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Comity & Federalism In Extraterritorial Abortion Regulation, Jensen Lillquist Nov 2024

Comity & Federalism In Extraterritorial Abortion Regulation, Jensen Lillquist

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court decided Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and held that states may regulate abortion in whatever manner they wish. In the wake of Dobbs, commentators and laypersons have focused primarily on its implications for reproductive rights and other fundamental rights—such as gay marriage. Less often discussed are the questions that arise regarding state extraterritorial jurisdiction. Since Dobbs, a patchwork of laws has developed: pro-life states have placed greater restrictions on abortion, while pro-choice states have sought to expand abortion access. Questions have arisen regarding whether and to what extent states may regulate the …


Abortion Access For Incarcerated People Post-Dobbs, Kate Bock Nov 2024

Abortion Access For Incarcerated People Post-Dobbs, Kate Bock

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has fundamentally altered the legal landscape regarding abortion access. Though abortion rights for all people across the United States have now been eliminated or are in jeopardy, incarcerated people are a particularly vulnerable group, given the way carceral institutions restrict autonomy and the drastic health implications of an unwanted pregnancy while confined. Before Dobbs, detained people retained the constitutional right to an elective abortion while incarcerated. To remedy violations of this right, women brought claims under the Fourteenth Amendment and the Eighth Amendment. In a post-Roe world, however, incarcerated folks denied abortion …


How Viable Is Viability? Artificial Womb Technology And The Threat To Abortion Access, James E. Brown Jan 2024

How Viable Is Viability? Artificial Womb Technology And The Threat To Abortion Access, James E. Brown

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The viability standard plays an important role in abortion access around much of the United States. In fact, before the Dobbs decision, the viability standard was the constitutional gatekeeper to abortion access and was uniform across the entire nation. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has removed the constitutional right to abortion altogether. Nevertheless, I will provide an argument as to why Dobbs does not signal the end of viability-based abortion around the U.S. I will prove the importance of the viability standard even in a post-Dobbs society, highlighting its operation within various state laws, such as Michigan’s Prop. 3, as well …


The Class Counsel Draft Gender Gap: An Analysis Of Class Counsel Applicants, Alissa Del Riego Jan 2024

The Class Counsel Draft Gender Gap: An Analysis Of Class Counsel Applicants, Alissa Del Riego

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article accomplishes three important and distinct objectives. First, it provides an updated window into the class counsel gender gap. Second, and most critically, it analyzes a to date unexamined data point—MDL class counsel applications. And third, based on its analysis of the data gathered, it demonstrates: (1) female class counsel application rates are correlated with appointment rates and (2) gender equal class counsel applicants’ success rate, suggesting courts are not discriminating against female class counsel applicants. Instead, the class counsel gender gap appears to be a product of the class counsel draft gender gap. To narrow the gap, more …


Gender Identity And Birth Certificates: The Surrogacy Nexus, Richard F. Storrow Jan 2024

Gender Identity And Birth Certificates: The Surrogacy Nexus, Richard F. Storrow

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article confronts and responds to the weaponization of birth certificates in recent controversies around gender identity by drawing parallels between gender identity and intentional parentage. A juxtaposition of gender identity with parentage identity reveals that they share the common underpinning of self-identification, raising the question why birth certificates are permitted to reflect one’s parentage identity but, as has been suggested in numerous controversies involving transgender litigants, not one’s gender identity. This Article argues that, for the same reasons that a surrogacy arrangement permits the parties to it to define for themselves who are the legal parents of the child …


Missed Connections In The U.N. Agenda: Applying The Women, Peace And Security Framework To The Feminization Of Poverty, Lauren A. Fleming Jul 2023

Missed Connections In The U.N. Agenda: Applying The Women, Peace And Security Framework To The Feminization Of Poverty, Lauren A. Fleming

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Women, Peace and Security, a multifaceted agenda intended to address the particular ways in which conflict affects women, has been on the United Nations agenda since the landmark Security Council Resolution 1325 passed in 2000. The unequal burden of poverty on women, a phenomenon that has been coined “the feminization of poverty,” has been on the United Nations agenda for even longer, since the 1995 Beijing Conference on Women. Yet, despite the fact that poverty and inequality both cause and result in conflict in a violent cycle, the problem of the feminization of poverty has not been integrated into the …


The Preservation Of The Separate Spheres Doctrine In Congress And The Federal Courts, Arjun Parikh Jul 2023

The Preservation Of The Separate Spheres Doctrine In Congress And The Federal Courts, Arjun Parikh

