Law Commons^™

Passion's Progress: Modern Law Reform And The Provocation Defense, Victoria Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Based on a systematic study of fifteen years of passion murder cases, this article concludes that reform challenges our conventional ideas of a "crime of passion" and, in the process, leads to a murder law that is both illiberal and often perverse. If life tells us that crimes of passion are the stuff of sordid affairs and bedside confrontations, reform tells us that the law's passion may be something quite different. A significant number of the reform cases the author has studied involve no sexual infidelity whatsoever, but only the desire of the killer's victim to leave a miserable relationship. …

Comparatively Speaking: The Honor Of The East And The Passion Of The West, Lama Abu-Odeh

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this Article, I will attempt a comparative review by examining in the United States the crime that has the most affinity with the crime of honor in the Arab World: the killing of women in the heat of passion for sexual or intimate reasons, which is seen in the United States as one of many instances in which the more generic crime of passion can occur. For the purposes of this Article, I will use the term "crime of passion" as it is so specifically defined. The reason for the exercise is to locate precisely the meaning of the …

Intimate Violence And The Problem Of Consent, Jane H. Aiken

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The juxtaposition of intimacy with violence is striking. Intimacy implies a closeness and a vulnerability that is treasured and inviolate. Intimacy should foreclose the possibility of violence. Intimate violence should be an oxymoron. Yet, intimacy sometimes creates its own special kind of violence, one that can erupt into rape or assault. On a less physical level, intimacy may cause violence to a woman's personal integrity and economic independence.

Intimate violence manifests itself with a certain subtlety that forces women to walk a careful tightrope in order to avoid threatened harm. This essay is about that tightrope: the double binds women …

Sex, Culture, And Rights: A Re/Conceptualization Of Violence For The Twenty-First Century, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

The central theme of this Article, "Sex, Culture, and Rights: A Re/conceptualization of Violence," is that a re/vision of acts that constitute violence against women is necessary for gender equality -- both domestically and internationally -- to become a reality. This reconceptualization must address not only the normative concept of violence, i.e., the use of physical force, but it must also transform and reposition the idea of violence within a broader framework that includes, considers and aims to eradicate (1) psychological, social and political subordination of women; (2) male dominant (and female subservient) cultural and traditional practices; as well as …

Family Secrets, Antoinette M. Sedillo Lopez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Intersectionality And Positionality: Situating Women Of Color In The Affirmative Action Dialogue, Laura M. Padilla

Faculty Scholarship

This article explores the position of women of color in the affirmative action dialogue. Affirmative action has come under attack locally, statewide, and federally. During this same period, critical race feminists have brought into sharp relief how women of color are marginalized or erased in discourses over sex and gender, as well as over race and ethnicity. Despite these protests and warnings, the current debate over affirmative action continues this history of invisibility, perpetuating America's spoken and unspoken conceptions about where women of color belong. For example, most discussion of affirmative action focuses on race, more specifically on African-Americans. Some …

Evidence In A Different Voice: Some Thoughts On Professor Jonakait's Critique Of A Feminist Approach, Aviva A. Orenstein

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Principles And Passions: The Intersection Of Abortion And Gun Rights , Nicholas J. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

In this article, Professor Nicholas J. Johnson explores the parallels between the right of armed self-defense and the woman's right to abortion. Professor Johnson demonstrates that the theories and principles advanced to support the abortion right intersect substantially with an individual's right to armed self-defense. Professor Johnson uncovers common ground between the gun and abortion rights - two rights that have come to symbolize society's deepest social and cultural divisions - divisions that prompt many to embrace the abortion right while summarily rejecting the gun right. Unreflective disparagement of the gun right, he argues, threatens the vitality of the abortion …

"My God!": A Feminist Critique Of The Excited Utterance Exception To The Hearsay Rule, Aviva A. Orenstein

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

A Feminist Theory Of Malebashing, Susan H. Williams, David C. Williams

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Proposition 209, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

