Law Commons^™

Trans-Cending The Medicalization Of Gender: Improving Legal Protections For People Who Are Transgender And Incarcerated, Lindsey Ruff

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

People who are transgender and incarcerated face a unique set of human rights challenges. Courts have made progress protecting transgender people who are incarcerated by relying on the psychiatric diagnosis, Gender Dysphoria (GD), as grounds for legal protections. However, reliance on a medical model of gender has practical limitations and adverse social consequences. This model fails to protect the most vulnerable people of trans experience and contributes to stigma against the transgender community overall. The social and legal interests of people who are transgender and incarcerated would be better served if their rights were protected on alternate legal grounds.

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The Maternal Dilemma, Noya Rimalt

Cornell Law Review

When enacting the FMLA and setting a minimum standard of family leave for all eligible employees, Congress was particularly cautious about attacking the stereotype that all women are responsible for family caregiving. As Justice Rehnquist explained in Nevada v. Hibbs, the goal was to encourage men to assume more caretaking responsibilities at home, thus reducing employers' incentives to discriminate against women by basing hiring and promotion decisions on the stereotype of women as mothers. Indeed, the likely contribution of the gender- neutral parental leave legislation to the promotion of gender equality in the division of care-work at home, hence to …

Silent, Spoken, Written, And Enforced: The Role Of Law In The Construction Of The Post-Colonial Queerphobic State, Chan Tov Mcnamarah

Cornell International Law Journal

Debates over the origins of queerphobia in post-colonial African nations are legion. The conversation is dominated by opinions that paint Africans as inherently more violent towards, and less tolerant of sexual minorities than their Western counterparts. Less present in the conversation is the view that colonially-imposed laws have played a significant role in the creation of queerphobic, post-colonial African states. However, as this Note contends, neither perspective fully accounts for regional variations in levels of queerphobia throughout the African continent. In response, this Note presents a model that tracks the role of law in the production of queerphobic sentiment prior …

Questioning Market Aversion In Gender Equality Strategies: Designing Legal Mechanisms For The Promotion Of Gender Equality In The Family And The Market, Hila Shamir, Tsilly Dagan, Ayelet Carmeli

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

This Article suggests that tax and welfare policies that promote gender equality require creative thinking about the design of social mechanisms for the promotion of women. It offers a framework for expanding the institutional imagination in order to recalibrate welfare state reforms to promote women. In particular, we advocate the creative use of legal tools and doctrine to dismantle existing dichotomies between private and public, understand the various goals different mechanisms can serve and reassemble them to promote different mixes of normative goals. We propose doing so by looking simultaneously at two fields of redistribution: welfare state benefits and services …

Women’S Rights In The Dprk: Discrepancies Between International And Domestic Legal Instruments In Promoting Women’S Rights And The Reality Reflected By North Korean Defectors, Jina Yang

Cornell International Law Journal

It is commendable that the DPRK has ratified the CEDAW and has established legislative measures to protect women from violence and guarantee equal protection. However short of internationally accepted human rights standard the DPRK may fall, such actions show that the DPRK is nonetheless trying to be a responsible member of the international community. However, many findings show that women’s rights are far from reaching the international standards, because of patriarchal traditions that are entrenched to the North Korean society and the national institutions related to women’s rights, which are used to mobilize women to work for the state, rather …