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Full-Text Articles in Law
Racing Dobbs, Katherine M. Franke, Ria Tabacco Mar
Racing Dobbs, Katherine M. Franke, Ria Tabacco Mar
Faculty Scholarship
In Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade's limits on a state's ability to restrict, and indeed completely outlaw, abortion. The case raises fundamentally important questions about rights to reproductive autonomy, bodily integrity, sex equality, privacy, and health.
Upon closer examination, Dobbs is also about race and the nation's racial history, as the two papers published here argue. In Dreding Dobbs, Professor Katherine Franke suggests that Dobbs should be read alongside the Supreme Court's 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, in which the Court held that Black people-even free or freed Black …
Remarks On Manifesting Justice: Wrongly Convicted Women Reclaim Their Rights, Amber Baylor, Valena Beety, Susan P. Sturm
Remarks On Manifesting Justice: Wrongly Convicted Women Reclaim Their Rights, Amber Baylor, Valena Beety, Susan P. Sturm
Faculty Scholarship
The following are remarks from a panel discussion co-hosted by the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law and the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law on the book Manifesting Justice: Wrongly Convicted Women Reclaim Their Rights.
Remarks From The 2022 Symposium: The Equal Rights Amendment: A New Guarantee Of Sex Equality In The U.S. Constitution, Katherine M. Franke
Remarks From The 2022 Symposium: The Equal Rights Amendment: A New Guarantee Of Sex Equality In The U.S. Constitution, Katherine M. Franke
Faculty Scholarship
In so many respects, the culmination of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s career took place in 1996, three years after she joined the Supreme Court and twenty-four years before her death. In U.S. v. Virginia, Justice Ginsburg convinced a majority of the Supreme Court to embrace the strongest formulation of a constitutional norm condemning sex inequality in the Court’s history. The new rule articulated in the U.S. v. Virginia case declared that “[s]ex classifications ... may not be used, as they once were, ... to create or perpetuate the legal, social, and economic inferiority of women.”
Class, Care, And The Equal Rights Amendment, Kate Andrias
Class, Care, And The Equal Rights Amendment, Kate Andrias
Faculty Scholarship
This piece was submitted in connection with the 2022 Symposium The Equal Rights Amendment: A New Guarantee of Sex Equality in the U.S. Constitution. The event was co-sponsored by the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law and the Columbia Law School ERA Project.
Advocacy In Ideas: Legal Education And Social Movements, Monica Bell, Tanya K. Hernandez, Solangel Maldonado, Rachelle Perkins, Chantal Thomas, Olatunde C.A. Johnson, Elsie Lopez
Advocacy In Ideas: Legal Education And Social Movements, Monica Bell, Tanya K. Hernandez, Solangel Maldonado, Rachelle Perkins, Chantal Thomas, Olatunde C.A. Johnson, Elsie Lopez
Faculty Scholarship
Panel moderated by Professor Olatunde Johnson, featuring Professors Monica Bell, Tanya K. Hernández, Solangel Maldonado, and Chantal Thomas. Introduced by Elise Lopez.
Women Of Color And Health: Issues And Solutions, June Cross, Nia Weeks, Kristen Underhill, Chloe Bootstaylor
Women Of Color And Health: Issues And Solutions, June Cross, Nia Weeks, Kristen Underhill, Chloe Bootstaylor
Faculty Scholarship
Chloe Bootstaylor: Welcome to our second panel. This panel focuses on women of color in health, issues, and solutions. The session is inspired by Professor June Cross of the Columbia School of Journalism and her recent film, Wilhemina’s War, which follows the story of Wilhemina Dixon and depicts the obstacles that Americans with HIV/AIDS face in accessing not only adequate healthcare but also financial, infrastructural, and social support in their communities.
