Law Commons^™

Gender Matters: Making The Case For Trans Inclusion, Nancy K. Knauer

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “The transgender communities are producing an important and nuanced critique of our gender system. For community members, the project is self-constitutive and, therefore, has an immediacy that also marks the efforts of other marginalized groups who have attempted to make sense of the world through description, interrogation, and ultimately a program for transformation. The transgender project also has universalizing elements because, existing within the gender system, each one of us embodies a particular gender articulation. It is through this articulation that we define ourselves in relation to the gender we were assigned at birth, the gender we choose, the …

Protecting Parent-Child Relationships: Determining Parental Rights Of Same-Sex Parents Consistently Despite Varying Recognition Of Their Relationship, Linda S. Anderson

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “The family and parental relationship appears secure as long as the members of the family stay within the borders of the states that recognize their relationship. What happens, though, when the family ventures beyond the borders of Vermont, Massachusetts, California, and Connecticut, has yet to be determined. Legislation in almost every other state has addressed whether each state will recognize the couples’ relationship,27 but no state has determined how it will treat the legal relationship between the children of these couples and their parents.28 This article will focus on the fragile legal relationship between same-sex parents and their children …

Letter From The Executive Director, Paisley Currah

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Heterosexuality is under attack--not by the authors of a new "I hate straights" broadsheet, not by vacationers in Provincetown, but by state judges in the US. In August, New York's highest court ruled that the New York State Constitution "does not compel recognition of marriages between members of the same-sex." Their reasoning? In part, the decision declared, because opposite-sex relationships are "often too casual," and thus result in the production of children by "accident or impulse." And so, "unstable relationships between people of the opposite sex present a greater danger that children will be born into or grow up in …

Conflicts Between The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court And The Legislature: Campaign Finance Reform And Same-Sex Marriage, Mark C. Miller

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] "This article will examine recent interactions and dialogues between the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts (“SJC” or “Supreme Judicial Court”) and the Massachusetts State Legislature. The interactions between courts and legislatures are often cordial, but sometimes these interactions are also highly conflictual. During the 1980s and 1990s, the relationship between the Massachusetts legislature and the Supreme Court was indeed mainly cooperative. Recently, however, in several high profile cases the Supreme Court has been willing to challenge directly the decisions of the legislature and vice versa. Among other controversies, the Court’s 2002 decision requiring that the state legislature fund the …

Constitutionalism, Gender Equality And Judicial Reform: A Study Of The Status Of Women In The Egyptian Judiciary, Mahmoud Moustafa

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Economics: Labor And Health In South Asia By Vibhuti Patel, Professor Vibhuti Patel

Professor Vibhuti Patel

In Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, inferior terms of women’s employment perpetuate their subordination in family and society and impact their health adversely. How women are paid and valued in the fields, factories, and offices has direct bearing on women workers’ status within and outside the workplace. The statistical profile of women’s work in South Asia reveals ahigh maternal mortality rate, adverse sex ratios, low levels of literacy, the highest work participation of women in agriculture, and women’s estimated earned income as less than half that of men, signifying the undervaluation and unpaid nature of women’s productive economic …

Law And The Fabric Of The Everyday: Settlement Houses, Sociological Jurisprudence, And The Gendering Of Urban Legal Culture, Felice J. Batlan

Felice J Batlan

The Maine Women's Advocate (2006 - Fall), Maine Women's Lobby Staff

Maine Women's Publications - All

No abstract provided.

The Maine Women's Advocate (2006 - Summer), Maine Women's Lobby Staff

Maine Women's Publications - All

No abstract provided.

The Maine Women's Advocate (2006 - Winter), Maine Women's Lobby Staff

Maine Women's Publications - All

No abstract provided.

Faculty And Male Football And Basketball Players On University Campuses: An Empirical Investigation Of The "Intellectual" As Mentor To The Student Athlete, Keith Harrison

Dr. C. Keith Harrison

No abstract provided.

