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Full-Text Articles in Law

Gender Stereotypes And Gender Identity In Public Schools, Dara Purvis Jan 2020

Gender Stereotypes And Gender Identity In Public Schools, Dara Purvis

Journal Articles

In recent years, claims brought by transgender students requesting accommodations from a public school have been framed under Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any educational program or activity that receives federal funding. Given the changing interpretation of Title IX from the Obama to Trump administrations, both statutory and constitutional arguments supporting the right of public school students to express their gender in any manner contrary to traditional gendered norms have renewed vitality. In the decades since Stonewall, students facing school discipline for nonconforming gender presentation that violated …


The Rules Of Maternity, Dara Purvis Jan 2017

The Rules Of Maternity, Dara Purvis

Journal Articles

A diverse body of laws and regulations speaking to reproductive rights, healthcare, criminal punishment of drug use, termination of parental rights, and more creates the rules of maternity. These rules are guidance provided both obliquely and explicitly by the law's coercive power telling women both how to and who should mother. Rule one begins in pregnancy, with the message that "your body is your child's vessel." During pregnancy, women are counselled that doctor knows best. After the child's birth, the mother remains responsible for the people who enter a child's life, leading to rule 3: "mothers must always protect." …


Expectant Fathers, Abortion, And Embryos, Dara Purvis Jan 2015

Expectant Fathers, Abortion, And Embryos, Dara Purvis

Journal Articles

One thread of abortion criticism, arguing that gender equality requires that men be allowed to terminate legal parental status and obligations, has reinforced the stereotype of men as uninterested in fatherhood. As courts facing disputes over stored pre-embryos weigh the equities of allowing implantation of the pre-embryos, this same gender stereotype has been increasingly incorporated into a legal balancing test, leading to troubling implications for ART and family law.


Promoting The General Welfare: Legal Reform To Lift Women And Children In The United States Out Of Poverty, Jill C. Engle Jan 2013

Promoting The General Welfare: Legal Reform To Lift Women And Children In The United States Out Of Poverty, Jill C. Engle

Journal Articles

American women and children have been poor in exponentially greater numbers than men for decades. The problem has historic, institutional roots which provide a backdrop for this article’s introduction. English and early U.S. legal systems mandated a lesser economic status for women. Despite numerous legal changes aimed at combating the financial disadvantage of American women and children, the problem is worsening. American female workers, many in low-paying job sectors, earn roughly twenty percent less than their male counterparts. Nearly forty percent of single mothers and their children subsist below the poverty level. The recession exacerbated this problem, mostly because unemployment …


A Female Disease: The Unintentional Gendering Of Fibromyalgia Social Security Claims, Dara Purvis Jan 2012

A Female Disease: The Unintentional Gendering Of Fibromyalgia Social Security Claims, Dara Purvis

Journal Articles

Social Security disability claims are not supposed to be decided based on the gender of the applicant. Reliance on the apparently neutral mechanism of clinical medical evidence, however, has a disproportionate impact on women bringing disability claims based on fibromyalgia. Recognizing and identifying disability has been delegated by Congress and the Social Security Administration almost entirely to physicians, based upon a misguided and mistaken belief that clinical medical evidence evaluated by a trained physician will answer with certainty whether an individual claimant is capable of working. Fibromyalgia, a diffuse syndrome characterized by excess pain that is overwhelmingly diagnosed in women …


Female Law Students, Gendered Self-Evaluation, And The Promise Of Positive Psychology, Dara Purvis Jan 2012

Female Law Students, Gendered Self-Evaluation, And The Promise Of Positive Psychology, Dara Purvis

Journal Articles

For the last several decades, studies and surveys have shown that female law students perform worse and feel worse about their experiences in law school than do male students. Hidden in average figures, however, is a subgroup of female students who thrive. Positive psychology, focusing on what traits make people happy rather than how to alleviate depression, provides novel ideas of how to improve legal education for women without making accommodations specifically targeting gender.


Overruling The Jury: Duncan V. Gmc And Appellate Treatment Of Hostile Work Environment Judgments, Dara Purvis Jan 2006

Overruling The Jury: Duncan V. Gmc And Appellate Treatment Of Hostile Work Environment Judgments, Dara Purvis

Journal Articles

In 2002, the Eighth Circuit reversed a one million dollar jury award to the plaintiff in a sexual harassment suit against General Motors Corporation. This reversal demonstrates the danger of appellate review of such verdicts, limiting sexual harassment verdicts to the lowest common denominator in that circuit.


So Much Activity, So Little Change: A Reply To The Critics Of Battered Women's Self-Defense, Kit Kinports Jan 2004

So Much Activity, So Little Change: A Reply To The Critics Of Battered Women's Self-Defense, Kit Kinports

Journal Articles

Prior to 1970, the term "domestic violence" referred to ghetto riots and urban terrorism, not the abuse of women by their intimate partners. Today, of course, domestic violence is a household word. After all, it has now been ten years since the revelation of football star O.J. Simpson's history of battering purportedly sounded "a wake-up call for all of America"; ten years since Congress enacted legislation haled as "a milestone . . .truly a turning point in the national effort to break the cycle" of violence; and twenty years since Farrah Fawcett's portrayal of Francine Hughes in the movie The …


A Paradigm For Sexual Harassment: Toward The Optimal Level Of Loss, Marie T. Reilly Jan 1994

A Paradigm For Sexual Harassment: Toward The Optimal Level Of Loss, Marie T. Reilly

Journal Articles

This article proposes a paradigm that draws from the common-law rule of negligence. It defines actionable sexual conduct in the workplace in terms of the cost of precautionary conduct and the increased safety such precaution would have yielded. Like the rule of negligence, the proposed paradigm creates incentives for men and women to take steps to prevent sexual conduct loss to the point at which the cost of an additional increment of precaution is equal to the value of the reduction in risk of loss. This point is the optimal level of precaution. After this point, additional precaution might further …


Evidence Engendered, Kit Kinports Jan 1991

Evidence Engendered, Kit Kinports

Journal Articles

Part I of this article briefly describes feminist legal theory and its evolution. Part II then discusses the extent to which evidence as a whole is a gendered topic that reflects predominantly male traits and ideals, and Part III analyzes various specific evidentiary doctrines from a feminist perspective. Finally, Part IV examines way of incorporating feminist theories in teaching an evidence course.