This panel will consist of Professor Underhill and Nia Weeks. June Cross will join us a little later on. We will start with a clip from her film, …
Closets, Standards, Abortion: A Reply To Professor Pozen, Carol Sanger
Closets, Standards, Abortion: A Reply To Professor Pozen, Carol Sanger
Faculty Scholarship
I am grateful for David Pozen's thoughtful observations regarding About Abortion. They have sharpened my understanding of how to think about the problem of abortion – or more accurately, about how abortion is kept problematic – as a matter of law and of social practice. I invoke the word "problematic" to describe the cultural setting in which abortion sits: although the procedure is legal, common, and safe, it is often treated as though it were not legal, or barely so; not common, except perhaps for women and girls who have nothing to do with you; and not at all …
The Abortion Closet (With A Note On Rules And Standards), David E. Pozen
The Abortion Closet (With A Note On Rules And Standards), David E. Pozen
Faculty Scholarship
An enormous amount of information and insight is packed into Carol Sanger's About Abortion: Terminating Pregnancy in Twenty-First Century America. The book is anchored in post-1973 American case law. Yet it repeatedly incorporates examples and ideas from popular culture, prior historical periods, moral philosophy, feminist theory, medicine, literature and the visual arts, and more.
Multidimensional Advocacy As Applied: Marriage Equality And Reproductive Rights, Suzanne B. Goldberg
Multidimensional Advocacy As Applied: Marriage Equality And Reproductive Rights, Suzanne B. Goldberg
Faculty Scholarship
Talking about marriage equality and reproductive rights advocacy together presents an interesting, and sometimes puzzling, assortment of challenges and opportunities. Both involve efforts to secure legal protections and social recognition that are fundamentally important to those who need them yet also deeply provocative to their opponents. For both, too, advocacy takes place on a shifting terrain shaped by competing views of sexuality, autonomy, equality, personhood, and more.
Yet the two advocacy efforts have experienced very different receptions over time. Just over two decades ago, the Supreme Court expressly affirmed that women have a constitutional right to seek an abortion and …
A Conversation With Edie Windsor, Edie Windsor, Suzanne B. Goldberg, Madeline M. Gomez, Andrew Chesley
A Conversation With Edie Windsor, Edie Windsor, Suzanne B. Goldberg, Madeline M. Gomez, Andrew Chesley
Faculty Scholarship
Suzanne Goldberg [SG]: It is not often that a law school gets to welcome a rock star. But in our world, Edie Windsor is a rock star. She is one of the major civil rights plaintiffs of our lifetime, whose lawsuit challenged – and triumphed over – the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Her victory in that suit has been vital to changing the landscape of marriage equality for all Americans. It is a tremendous honor, Edie, to have you here at Columbia Law School, and we welcome you.
A Tribute To The Work Of Patricia Williams, Katherine M. Franke
A Tribute To The Work Of Patricia Williams, Katherine M. Franke
Faculty Scholarship
The task of selecting an honoree is not an easy one – as we aim to take up a corpus of work that is at once deep enough and broad enough to sustain a full day of conversation. To be honest, most legal scholars tend to be more hedgehogs than foxes, burrowing down deep into an area of law over the course of a career rather than bringing their intellectual talents to bear on a range of social problems or diverse disciplinary locations. One person, without question, stands out as an exception to this tendency in the legal academy, and …
A Conversation With Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Gillian E. Metzger, Abbe Gluck
A Conversation With Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Gillian E. Metzger, Abbe Gluck
Faculty Scholarship
Professor Gillian Metzger: Katherine, thank you for that wonderful overview of all that the Justice has achieved and the history of Columbia Law School. And I want to apologize for those to whom I am showing my back, but this will allow us to have more of a conversation with the Justice.
Justice, thank you so much for being with us today. It is a real privilege for us to get to talk to you this way, and we know for the entire audience. You have had – as you have now heard (LAUGHS) – an amazing and just tremendously …
Symposium Honoring The Advocacy, Scholarship, And Jurisprudence Of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Introduction, Katherine M. Franke
Symposium Honoring The Advocacy, Scholarship, And Jurisprudence Of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Introduction, Katherine M. Franke
Faculty Scholarship
I want to welcome back Justice Ginsburg to Columbia Law School. She has been a frequent visitor since her time here as a student in the late 1950s and again as a member of our faculty in the 1970s. I know she knows, but it is worth reiterating that she always has a home here at Columbia.