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In Bradwell v. State, an 1872 decision upholding an Illinois law prohibiting women from practicing law, the United States Supreme Court reasoned that the law was justified because women belonged in the “domestic sphere.” While today’s sex-based workplace exclusions are not as explicit as they once were, women still face barriers to remaining in the workforce and advancing in the workplace despite the existence of major federal legislation in the areas of pregnancy discrimination and family leave policy. Congress passed the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) in 1978 to stop pregnancy discrimination, but the PDA has not come close to …


Right To Informed Consent, Right To A Doula: An Evidence-Based Solution To The Black Maternal Mortality Crisis In The United States, Cecilia Landor Jul 2023

Right To Informed Consent, Right To A Doula: An Evidence-Based Solution To The Black Maternal Mortality Crisis In The United States, Cecilia Landor

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Note seeks to build on existing research about how to improve childbirth in the United States for women, particularly for Black women, given the United States’ extremely high maternal mortality rate. Through examining the history and characteristics of American and Western childbirth, it seeks to explore how the current birth framework contributes to maternal mortality. To fight this ongoing harm, I suggest increasing access to doulas— nonmedical support workers who provide “continuous support” to the birthing person.

Through this Note I seek to build on the research of others by identifying the ways medicalized birth practices fail women, particularly …


Title Ix And "Menstruation Or Related Conditions", Marcy L. Karin, Naomi Cahn, Elizabeth B. Cooper, Bridget J. Crawford, Margaret E. Johnson, Emily Gold Waldman Jul 2023

Title Ix And "Menstruation Or Related Conditions", Marcy L. Karin, Naomi Cahn, Elizabeth B. Cooper, Bridget J. Crawford, Margaret E. Johnson, Emily Gold Waldman

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 (“Title IX”) prohibits sex discrimination in educational programs or activities receiving federal financial assistance. Neither the statute nor its implementing regulations explicitly define “sex” to include discrimination on the basis of menstruation or related conditions such as perimenopause and menopause. This textual absence has caused confusion over whether Title IX must be interpreted to protect students and other community members from all types of sex-based discrimination. It also calls into question the law’s ability to break down systemic sex-based barriers related to menstruation in educational spaces. Absent an interpretation that there …


Constructing Race And Gender In Modern Rape Law: The Abandoned Category Of Black Female Victims, Jacqueline Pittman Jul 2023

Constructing Race And Gender In Modern Rape Law: The Abandoned Category Of Black Female Victims, Jacqueline Pittman

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Despite the successes of the 1960s Anti-Rape Movement, modern state rape statutes continue to prioritize white male perspectives and perceptions of race, ultimately ignoring the intersectional identity of Black women and leaving these victims without legal protection. This Note examines rape law’s history of allocating agency along gendered and racialized lines through statutory construction and other discursive techniques. Such legal constructions both uphold and cultivate the white victim/Black assailant rape dyad primarily by making the Black male the “ultimate” and most feared assailant. Rape law’s adherence to a white baseline sustains stereotypes of Black men as criminals and predators, which …


Making Mandates Last: Increasing Female Representation On Corporate Boards In The U.S., Nikki Williams Dec 2022

Making Mandates Last: Increasing Female Representation On Corporate Boards In The U.S., Nikki Williams

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

A lack of female representation on corporate boards has plagued our country for decades. Until a few years ago, there was not a single state or federal regulation that required corporations to fill board seats with female directors. Instead, the federal government talked around the issue. In 2010, the SEC established an optional reporting structure for corporations to communicate their hiring practices, but did little else. With no national plan in place, many states implemented legislation that urged corporations to hire female directors. But this legislation barely moved the needle. The country needed a mandate. And in 2018, California implemented …


Gender And Corporate Crime: Do Women On The Board Of Directors Reduce Corporate Bad Behavior?, Ido Baum, Dalit Gafni, Ruthy Lowenstein Lazar Dec 2022

Gender And Corporate Crime: Do Women On The Board Of Directors Reduce Corporate Bad Behavior?, Ido Baum, Dalit Gafni, Ruthy Lowenstein Lazar

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Public debate on mandating gender representation on boards of directors in the United States is close to a boiling point. California introduced a mandatory quota in 2018 only to see it constitutionally disqualified in 2022, and the Nasdaq Stock Market followed suit with new diversity rules in 2021 for all corporations listed on the exchange. While public discourse focuses on corporate performance, not much is known about the link between gender diversity and corporate normative obedience.

