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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Social Foundations Of Law, Martha Albertson Fineman
The Social Foundations Of Law, Martha Albertson Fineman
Faculty Articles
There are several important questions to ask both our politicians and ourselves as we seek to refine and further define an otherwise abstract commitment to substantive equality with which to replace our current formal version. As with many concepts of historic magnitude, some of the most significant questions to pose about equality have to do with how we should respond to evolutions in understanding and changes in aspiration for the term: ls a mere commitment to formal equality sufficient for a humane and modem state? How should the state respond to the fact that our society is increasingly one in …
Freedom In A Regulatory State?: Lawrence, Marriage And Biopolitics, Dean Spade, Craig Willse
Freedom In A Regulatory State?: Lawrence, Marriage And Biopolitics, Dean Spade, Craig Willse
Faculty Articles
This paper attempts to trace the links between the Lawrence v. Texas decision and campaigns for gay marriage rights in order to envision movements that seek justice for more than just the most racially and economically privileged lesbians and gay men. The authors outline the limits of the agenda represented by Lawrence and propose alternative modes for resisting the coercive regulation of sexuality, gender, and family formations.
Citizen And Citizenship Within And Beyond The Nation, Tayyab Mahmud
Citizen And Citizenship Within And Beyond The Nation, Tayyab Mahmud
Faculty Articles
This review essay deploys critical social theory and critical race theory to interrogate concepts of citizen and citizenship. It reviews three submissions to a Lationa/o Critical Legal Theory (LatCrit) Symposium. One explores the relationship between law, race, and nation-building. The second examines the relationship between race and citizenship through the prism of police round-up of undocumented workers in Arizona. The last located the question of citizenship and legal subjecthood beyond the traditional confines of the nation-state.
Screening The Law: Ideology And Law In American Popular Culture, Mark Niles, Naomi Mezey
Screening The Law: Ideology And Law In American Popular Culture, Mark Niles, Naomi Mezey
Faculty Articles
This paper reevaluates Frankfurt School theory, and other cultural critiques, in an effort to bring a more sophisticated analysis to bear on popular culture depictions of law. It invokes the cultural critiques of the Birmingham School in order to assess the more subtle ideological content more often found in film. The focus is not only on how popular culture functions as a mechanism for communicating and reproducing ideologies, but also what this function is based on, a theoretical analysis that asks what images of law and legal justice one might expect to see in popular media. The article also assesses …
Limit Horizons & Critique: Seductions And Perils Of The Nation, Tayyab Mahmud
Limit Horizons & Critique: Seductions And Perils Of The Nation, Tayyab Mahmud
Faculty Articles
This essay introduces four contributions on nation and nationalism that form a cluster in the 2005 Annual Symposium of Latina/o Critical Legal Theory (LatCrit). It puts forward the concept of "limit horizons": the hegemonic ontological categories that so imprint the imaginary of an age the even critique remains imprisoned in the normalcy of these categories - an imprisonment that curtails the transformatory potential of critique. It is argued that the modern concept of the nation is such a limit horizon. Consequently, any critical engagement with the concept of the nation must concurrently be an exercise in self-critique to ensure that …
Lawrence Summers’ Speech On “Innate” Differences Between Men And Women--A Different Perspective, Thomas Fischer
Lawrence Summers’ Speech On “Innate” Differences Between Men And Women--A Different Perspective, Thomas Fischer
Faculty Articles
In this article, Professor Fischer outlines his experience in the admissions department at Georgetown University Law Center as well as other legal academic settings, and the perspective he gained with regard to women in the sphere of legal academia. The article outlines a careful reflection over the role of gender in these settings, in contrast with Lawrence Summer's perspective on innate gender differences.
Allegory From The Cave: A Story About A Mis-Educated Profession And The Paradoxical Prescription, Natasha Martin
Allegory From The Cave: A Story About A Mis-Educated Profession And The Paradoxical Prescription, Natasha Martin
Faculty Articles
The article reviews and engages Professor Derrick Bell’s more recent scholarship on the nature of the legal profession and the practice of law – ETHICAL AMBITION: LIVING A LIFE OF MEANING AND WORTH – placing Bell’s work in the broader framework of the entire legal enterprise highlighting its relevance to legal ethics, the ills of the profession and legal training. The article juxtaposes Bell’s more contemporary critique of the legal profession and practice with the observations of Carter G. Woodson in THE MIS-EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO, another African-American educator largely unfamiliar to the broader legal academy. The author proposes that …
Essay: A Search For Reason In Fairy Tales, John F. Hernandez
Essay: A Search For Reason In Fairy Tales, John F. Hernandez
Faculty Articles
A fairy tale: Once upon at time (not so very long ago), in a land (not so far away) lived a beautiful queen (well, actually a "runner up ") with a golden voice. The beautiful queen reined over her people and sang of sunshine. Some of the queen's subjects had felt that they were not treated fairly by the laws of the land and sought to have their unfair treatment prohibited. Apparently, this caused the queen to develop a fear and hatred for these subjects. These subjects had done nothing to the queen. Yet, the queen made it her mission …