I have a proposition for you. It's called Proposition 209. All you have to do is stop discriminating in favor of women and racial minorities, and your perpetual problems of race and gender discrimination will finally disappear. If this Proposition sounds too good to be true ... well, you know how the saying goes. In law, as in life, the seductiveness of a proposition owes as much to its disregard of established norms as to its underlying content. Eliminate the affront to social convention, and a proposition promises about as much excitement as a routine liaison with one's spouse. But …

Of 'Subtle Prejudices,' White Supremacy And Affirmative Action: A Reply To Paul Butler, Margaret E. Montoya

Faculty Scholarship

I analyze the connection of affirmative action to two models of race and racism. I contend that the Supreme Court Justices who continue to support affirmative action adhere to a "prejudice" model in which race is a concept to be overcome and racism is merely a condition of individual ignorance. 13 On the other hand, I posit that Professor Butler's proposals fall within a "white supremacy" model, which looks at race as a historically contingent concept that has been used to subordinate non-white peoples from precolonial times through the present. This historical perspective offers the possibility that the concept of …

Working On The "Mommy-Track": Motherhood And Women Lawyers, Rebecca Korzec

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the effects of motherhood on the careers of women lawyers and the efficacy of the 'mommy-track' as a means of ameliorating these effects. Part I examines the current position of women in the legal profession. Part II examines the nature of 'motherhood' and the risk/benefit function of 'mommy-tracking.' Part III analyzes the 'mommy-track' from the perspective of feminist jurisprudence. Finally, Part IV examines issues related to workplace transformation. It is the position of this paper that 'mommy-tracking' reinforces undesirable stereotypes. Ironically, this apparent 'solution' actually forestalls the transformations, at home and at work, which could enable women …

From Gladiators To Problem-Solvers: Connective Conversations About Women, The Academy, And The Legal Profession, Susan P. Sturm

Faculty Scholarship

Dissatisfaction permeates the public and professional discourse about lawyers and legal education. Diverse communities within and outside the profession are engaged in multiple conversations critiquing legal education and the profession itself. These conversations, though linked in subject matter and orientation, often proceed on separate tracks.

One set of conversations explicitly focuses on women and people of color, centering on their marginalization and underrepresentation in positions of power. Those concerned about race and gender exclusion often participate in separate communities of discourse. Indeed, the symposium that spawned this article framed the inquiry about higher education in terms of gender. This exclusive …

Homosexuals, Torts, And Dangerous Things, Katherine M. Franke

Faculty Scholarship

Negligent, intentional, and strict liability torts. From a canonical standpoint, whatever else one might teach, it is not a first-year torts course if these three concepts are not covered. Torts has a canon, even a Restatement. Yet a canon evolves only after some criteria of value has been established such that privileged texts can be identified according to some authoritative standard. In other words, a canon is the result of a process by which a rule of recognition identifies authoritative texts.

At what point can we say that torts became a field and an intact legal subject, the canon …

What's Wrong With Sexual Harassment, Katherine M. Franke

Faculty Scholarship

In this article, Professor Franke asks and answers a seemingly simple question: why is sexual harassment a form of sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964? She argues that the link between sexual harassment and sex discrimination has been undertheorized by the Supreme Court. In the absence of a principled theory of the wrong of sexual harassment, Professor Franke argues that lower courts have developed a body of sexual harassment law that trivializes the legal norm against sex discrimination. After illustrating how the Supreme Court has not provided an adequate theory of sexual harassment as …

Commodification And Women's Household Labor, Katharine B. Silbaugh

Faculty Scholarship

A woman washes a kitchen floor. She puts the mop away and drives to the comer market. She consults a shopping list, and purchases groceries from it, carefully choosing the least expensive options. A four-year-old child is tugging at her leg while she does this, and she tries to entertain him, talking to him about the mopped floor, the grocery items. When she returns from the store, she prepares lunch from what she has brought home with her. She and the child both eat lunch. After lunch, she and the child collect laundry and she runs a load. She takes …

Lionheart Gals Facing The Dragon : The Human Rights Of Inter/National Black Women In The United States, Hope Lewis

