look like. Along the way, this Article takes seriously the real deep concerns many have for the sanctity of human life. By the end, it attempts to find a balance for those concerns with the view of personhood offered that should engage current debates about ...

Recognizing Women's Rights At Work: Health And Women Workers In Global Supply Chains, Erika George, Candace D. Gibson, Rebecca Sewall, David Wofford

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

In 2002, shortly after Paul Hunt was named as the first UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, he presented his vision for promoting the right to health as a fundamental human right, clarifying the content of this right and identifying good practices at the community, national, and international levels. His vision remains true today for women’s health at the workplace in global supply chains. In an era where women and families must often migrate to find work, leaving behind their homes and support networks, the workplace can be a site where they can access resources and information ...

The Impact Of Wal-Mart V. Dukes On Employment Discrimination Class Actions Five Years Out: A Forecast That Suggests More Of A Wave Than A Tsunami, Suzette M. Malveaux

Articles

No abstract provided.

Moving Women Out Of Poverty: A Call To Action For Legal Aid, Catherine Carr

Impact Center for Public Interest Law

No abstract provided.

The Lawyer's Obligation To Correct Social Injustice!, James F. Gill

Fordham Urban Law Journal

No abstract provided.

"Horror Of A Woman": Myra Bradwell, The 14th Amendment, And The Gendered Origins Of Sociological Jurisprudence, Gwen Hoerr Jordan

Akron Law Review

On June 14, 1873, Myra Bradwell reprinted a short article from the St. Louis Republican in the Chicago Legal News announcing the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in her case.

This short article reveals an important insight that challenges some contemporary interpretations of Bradwell v. Illinois. First, it points out what we know, but sometimes overlook, that the Supreme Court holding in Bradwell did not prevent women from becoming lawyers or practicing law.6 More importantly, however, it suggests that Justice Bradley’s oftcited concurrence – where he reveals his horror of a woman, writing that “[t]he harmony, not ...

Professional Women Silenced By Men-Made Norms, Maritza I. Reyes

Journal Publications

The call of this symposium was for articles regarding women's rights and the movement toward equality. We are still wrestling with what equality should mean. In this Article, when I refer to equality I envision it as both a strategy and as the end goal. Equality as a strategy means assessing the inherent inequalities of particular situations and using the means necessary to remedy the inequalities and achieve equality as the end goal. The end goal is for women (with all our complexities and intersectionalities) to achieve the same rights and results as men (with all their complexities and ...

Uncovering Women In Taxation: The Gender Impact Of Detaxation, Tax Expenditures, And Joint Tax/Benefit Units, Kathleen A. Lahey

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Women have made great progress in gaining individual civil and political rights since the 1800s. However, for nearly a century, the use of couple-based tax and benefit provisions has increased steadily, enshrouding women in new and extensive forms of fiscal coverture that run counter to democratic ideals of economic equality. While the pros and cons of joint taxation have been well-rehearsed, the reality is that between unequal distributions of new and old varieties of tax and benefit items to women and men and the continued expansion of joint tax and benefit items in recent decades, Canada’s tax and transfer ...

The Challenge Of Strong Religion In The Liberal State, Gila Stopler

Gila Stopler

Liberal states are struggling to find ways to deal with strong religion in a manner that would enable them to give due respect to the religious beliefs of citizens while at the same time to adhere to core liberal values such as respect for human rights and avoidance of undue entanglement of religious and state authority. One type of solution that has been offered is granting authority and autonomy to private religious tribunals, for example in the area of religious family law. Another type of solution is creating a direct link between state law and some religious obligations, as was ...

The Power And Promise Of Procedure: Examining The Class Action Landscape After Wal-Mart V. Dukes, Suzette M. Malveaux

Articles

No abstract provided.

Abandoning Women To Their Rights: What Happens When Feminist Jurisprudence Ignores Birthing Rights, Rebecca A. Spence

Student Articles and Papers

The goals of the Article are twofold. First, this Article will demonstrate that while birthing rights issues have been familiar areas of concern for feminist scholarship on women's rights to privacy and equality, neglecting to integrate this work into the law school classroom fails to promote effective legal advocacy for pregnant women. The violation of women's rights during childbirth is a more common problem than reported legal opinions indicate, and few lawyers are prepared to protect clients prospectively or to vindicate women's rights post-childbirth.

Finding A Voice Of Challenge: The State Responds To Religious Women And Their Communities, Marie A. Failinger

Marie A. Failinger

The appropriate response of Western nation-states to the situation of religious women who are caught between democratic norms of gender equality and the demands of their religious community has been a source of tension in many Western nations, including the U.S. This article attempts to give voice to the complex nature of women’s religious conduct as tied to their identities, and to propose alternative ways that the state might further its norms of gender equality besides intrusive regulation of religious communities.

How Goliath Won: The Future Implications Of Dukes V. Wal-Mart, Suzette M. Malveaux

Articles

No abstract provided.

Witchcraft Accusations And Human Rights: Case Studies From Malawi, Chi Adanna Mgbako, Katherine Glenn

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores potential community-based interventions to assist victims of witchcraft accusations, based on forty-five case studies from an experimental mobile legal-aid clinic in Malawi, a country in southeastern Africa where witchcraft accusations are widespread and often irreparably harm those accused. In Malawi, the accused are mainly older women who are often blamed for bewitching young children.

Thurgood Marshall, The Race Man, And Gender Equality In The Courts, Taunya Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

Renowned civil rights advocate and race man Thurgood Marshall came of age as a lawyer during the black protest movement in the 1930s. He represented civil rights protesters, albeit reluctantly, but was ambivalent about post-Brown mass protests. Although Marshall recognized law's limitations, he felt more comfortable using litigation as a tool for social change. His experiences as a legal advocate for racial equality influenced his thinking as a judge. Marshall joined the United States Supreme Court in 1967, as dramatic advancement of black civil rights through litigation waned. Other social movements, notably the women's rights movement, took its ...