In this study we explore the relationship between boardroom gender representation and corporate compliance with the law. We examine the impact of gender diversity …


Critical Race Feminism, Health, And Restorative Practices In Schools: Centering The Experiences Of Black And Latina Girls, Thalia González, Rebecca Epstein Dec 2022

Critical Race Feminism, Health, And Restorative Practices In Schools: Centering The Experiences Of Black And Latina Girls, Thalia González, Rebecca Epstein

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Restorative practices (RP) in K-12 schools in the United States have grown exponentially since the early 1990s. Developing against a backdrop of systemic racism, RP has become embedded in education practice and policy to counteract the harmful and persistent patterns of disparities in school discipline experienced by students of color. Within this legal, social, and political context, the empirical evidence that has been gathered on school-based restorative justice has framed and named RP as a behavioral intervention aimed at reducing discipline incidents—that is, an “alternative” to punitive and exclusionary practices. While this view of RP is central to dismantling discriminatory …


Litigation, Referendum Or Legislation? The Road To Becoming The First In Asia To Institutionalize Same-Sex Marriage, Tzu-Chiang Huang Dec 2022

Litigation, Referendum Or Legislation? The Road To Becoming The First In Asia To Institutionalize Same-Sex Marriage, Tzu-Chiang Huang

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In the pursuit of same-sex marriage, advocates in each country evaluate the appropriate decision-making process for addressing this highly disputed issue—litigation, legislation, or referendum. The choice may be partially based on the institutional advantages of each approach, but more importantly, the choice is also conditioned by the legal and political context of each country, such as the authority of the court, the framing of public opinion, and the dynamics between movement and countermovement. Uniquely, all three decision-making processes are involved in the course of the institutionalization of same-sex marriage in Taiwan. This Article, focusing on the experience in Taiwan, examines …


Gentlewomen Of The Jury, Vivian N. Rotenstein, Valerie P. Hans Dec 2022

Gentlewomen Of The Jury, Vivian N. Rotenstein, Valerie P. Hans

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article undertakes a contemporary assessment of the role of women on the jury. In 1946, at a time when few women served on U.S. juries, the all-male Supreme Court opined in Ballard v. United States: “The truth is that the two sexes are not fungible; a community made up exclusively of one is different from a community composed of both; the subtle interplay of influence of one on the other is among the imponderables.” Three-quarters of a century later, women’s legal and social status has changed dramatically, with increased participation in the labor force, expanded leadership roles, and the …


Pregnant Transgender People: What To Expect From The Court Of Justice Of The European Union's Jurisprudence On Pregnancy Discrimination, Hannah Van Dijcke Jun 2022

Pregnant Transgender People: What To Expect From The Court Of Justice Of The European Union's Jurisprudence On Pregnancy Discrimination, Hannah Van Dijcke

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Pregnant transgender people’s experiences vary: they may identify as male or non-binary and may seek gender-affirming medical care to different degrees. This variety in gender identities and bodies puts additional pressure on CJEU’s pregnancy discrimination case law—a case law that is, as this Article argues, already flawed. Building on a critique of the CJEU’s decision in Dekker, this Article discusses three alternative approaches to addressing pregnancy discrimination in EU law. The first two approaches are different ways of construing pregnancy discrimination as sex discrimination. First, the Article discusses a gender-stereotyping approach to direct sex discrimination, and, second, an indirect sex …


Cruel Dilemmas In Contemporary Fertility Care: Problematizing America's Failure To Assure Access To Fertility Preservation For Trans Youth, Anna Reed Jun 2022

Cruel Dilemmas In Contemporary Fertility Care: Problematizing America's Failure To Assure Access To Fertility Preservation For Trans Youth, Anna Reed

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Transgender youth are increasingly able to access gender-affirming healthcare. Because gender-affirming care such as hormone therapy is clinically shown to reduce gender dysphoria and ease physical and social transition, every major U.S. medical association recognizes that gender-affirming healthcare is medically necessary for the treatment of dysphoria. However, an important dimension of gender-affirming care remains under-insured and overpriced: fertility preservation (FP). Several studies indicate that hormone therapies and certain gender-affirming surgeries can have negative, long-term impacts on future fertility. Although these impacts can be mitigated through approved FP methods such as sperm cryopreservation and oocyte cryopreservation, such methods are rarely affordable …


Surrogacy And Parenthood: A European Saga Of Genetic Essentialism And Gender Discrimination, Mélanie Levy Jun 2022

Surrogacy And Parenthood: A European Saga Of Genetic Essentialism And Gender Discrimination, Mélanie Levy