Family Law Scholarship Goes To Court: Functional Parenthood And The Case Of Debra H. V. Janice R., Suzanne B. Goldberg, Harriet Antczak, Mark Musico
Family Law Scholarship Goes To Court: Functional Parenthood And The Case Of Debra H. V. Janice R., Suzanne B. Goldberg, Harriet Antczak, Mark Musico
Faculty Scholarship
Family law literature, while diverse in its exploration of contemporary families, also offers important threads of consensus. These strong points of coherence, when brought together with relevant case law, can be a useful means of advancing the academic conversation as well as engaging directly with courts to shape the law's development.
In a field as complex as family law, myriad academic viewpoints on any given issue often make it difficult to imagine scholarly discussion having utility for courts. As we aim to show here, however, amicus briefs can be important vehicles for synthesizing the literature, highlighting basic points of consensus …
Introduction, Katherine M. Franke
Introduction, Katherine M. Franke
Faculty Scholarship
Each year, the Center for Gender & Sexuality Law devotes a day- long symposium to the significant contributions of a senior scholar to the literature of gender and/or sexuality law and theory. For our inaugural symposium we were pleased to have selected Martha Nussbaum, the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago with joint appointments in the Philosophy Department, Law School and Divinity School. Professor Nussbaum’s work spans a daunting terrain. In her work as a classicist and theorist of liberal humanism, she has both explored an ethics of vulnerability and human flourishing, …
Decisional Dignity: Teenage Abortion, Bypass Hearings, And The Misuse Of Law, Carol Sanger
Decisional Dignity: Teenage Abortion, Bypass Hearings, And The Misuse Of Law, Carol Sanger
Faculty Scholarship
How might we think about reforming abortion regulation in a world in which the basic legality of abortion may, as a matter of constitutional law, at last be relatively secure? I have in mind the era just upon us in which the overturn of Roe v. Wadeno longer looms so threateningly over the reproductive rights community in the United States and is no longer necessarily its central concern. There is now a general and seemingly well-founded optimism that under the Obama administration, those who support and rely on reproductive rights will not have to pray nightly for the health …
Family Law Cases As Law Reform Litigation: Unrecognized Parents And The Story Of Alison D. V. Virginia M., Suzanne B. Goldberg
Family Law Cases As Law Reform Litigation: Unrecognized Parents And The Story Of Alison D. V. Virginia M., Suzanne B. Goldberg
Faculty Scholarship
Although the gap between law and lived experience comes as no surprise to most people, the divergence is especially striking – and disturbing – in the area of family law. Legal training quickly reveals that love is not a foundational element of family law, yet it can still be jarring to find that love has little, if any, bearing on the contours of the legal family. Love, after all, does not account for who can and cannot marry. Nor does the past love of an unmarried couple trigger the protections of divorce should the couple separate.
