Law Commons^™

Same Sex Marriage And Its Implications For Employee Benefits: Proceedings Of The 2005 Meeting Of The Association Of American Law Schools Sections On Employee Benefits, And Sexual Orientation And Gender Identity Issues, Maria O'Brien, Constance Hiatt, Shannon Minter, Teresa S. Collett

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Maria O'Brien Hylton*: Welcome to this session on "Same Sex Marriage and its Implications for Employee Benefits." I'm Maria Hylton and I will introduce our speakers and moderate the program.

Our first speaker is Constance Hiatt, who is a partner with the Hanson Bridgett law firm here in San Francisco. She represents mostly large employers and large employee benefit plans, including the State of California's 401(k) and 457 plans as well as the University of California's benefits office. So, she has extensive experience in the employee benefits area and she came to us, to me really, through several …

How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying (Cases): Gender Stereotypes And Sexual Harassment Since The Passage Of Title Vii, Miriam A. Cherry

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Last year I was invited to an undergraduate revival of the musical "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," a comedy about the workplace, which I thought, as a teacher of employment law, I would enjoy. Written in the early 1960s and made into a 1967 movie, "How to Succeed" follows the adventures of J. Pierrepont Finch, a window washer who, with the aid of a sarcastic self-help book, schemes his way up the corporate ladder. Although ostensibly a humorous look at the corporate world of the late 1950s and early '60s, I found myself cringing throughout the …

In Response To The Remarks By Lawrence H. Summers, Presenting Empirical Data On The Differences In Learning Styles Between Males And Females, Robin Boyle Laisure, Andrea Honigsfeld

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Lawrence H. Summers' remarks at a conference on "Diversifying the Science and Engineering Workforce," raise provocative issues regarding reasons for the disparities of "women's representation in tenured positions in science and engineering at top universities and research institutions." He postulated that one reason for this disparity was the "different availability of aptitude at the high end." One suspects that the word "aptitude" struck a raw nerve in the audience. After all, most academics in the audience would be familiar with the research of Carol Gilligan, and her well-known book, In A Different Voice, suggesting that women have different …

Coverage Of Reproductive Technologies Under Employer-Sponsored Health Care Plans, Elizabeth Pendo

Articles

The federal courts have issued two important decisions regarding non-discriminatory insurance coverage of conditions and treatments associated with sex, disability or both, such as prescription contraception and infertility treatment. Cases like Erickson and Saks are important because, as ERISA scholars know, state law mandates regarding coverage are unlikely to lead to uniform results due to the structure of ERISA's preemption provisions, and none of the federal proposals addressing infertility treatment or prescription contraception have been enacted to date.

What I would like to do is outline the impact of ERISA in this area, and offer some thoughts on one of …

Judicial Deference Or Bad Law? Why Massachusetts Courts Will Not Impose Municipal Liability For Failure To Enforce Restraining Orders, Carolyn Grose

Faculty Scholarship

The authors take up the challenge that was thrown down by the Ford v. Town of Grafton court. The first part of this Article examines the somewhat tortured and fascinating history of the Massachusetts Tort Claims Act. It then describes the arguments Catherine Ford made, how the court responded, and why it responded as it did. In Part II, Massachusetts' strong commitment to protecting and assisting victims of domestic violence is examined. A variety of legislative, executive and judicial initiatives that demonstrate commitment are described, but the Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 209A, the restraining order statute, is emphasized. The article …

The Evolving, Yet Still Inadequate, Legal Protections Afforded Battered Immigrant Women, Indira K. Balram

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Refocusing On Women: A New Direction For Policy And Research On Intimate Partner Violence, Lisa A. Goodman, Deborah Epstein

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

A key question facing researchers of intimate partner violence is how the real-life contexts of victims’ lives should affect state policy. The bulk of recently adopted and much touted criminal justice reforms have taken the form of relatively inflexible, one-size-fits-all mandatory responses focused on counseling, restraining, and punishing batterers. Even the protection order system relies far more heavily on batterer treatment programs than on victim support to prevent future violence. Together, these reforms have largely sacrificed the contextualized, woman-centered focus from which the anti-domestic violence movement originated. Recently, however, a small body of research has emerged indicating that responding flexibly …

The Semiotics Of Visible Face Make-Up: The Masks Women Wear, Madeleine Ogilvie

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This dissertation explores the `sign' of visible face make-up and examines how women consume appearance in everyday life in contemporary Australia. Using a semiotic framework, it presents a novel new method for interpreting and gaining increased meaning into an everyday consumption phenomenon. The purpose of the study is to gain insights into why women wear make-up. It seeks to provide understanding of what this medium signifies to women and what the `sign' of make-up symbolises to the female individual. It explores how visible face make-up affects the way women consume appearance in everyday life, how they feel about themselves, and …

Telling Stories, Saving Lives: The Battered Mothers' Testimony Project, Women's Narratives, And Court Reform, Leigh Goodmark

Leigh S. Goodmark

In November 2002, the Wellesley Centers for Women’s Battered Mothers’ Testimony Project released Battered Mothers Speak Out, a report detailing human rights abuses committed against forty battered mothers and their children who had litigated cases in the Massachusetts family court system. Although the report initially generated a great deal of attention, the response from the courts was overwhelmingly negative, and the report prompted no change in the courts. Because the stories of these women resonated with my own experiences representing battered women, I wondered why the report had so little effect on system change. The official response of the courts …

How The Confrontation Clause Defeated The Rape Shield Statute: Acquaintance Rape, The Consent Defense And The Nj Supreme Court's Ruling In State V. Garron, James B. Johnston

James B Johnston

Rape shield statutes are designed to limit a judge's discretion in allowing information about a rape victim's sexual past into evidence at trial. This is done to prevent dual victimization of the rape victim. First during the rape and then at trial. Despite rape shield protections the NJ Supreme Court ruled in State v. Garron that a victim's prior flirtations with the attacker, some of which occurred 6 years before the rape was admissible. The court overturned the attacker's guilty verdict and he went free. Advocates for rape victims rights were outraged. This article provides an analysis and critique of …