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This paper tells a story of shifting normativities, from tradition to modernity and back, regarding the recognition of legal parenthood in non-traditional families created through crossborder surrogacy. The cross-border nature of the surrogacy is often forced as most domestic legal frameworks in Europe still restrict the creation of non-traditional families through assisted reproductive technologies. Once back home, these families struggle to have birth certificates recognized and establish legal parenthood. The disjuncture between social reality and domestic law creates a situation of legal limbo. In its recent case law, the European Court of Human Rights has pushed for domestic authorities to …


Defining Sexual Orientation: A Proposal For A New Definition, Andrew Park Jun 2022

Defining Sexual Orientation: A Proposal For A New Definition, Andrew Park

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Laws prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation are becoming more common in all parts of the world. Few of these laws provide useful definitions of the term sexual orientation. As a result, the meaning and impact of these laws remains unclear. This Article reviews past and current definitions of sexual orientation according to how well they incorporate current empirical knowledge of sexual orientation, and how their use in human rights laws impacts the dignity, right to equality, and human development of sexual minorities. The Article gives particular attention to the definition of sexual orientation found in the Yogyakarta Principles which …


Trek To Triumph, Briaunna Buckner Apr 2022

Trek To Triumph, Briaunna Buckner

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

I was screaming in the stairwell of my home, holding a dead baby. The air was so thick that I could barely breathe. Tears were racing down my face as her twin sister, Zola, was screeching at the top of her lungs. “WHY LORD, don't take my baby!” Every emotion, every word, and every second after that moment felt black. All the sweet memories from just eight days of being able to hold her, kiss her, and love her fell in a black pit along with the dreams I had for my life. As I looked down at my sweet …


Title Ix And The Alleged Victimization Of Men: Applying Twombly To Federal Title Ix Lawsuits Brought By Men Accused Of Sexual Assault, Zoë Seaman-Grant Apr 2022

Title Ix And The Alleged Victimization Of Men: Applying Twombly To Federal Title Ix Lawsuits Brought By Men Accused Of Sexual Assault, Zoë Seaman-Grant

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Note provides a survey of the current state of Title IX law as applied to anti-male bias lawsuits and suggests how courts should apply Twombly’s plausibility standard to anti-male bias claims going forward. Part I of this Note provides an overview of sexual violence on college campuses and the history of Title IX regulations and jurisprudence. Part II offers a brief history of Title IX anti-male bias lawsuits, examines the structure of anti-male bias lawsuits, and analyzes the various pleading standards applied by courts. Part III lays out the types of facts pled by Title IX anti-male bias …


Reproduction And Gender Self-Determination: Fertile Grounds For Trans Legal Advocacy, Samira Seraji Apr 2022

Reproduction And Gender Self-Determination: Fertile Grounds For Trans Legal Advocacy, Samira Seraji

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Current medical constructions of trans identities reflect heterosexist understandings of gender expression—understandings that deny access to gender-affirming healthcare to those who fail to perform normative binary genders. As medical providers establish norms for how to “properly” be trans, the state codifies these norms, basing trans existence on rigidly defined and harshly enforced understandings of binary gender. When this construction of transness is codified on an institutional level, such as with gender reclassification rules for government identification, it forces trans people to conform their bodies to cisgender norms, and dangerously disrupts trans people’s bodily autonomy and diminishes their control over their …


The Home Of The Dispossessed, Allison Anna Tait Apr 2022

The Home Of The Dispossessed, Allison Anna Tait

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The objects that people interact with on a daily basis speak to and of these people who acquire, display, and handle them—the relationship is one of exchange. People living among household objects come to care for their things, identify with them, and think of them as a constituent part of themselves. A meaningful problem arises, however, when people who have deep connections to the objects that populate their lived spaces are not those who possess the legal rights of ownership. These individuals and groups—usually excluded from the realm of property ownership along lines of gender, race, and ethnicity—live on an …


Advancing Reproductive Justice In Latin America Through A Transitional Justice Lens, Rosario Grimà Algora Apr 2022

Advancing Reproductive Justice In Latin America Through A Transitional Justice Lens, Rosario Grimà Algora

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Reproductive autonomy is a pivotal part of women’s access to equal citizenship, yet it has not been included in any international nor regional human rights treaty. In the past decades, the U.N. Committees, notably the CEDAW Committee, and regional human rights bodies, particularly the Inter-American System for the Protection of Human Rights, have timidly advanced reproductive justice through their jurisprudence, including through the use of reparations. Drawing from the standards of reparations developed in the field of transitional justice, human rights bodies increasingly rely on reparations to enhance the transformative effects of their decisions. These reparations intend to include a …


Black Women & Women's Suffrage: Understanding The Perception Of The Nineteenth Amendment Through The Pages Of The Chicago Defender, Tamar Anna Alexanian Jan 2022