Hope Lewis

This Article commands a more explicit engagement of critical race scholarship with feminist international human rights strategies. It focuses on Jamaican-American women. Part I discusses key aspects of the historical and sociological context in which the migration of Jamaican women to the New York City area has occurred. It also discusses trends in their participation in the paid labor force since the migratory patterns of Jamaican women are strongly linked to their employment opportunities. Part II describes and analyzes significant survival strategies used by working-class Jamaican-American women to escape from, reshape, or resist the exploitative conditions they face. The strategies …

Embracing The Tar Baby: Latcrit Theory And The Sticky Mess Of Race, Angela P. Harris, Leslie Espinoza

Angela P Harris

No abstract provided.

United States. V. Virginia New Gender Equal Protection Analysis With Ramifications For Pregnancy, Parenting And Title Vii.Pdf, Candace Kovacic-Fleischer

Candace Kovacic-Fleischer

Grappling With Gender Equality, Jerry R. Parkinson

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

In this twenty-fifth anniversary year of the enactment of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the issue of gender equity in athletics is as divisive as ever. Lawsuits by female athletes and the demise of many men's teams have changed perceptions of Title IX in the 1990s and have provided an impetus for a thorough reexamination of the gender equity issue.

In this Article, Professor Parkinson begins with a brief overview of the regulatory framework governing Title IX's application to athletics. He then examines the legal standards by which the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) …

Implications Of Global Polarization For Feminist Work, Gracia Clark

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

No abstract provided.

Toward A Feminist Analytics Of The Global Economy, Saskia Sassen

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Economic globalization has reconfigured fundamental properties of the

nation-state, notably territoriality and sovereignty. There is an incipient

unbundling of the exclusive territoriality we have lcing associated with the

nation-state. The most strategic instantiation of this unbundling is probably

the global city, which operates as a partly denationalized plaform for global

capital. Sovereignty is being unbundled by these economic and other noneconomic

practices and new legal regimes. At the limit this means that the

State is no longer the only site for sovereignty and the normativity that comes

with it, and further, that the State is no longer the exclusive subject …

As The World (Or Dare I Say Globe?) Turns: Feminism And Transnationalism, Fedwa Malti-Douglas

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

No abstract provided.

Stop Stomping On The Rest Of Us: Retrieving Publicness From The Privatization Of The Globe, Zillah Eisenstein

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Professor Eisenstein's article discusses the effects of globalization on the

relationship between privatization and public responsibility and how this

dynamic impacts the future of women across the globe. She argues that the

global growth of privatization in the North and West has disseminated around

the world to the detriment of women. Privatization, she contends, has been

accepted as the agenda of politicians for the late twentieth century, and public

responsibility has been lost as a result.

According to Professor Eisenstein, globalization has been essentially an

economic process in which a global economy surfaces without differences or

borders. The global economy, …

Strategic Sisterhood Or Sisters In Solidarity? Questions Of Communitarianism And Citizenship In Asia, Aihwa Ong

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing 1995) has spawned a

Triumphant sense among Western/Northern feminists that they are forging a

strategic sisterhood with less privileged women in the South. Feminists from

metropolitan countries seek a new North-South alliance whereby they make

strategic interventions on behalf of third world women by putting pressure on

their governments. Professor Ong critiques strategic sisterhood on the

following grounds:

First, strategic sisterhood is based on individualistic notions of

transnational feminine citizenship, ignoring the historical and cultural

differences between women from the first and third worlds. In particular, the

concept ignores geopolitical inequalities whereby postcolonial …

Beyond Bosnia And In Re Kasinga: A Feminist Perspective On Recent Developments In Protecting Women From Sexual Violence, Linda A. Malone

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Introduction: Feminism And Globalization: The Impact Of The Global Economy On Women And Feminist Theory Symposium, Alfred C. Aman

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

No abstract provided.

Globalization, Privatization, And A Feminist Public, Susan H. Williams

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

No abstract provided.

Dividing The Surplus: Will Globalization Give Women A Larger Or Smaller Share Of The Benefits Of Cooperative Production?, Kenneth G. Dau-Schmidt

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

No abstract provided.