Thurgood Marshall, The Race Man, And Gender Equality In The Courts, Taunya Lovell Banks

Faculty Scholarship

Renowned civil rights advocate and race man Thurgood Marshall came of age as a lawyer during the black protest movement in the 1930s. He represented civil rights protesters, albeit reluctantly, but was ambivalent about post-Brown mass protests. Although Marshall recognized law's limitations, he felt more comfortable using litigation as a tool for social change. His experiences as a legal advocate for racial equality influenced his thinking as a judge.

Marshall joined the United States Supreme Court in 1967, as dramatic advancement of black civil rights through litigation waned. Other social movements, notably the women's rights movement, took its ...

The Beginning Of The Second Wave Of The Women's Movement And Where We Are Today: A Personal Account, Sonia Pressman Fuentes

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

The second wave of the women’s movement, which started in the early 1960s, revolutionized women’s legal rights in the U.S. and reverberated in the rest of the world. Ms. Fuentes, a founder of NOW (National Organization for Women) and the first woman attorney in the Office of the General Counsel at the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), discusses the beginning of this movement, her role in it, the changes that have occurred since then, and the problems that remain in the US and throughout the world today.

Internalizing Gender: International Goals, Comparative Realities, Darren Rosenblum

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article uses the example of international women's political rights to examine the value of comparative methodologies in analyzing the process by which nations internalize international norms. As internalized in Brazil and France, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women suggests possibilities for (and possible limitations of) interdisciplinary comparative and international law scholarship. Indeed, international law scholarship is divided between theories of internalization and neorealist challenges to those theories. Comparative methodologies add crucial complexity to internalization theory, the success of which depends on acknowledging vast differences in national legal cultures. Further, comparative methodologies expose ...

Learning From Wal-Mart, Melissa Hart

Articles

This article considers the landmark gender discrimination class action, Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, both as a prototype of an emerging litigation strategy and also as a case that is entirely unique. As part of a growing trend of gender discrimination class claims, Dukes has the potential to push the boundaries of the law to confront the pervasive, tenacious stereotypes that continue to limit women's workplace opportunities. The plaintiffs' arguments - both the narrative of discrimination their evidence set out and the legal strategies they chose - are strikingly similar to claims that have been made in many class action lawsuits over ...

No Guarantees: Lessons From The Property Rights Gained And Lost By Married Women In Two American Colonies, Yvette Joy Liebesman

All Faculty Scholarship

While our own history demonstrates long-term forward progress and expansion of women’s rights, it is also marked with periods of back-treading, and there is no absolute assurance that the rights women in the United States enjoy today will be present in the future. Rights of property, suffrage, and liberty are not guaranteed to last forever, and not just in places such as Iran and Afghanistan. Indeed, we are only a few generations removed from circumstances in which our own freedom was sharply curtailed, and they are under a continuing threat.

Women Choosing Diverse Workplaces: A Rational Preference With Disturbing Implications For Both Occupational Segregation And Economic Analysis Of Law, Scott A. Moss

Articles

Despite women's dramatic labor market gains, there remains a striking degree of occupational segregation by gender. Analysts typically blame discrimination or women's work/family priorities. This Article offers a different explanation.

It is hard for women choosing jobs or occupations to know where they will face discrimination, particularly since recent judicial decisions eliminated certain employer signals that once differentiated fair and discriminatory firms. One way women can effectuate a preference for nondiscriminatory workplaces is by choosing gender-diverse workplaces. Nondiverse workplaces often are not female-friendly, and discrimination may be the reason they are nondiverse. In economic terms, women rationally ...

Holding-Up More Than Half The Sky: Marketization And The Status Of Women In China, Anna M. Han

Faculty Publications

The purpose of this article is to examine generally how Chinese women fared under communism and more specifically, delve into how marketization has adversely impacted the status of women in China. It is this author's contention that despite the overall improvements in the standard of living, Chinese women are increasingly being marginalized economically. The long-term effects of subjugating the advancement of women for the immediate benefits of China's experimentation with a market economy hold vast implications for the future of the country. As China progresses economically, politically and socially, it cannot afford to leave half of its population ...

Reconstructing Liberty, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

It is commonly and rightly understood in this country that our constitutional system ensures, or seeks to ensure, that individuals are accorded the greatest degree of personal, political, social, and economic liberty possible, consistent with a like amount of liberty given to others, the duty and right of the community to establish the conditions for a moral and secure collective life, and the responsibility of the state to provide for the common defense of the community against outside aggression. Our distinctive cultural and constitutional commitment to individual liberty places very real restraints on what our elected representatives can do, even ...

Women's Rights Litigation In The 1980s: More Of The Same?, Tracey E. George, Lee Epstein

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In the September 1983 issue of Judicature,Karen O'Connor and Lee Epstein published the results of their examination of the fate of gender-based cases in the U.S. Supreme Court during the 1970s. Overall, they found that the justices were quite receptive to such claims, supporting the women's rights position in about 58 percent of the 63 disputes resolved between the 1969 and 1980 terms.

Change In The Meaning Of Consortium, Evans Holbrook

Articles

LAWYERS have long boasted of the flexibility of the common law, of its ability to adapt itself to the needs of changing conditions of society, of its responsiveness to sociological progress. And while eager reformers have often-and with much reason complained that the law is laggard in its response to the needs of the people, yet it is clear that sooner or later the courts generally bring themselves into accord with "what is sanctioned by usage, or held by the prevailing morality or strong and preponderant public 'opinion to be greatly and immediately necessary to the public welfare." This responsiveness ...