The Strange Career Of Jane Crow: Sex Segregation And The Transformation Of Anti-Discrimination Discourse, Serena Mayeri

All Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the causes and consequences of a transformation in anti-discrimination discourse between 1970 and 1977 that shapes our constitutional landscape to this day. Fears of cross-racial intimacy leading to interracial marriage galvanized many white Southerners to oppose school desegregation in the 1950s and 1960s. In the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, some commentators, politicians, and ordinary citizens proposed a solution: segregate the newly integrated schools by sex. When court-ordered desegregation became a reality in the late 1960s, a smattering of southern school districts implemented sex separation plans. As late as 1969, no one saw sex-segregated schools …

Mandatory Waiting Periods For Abortions And Female Mental Health, Jonathan Klick

All Faculty Scholarship

Proponents of laws requiring a waiting period before a woman can receive an abortion argue that these cooling off periods protect against rash decisions on the part of women in the event of unplanned pregnancies. Opponents claim, at best, waiting periods have no effect on decision-making and, at worst, they subject women to additional mental anguish and stress. In this article, I examine these competing claims using adult female suicide rates at the state level as a proxy for mental health. Panel data analyses suggest that the adoption of mandatory waiting periods reduce suicide rates by about 10 percent, and …

The Egyptian Feminist Movement Between Theory And Law: Law In The Writings Of Nawal Al Saadawi, Lobna I. Khater

Archived Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the role of law in the writings of the Egyptian feminist Nawal al Saadawi.

Making Meaning Of Megan’S Law, Rose Corrigan

Rose Corrigan

This study of Megan's Law contrasts scholarly narratives that describe and analyze sexual predator laws with a case study of implementation in New Jersey. A critical feminist perspective shows that Megan's Law employs a radically underinclusive notion of sexual violence that conflicts sharply with feminist arguments about the cultural and institutional roots of sexual violence. The law excludes many of the most common offenders from reach of the law, thus deflecting attention away from assaults committed by family and friends in favor of reviving stereotypes about deviant strangers. The most significant effect of Megan's Law is not to expand the …

Correspondence: To Dr. Edna Saffy From James L. “Skip” Rutherford Iii, Chairman Of The William J. Clinton Foundation, Edna Louise Saffy

Saffy Collection - All Textual Materials

A letter to Dr. Saffy offering a gold-plated keepsake for a donation of $35 or more as a remembrance of the first year anniversary of the William J. Clinton Presidential Center, October 24, 2005.

Women As A Symbol Of Cultural Conflict: The Compatability Of Egypt's Shari'a Derived Personal Status Laws With Its International Obligations, And Prospects For Reform, Jasmin Moussa

Archived Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the compatibility of Shari'a-derived personal status laws in Egypt with the international legal obligation to eliminate gender discrimination (specifically in the area of family relations). In Egypt, the Shari'a-derived personal status law for Sunni Muslims governs family relations, including marriage, divorce, child custody and successions, and have been frequently criticized for discriminating against women. However, this body of law is not immutable, it has proven flexible over the centuries, and has accommodated many changes in society.

As such, an important question is: are Egypt's personal status laws reconcilable with its international obligations? If not, how can they …

The Travels Of Our Bodies, Ourselves, Jane Pincus

New England Journal of Public Policy

The women’s health book, Our Bodies, Ourselves: A Book by and for Women, was first printed in 1970 by the small, radical New England Free Press. Published by the group of women soon too become the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, it was advertised solely by word of mouth. Successive newsprint editions reached a quarter of a million people in the United States through colleges and an extensive network of “underground” bookstores. The book placed female sexuality firmly within the framework of women’s health and combined vividly experienced medical encounters with available health and medical information. It critiqued prevailing cultural …

Lessons About Reform From “A Very Dangerous Woman”, Sherry H. Penney, James Livingston

New England Journal of Public Policy

We discuss reform in antebellum America through the life of Martha Coffin Wright, an activist in the abolition and early women’s rights movements. Consideration of her motivations for reform; the obstacles faced by these movements; their methods, successes, and failures, may offer guidelines for reformers of today.

