Law Commons^™

Western Feminism Before And After October 7, Lama Abu-Odeh

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this interview, I provide my view on the state of Western feminism before and after the assault on Gaza. The interview includes discussion of the various strands of emergent feminisms in the West and some of their offshoots as they appear in Palestine in the context of Israeli colonialism and resistance to it.

Defragging Feminist Cyberlaw, Amanda Levendowski

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In 1996, Judge Frank Easterbrook famously observed that any effort to create a field called cyberlaw would be “doomed to be shallow and miss unifying principles.” He was wrong, but not for the reason other scholars have stated. Feminism is a unifying principle of cyberlaw, which alternately amplifies and abridges the feminist values of consent, safety, and accessibility. Cyberlaw simply hasn’t been understood that way—until now.

In computer science, “defragging” means bringing together disparate pieces of data so they are easier to access. Inspired by that process, this Article offers a new approach to cyberlaw that illustrates how feminist values …

Hard Truths About Soft Ip, Amanda Levendowski

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

People routinely refer to copyright and trademark as “soft IP” to distinguish these practices from another area of intellectual property: patent. But the term reflects implicit biases against copyright and trademark doctrine and practioners. “Soft IP” implies that patent law alone is hard, even though patents are no more physically, metaphorically or intellectually hard than copyrights and trademarks. Despite stereotypes to the contrary, patents are not necessarily more practically hard: while the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office requires technical training for patent prosecutors, which excludes many women and people of color, no such experience is necessary for most patent litigators …

Women In The Legal Academy: A Brief History Of Feminist Legal Theory, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Women’s entry into the legal academy in significant numbers—first as students, then as faculty—was a 1970s and 1980s phenomenon. During those decades, women in law schools struggled: first, for admission and inclusion as individual students on a formally equal footing with male students; then for parity in their numbers in classes and on faculties; and, eventually, for some measure of substantive equality across various parameters, including their performance and evaluation both in and in front of the classroom, as well as in the quality of their experiences as students and faculty members and in the benefits to be reaped from …

Equality's Future: An Introduction, Victoria Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

We stand at an extraordinary moment: never before have so many powerful men wished to be women. For the first time in history, a massive number of male and female voters--18 million in fact--cast their ballots to nominate a woman, Senator Hillary Clinton, to be President of the United States. Disappointed at Senator Clinton's failure to win the Democratic Party's nomination, many women threatened to bolt the party. Sensing opportunity, the Republican Presidential candidate, Senator John McCain, promptly named as his vice-presidential running mate the first woman ever nominated by the Republican Party to a Presidential ticket. And, not to …

Law's Nobility, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article first aims to set out the feminist theory of Catharine MacKinnon as explicitly as possible and in a way that accounts for its incredible power. To strengthen MacKinnon's theoretical project, the article proposes some modifications to the original that are drawn from, in part, the critiques of queer theorists. The crucial departure proposed here concerns MacKinnon's "critique of desire," which in my view is deeply mistaken. Rather than distrusting the sexual desires of women as hopelessly polluted by subordination, we should be neutral -- neither critical nor confident -- regarding the degree to which our desires, if fulfilled, …

Feminism And International Law: An Opportunity For Transformation, Rosa Ehrenreich Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this essay, the author wants to outline briefly both some of the ways in which the assumptions and categories of international law can be damaging to women, and also some of the ways in which creative feminists could use international law to transform both international policy and the domestic political and legal discourse. In the wake of September 11, a robust feminist engagement with international law and policy is more urgent than ever before.

The Difference In Women’S Hedonic Lives: A Phenomenological Critique Of Feminist Legal Theory, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Part One of this article provides a phenomenological and hedonic critique of the conception of the human - and thus the female - that underlies liberal legal feminism. Part Two presents a phenomenological critique of the conception of the human - and thus the female - which underlies radical feminist legal criticism. Again, I will argue that in both cases the theory does not pay enough attention to feminism: liberal feminist legal theory owes more to liberalism than to feminism and radical feminist legal theory owes more to radicalism than it does to feminism. Both models accept a depiction of …

The "Normal" Successes And Failures Of Feminism And The Criminal Law, Victoria Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

To write of feminist reform in the criminal law is to write of simultaneous success and failure. We have seen marked changes in the doctrines and the practice of rape law, domestic violence law, and the law of self-defense. There is not a criminal law casebook in America today, nor a state statute book, that does not tell this story. Yet for all of this success, we also live in a world in which reform seems to suffer routine failures. Many believe, for example, that feminist reforms have rid rape law of the resistance requirement; however, recent scholarship makes it …

Crossing The River Of Blood Between Us: Lynching, Violence, Beauty, And The Paradox Of Feminist History, Emma Coleman Jordan

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Understandably, early feminist legal theory and history focused almost exclusively on establishing white women's autonomy against white male dominance. The vehicles of nineteenth century women's liberation included elements of public equality such as ownership of property, the right to vote, access to male dominated occupations, equal education and employment opportunity. Twentieth century feminists extended the equality project by penetrating the "private" sphere and attacking the very notion of a separate zone of family relations which was immune from government intervention to protect women from male abuse. Cultural feminists like Carol Gilligan took another approach, arguing that women's experiences as sexual …

Equality Theory, Marital Rape, And The Promise Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

During the 1980s a handful of state judges either held or opined in dicta what must be incontrovertible to the feminist community, as well as to most progressive legal advocates and academics: the so-called marital rape exemption, whether statutory or common law in origin, constitutes a denial of a married woman's constitutional right to equal protection under the law. Indeed, a more obvious denial of equal protection is difficult to imagine: the marital rape exemption denies married women protection against violent crime solely on the basis of gender and marital status. What possibly could be less rational than a statute …