Black Women & Women's Suffrage: Understanding The Perception Of The Nineteenth Amendment Through The Pages Of The Chicago Defender, Tamar Anna Alexanian

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Susan B. Anthony once famously stated, “I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work for or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman.” The racism of many early suffragettes has been well documented and discussed; Black suffragettes and other suffragettes of color were, at best, relegated to the margins of the movement and, at worst, scorned and turned away by white suffragettes. Moreover, part of white suffragettes’ strategy for passage of the Nineteenth Amendment was based on racist appeals to white men; white suffragettes claimed that passage of the Nineteenth Amendment …


World Peace And Gender Equality: Addressing Un Security Council Resolution 1325’S Weaknesses, Elizabeth Griffiths, Sara Jarman, Eric Talbot Jensen Feb 2021

World Peace And Gender Equality: Addressing Un Security Council Resolution 1325’S Weaknesses, Elizabeth Griffiths, Sara Jarman, Eric Talbot Jensen

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The year 2020 marks the twentieth anniversary of the passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution (“UNSCR”) 1325, the most important moment in the United Nations’ efforts to achieve world peace through gender equality. Over the past several decades, the international community has strengthened its focus on gender, including the relationship between gender and international peace and security. National governments and the United Nations have taken historic steps to elevate the role of women in governance and peacebuilding. The passage of UNSCR 1325 in 2000 foreshadowed what many hoped would be a transformational shift in international law and politics. However, …


The Intersection Of Wrongful Convictions And Gender In Cases Where Women Were Sentenced To Death Or Life In Prison Without Parole, Connor F. Lang Feb 2021

The Intersection Of Wrongful Convictions And Gender In Cases Where Women Were Sentenced To Death Or Life In Prison Without Parole, Connor F. Lang

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Note examines National Registry of Exonerations data and discusses the prevalence of false confessions and presence of a child victim in cases of women who were convicted of murder, received a serious sentence, and were later exonerated. After looking at the cases of women exonerated after receiving death sentences or life without parole sentences in light of the prevalence of these factors, this Note argues that examination of the cases reveals that the presence of a false confession or a child victim may have contributed to some of the wrongful convictions where these factors may have led to the …


Resolutions Without Resolve: Turning Away From Un Security Council Resolutions To Address Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, Emma K. Macfarlane Feb 2021

Resolutions Without Resolve: Turning Away From Un Security Council Resolutions To Address Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, Emma K. Macfarlane

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In 2008, the United Nations first recognized rape as a war crime with the passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1820. Since then, the fight against conflict-related sexual violence has become a frequent subject of Security Council Resolutions. But what, if anything, has changed? Wartime sexual violence is still prevalent today and shows no signs of slowing down. This Note argues that Security Council Resolutions are not an effective method to prevent conflict-related sexual violence. The procedural weaknesses in passing Security Council Resolutions and the structure of the Security Council itself may do more harm than good to the efforts …


Criminal Record Relief For Human Trafficking Survivors: Analysis Of Current State Statutes And The Need For A Federal Model Statute, Ashleigh Pelto Feb 2021

Criminal Record Relief For Human Trafficking Survivors: Analysis Of Current State Statutes And The Need For A Federal Model Statute, Ashleigh Pelto

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Note defines criminal record relief and analyzes the effectiveness of three state criminal record relief statutes at protecting trafficking survivors. This analysis is based on State Report Cards: Grading Criminal Record Relief Laws for Survivors of Human Trafficking by Polaris, a leading human trafficking nonprofit. It next discusses the absence of federal criminal record relief and how a statute at the federal level could provide relief for survivors with federal convictions while simultaneously providing a model for states to ensure their statutes incorporate best practices for record relief moving forward. This Note then discusses how Polaris’s report stops short …


The Stability Paradox: The Two-Parent Paradigm And The Perpetuation Of Violence Against Women In Termination Of Parental Rights And Custody Cases, Judith Lewis Feb 2021

The Stability Paradox: The Two-Parent Paradigm And The Perpetuation Of Violence Against Women In Termination Of Parental Rights And Custody Cases, Judith Lewis

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Despite changing family compositions, entrenched in family law is the antiquated idea that a two-parent household, or its approximation vis-à-vis a shared custody arrangement, promotes stability and integrity and, thus, is in the best interest of the child. Yet, the concept that the two-parent household (or shared involvement of both parents in the child’s life if the parents separate) promotes stability for the family and is best for the child is a dangerous fallacy. When rape or intimate partner violence (IPV) is present, or the re-occurrence of violence remains a threat, the family unit is far from stable.

This Article …