When children are involved, …
The Politics Of Same-Sex Marriage Politics, Katherine M. Franke
The Politics Of Same-Sex Marriage Politics, Katherine M. Franke
Faculty Scholarship
In this Essay I would like to share some reflections on the politics of same-sex marriage politics. In a very short period of time, this issue has moved to the center of the gay and lesbian rights movement as well as larger mainstream political and legal debates. Some have even argued that this issue affected, if not determined, the outcome of the 2004 presidential election. This, I believe, is rather an overstatement, but I must concede that the issue has gained traction in ways that most of us would not have predicted five years ago. The states of Vermont and …
Gendered Subjects Of Transitional Justice, Katherine M. Franke
Gendered Subjects Of Transitional Justice, Katherine M. Franke
Faculty Scholarship
Transitional societies must contend with a range of complex challenges as they seek to come to terms with and move beyond an immediate past saturated with mass murder, rape, torture, exploitation, disappearance, displacement, starvation, and all other manner of human suffering. Questions of justice figure prominently in these transitional moments, and they do so in a dual fashion that is at once backward and forward looking. Successor governments must think creatively about building institutions that bring justice to the past, while at the same time demonstrate a commitment that justice will form a bedrock of governance in the present and …
A Historical Guide To The Future Of Marriage For Same-Sex Couples, Suzanne B. Goldberg
A Historical Guide To The Future Of Marriage For Same-Sex Couples, Suzanne B. Goldberg
Faculty Scholarship
History and tradition have emerged, together, as contemporary flagship arguments for limiting marriage to different-sex couples. According to advocates of "traditional marriage," same-sex couples can be excluded from marriage today because marriage always has been reserved to male-female couples. Further, some contend, the restriction of marriage to different-sex couples has long been understood as necessary to provide channels to control naturally procreative (i.e., male-female) relationships.
However popular these claims might be in op-ed pieces and on talk radio, when they are made in the litigation context, the question is not whether they have rhetorical appeal but rather whether they can …
Women's Rights: Reframing The Issues For The Future, Ariana Dubler, Anika Rahman, Kathy Rodgers, Jane M. Spinak
Women's Rights: Reframing The Issues For The Future, Ariana Dubler, Anika Rahman, Kathy Rodgers, Jane M. Spinak
Faculty Scholarship
Good morning and welcome, everyone, to our panel on Women's Rights: Refraining the Issues for the Future. I am Kathy Rodgers. I'm from the class of 1973 of Columbia Law School, and I'm looking around this room – this is not what room A and B looked like back then! Everybody has a microphone, which is great, because we hope to have some good interactive discussion with all of you this morning.
I am also, in addition to being a Columbia Law alum, the president of NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund here in New York. For over thirty-two years, …
Remarks From The 75th Anniversary Luncheon, Barbara Aronstein Black
Remarks From The 75th Anniversary Luncheon, Barbara Aronstein Black
Faculty Scholarship
I will try to make this reasonably brief, though not as brief as a commencement address I was once asked to give. The invitation stated that I was to speak on any topic of my choice. Anything at all. For five minutes. Reporting this to one of my sons – I can't remember which one – I said, "They say it has to be no longer than five minutes. What can I possibly say in five minutes that's worth saying?" To which my son replied, "Did they say it has to be worth saying?"
Well, I'd like to say something …
Where Will Women Lawyers Be In 25 Years?, Frances E. Bivens, Joan Guggenheimer, Nancy Northrup, Susan Sturm, Judith Reinhardt Thoyer
Where Will Women Lawyers Be In 25 Years?, Frances E. Bivens, Joan Guggenheimer, Nancy Northrup, Susan Sturm, Judith Reinhardt Thoyer
Faculty Scholarship
Barbara Black said in her unbelievably moving remarks that Columbia has opened up its institutional heart to women. I thought that was a wonderful expression and, as a relative newcomer to Columbia, I have to agree. What does this mean? It means that women have become part of the cultural fabric of the Columbia Law School. We are not an accent. We are not an accessory. We are woven into the day-to-day fabric of the school. And this means being able both to participate in the old traditions and to reshape them to make some new traditions and then have …
On Discipline And Canon, Katherine M. Franke
On Discipline And Canon, Katherine M. Franke
Faculty Scholarship
While the title of the panel I participated in was "Why Do We Eat Our Young?", I think I prefer: "On Discipline and Canon," or to rework the title of the panel in the program, "Why Do We Eat Our Girlfriends?"
In my short remarks, I would like to raise a set not of answers, but of questions that over the last year or so a few of us have been discussing outside of our published work. These questions seem apt both for this panel and for this conference. Last November a group of really wonderful women at the University …