Law Commons^™

Do Ask And Do Tell: Rethinking The Lawyer's Duty To Warn In Domestic Violence Cases, Margaret B. Drew, Sarah Buel

Margaret B Drew

Empirical data document that while domestic violence victims face high risk of recurring abuse, batterers’ lawyers may be privy to information that could avert further harm. Attorneys owe a duty of confidentiality to their clients that can be breached only in extraordinary circumstances, such as when counsel learns her client plans to commit a crime. To resolve the tension between client confidentiality and victim safety, this Article argues that, in the context of domestic violence cases, lawyers have an affirmative duty to (1) screen battering clients who have indicated a likelihood of harming others, (2) attempt to dissuade them from …

Weighty Speech: Addressing Body Size In The Classroom, Yofi Tirosh

Yofi Tirosh

The politics of body size has been the topic of intriguing feminist work. Although in my view this issue is still undertheorized, I have long sought for a way to bring what does exist in the literature into my academic activities. The opportunity arose when, as a graduate student at the University of Michigan in 2001, I taught an undergraduate mini-course in the women's studies program, which I named Weight as a Cultural Question.

This essay discusses two pedagogical challenges I faced while teaching a class. Both questions deal with the extent to which it is productive to talk about …

The Recognition Of Same-Sex Relationships: Comparative Institutional Analysis, Contested Social Goals, And Strategic Institutional Choice, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

The emerging field of comparative institutional analysis (CIA) has much to offer public policy analysts. However, the failure of CIA to address the dynamic process through which social goals are articulated limits the scope of its application to the largely prescriptive pronouncements of legal scholars. By examining the movement for equal recognition of same-sex relationships, this Essay builds on the basic observations of CIA and introduces a new dimension, namely the dynamic process through which social goals are articulated and social change is pursued. The acknowledgment that the production of social goals involves institutional behavior, as well as multiple sites …

Confronting Conventional Thinking: The Heuristics Problem In Feminist Legal Theory, Nancy Levit

Nancy Levit

The thesis of The Heuristics Problem is that the societal problems about which identity theorists are most concerned often spring from and are reinforced by thinking riddled with heuristic errors. This article first investigates the ways heuristic errors influence popular perceptions of feminist issues. Feminists and critical race theorists have explored the cognitive bias of stereotyping, but have not examined the ways probabilistic errors can have gendered consequences. Second, The Heuristics Problem traces some of the ways cognitive errors have influenced the development of laws relating to gender issues. It explores instances in judicial decisions in which courts commit heuristic …