Sex Selection & Pre Birth Elimination Of Girl Child, Professor Vibhuti Patel

Professor Vibhuti Patel

Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques Act was enacted in 1994 as a result of pressure created by Forum Against Sex-determination and Sex –preselection. But it was not implemented. After another decade of campaigning by women’s rights organisations and public interest litigation filed by CEHAT, MASUM and Dr. Sabu George, The Pre-natal Diagnostics Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Amendment Act, 2002 received the assent of the President of India on 17-1-2003. The Act provides “for the prohibition of sex selection, before or after conception, and for regulation of pre-natal diagnostic techniques for the purposes of detecting genetic abnormalities or metabolic disorders or …

Correspondence: Letter From Planned Parenthood Of Northeast Florida, Inc. Ceo, Carole Ann Steiger

Saffy Collection - All Textual Materials

Thank you letter from the desk of the Chief Executive Officer, Carole Ann Steiger to Dr. Edna L. Saffy. The letter mentions Jacksonville Women’s Network.

Troubling The Definition Of Pornography: Little Sisters, A New Defining Moment In Feminists' Engagement With The Law?, Lara Karaian

Lara Karaian

This article explores feminism’s relationship to the legal regulation of pornography. Of particular interest to the author is how the defining moment of the Butler decision has been opened up to contestation and complication by Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium et. al. v. Minister of Justice et al., a recent Supreme Court of Canada decision regarding Canada Customs violations of the free expression and equality rights of a Vancouver-based gay and lesbian bookstore. The focus of the article is on the role that the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) played in both Butler and Little Sisters. The …

September 11 Relief Efforts And Surviving Same-Sex Partners: Reflections On Relationships In The Absence Of Legal Recognition, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

The criteria established by federal, state, and private relief efforts to assist the families of the victims of the September 11 attacks present a unique opportunity to examine the status of same-sex relationships in the United States. In the absence of uniform relationship recognition, surviving same-sex partners continue to struggle with a loss that legally is not cognizable. The stories from the September 11 survivors illustrate that a surviving partner is a legal stranger, who often must reconfigure her relationship with her partner to fit within the various legal categories where relief or compensation might be forthcoming. These legal categories …

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.

Women In The Web Of Secondary Copyright Liability And Internet Filtering, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

This Essay suggests possible explanations for why there is not very much legal scholarship devoted to gender issues on the Internet; and it asserts that there is a powerful need for Internet legal theorists and activists to pay substantially more attention to the gender-based differences in communicative style and substance that have been imported from real space to cyberspace. Information portals, such as libraries and web logs, are "gendered" in ways that may not be facially apparent. Women are creating and experiencing social solidarity online in ways that male scholars and commentators do not seem to either recognize or deem …

Sodomy And Prostitution: Laws Protecting The “Fabric Of Society”, Nicole A. Hough

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “Throughout history many people have viewed sodomy and prostitution as moral evils, because sex has often been linked to sin and, therefore, to immorality and guilt. For example, in ancient Hebrew, a sodomite was known as a qadhesh, a male temple prostitute who was associated with heathen deities and impure forms of worship. The female version of qadhesh, qedheshah, is translated directly as prostitute. This archaic view of labeling prostitution and sodomy as impure has been challenged over time, and both topics are still a source of great controversy. […]

This note is a comparative analysis of sodomy and …

Feminism, Law, And Public Policy: Family Feuds And Taxing Times, Susan B. Boyd, Claire F. L. Young

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This article offers a retrospective analysis of feminist research on tax and family law and developments in these fields since the early 1980s. We identify the sometimes contradictory trends-both in legislation and in case law-that raise questions about the influence that feminist research has had on these areas of law. We then flag some ongoing challenges confronting feminists engaged in law reform efforts. Some common themes will emerge, but notable differences are also evident in the ways that feminist thought has played out in tax and family law.

Choices And Commitments For Women: Challenging The Supreme Court Of Canada In The Context Of Social Assitance, Mary Jane Mossman

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Measuring The Effects Of Feminist Legal Research: Looking Critically At "Failure" And "Success", Lisa Philipps

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Feminism, Consequences, Accountability, Sonia Lawrence

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

No abstract provided.