Law Commons^™

The Women Feminism Forgot: Rural And Working-Class White Women In The Era Of Trump, Lisa R. Pruitt

Lisa R Pruitt

Acting White? Or Acting Affluent? A Book Review Of Acting White? Rethinking Race In "Post-Racial" America, Lisa Pruitt

Lisa R Pruitt

Acting White? Rethinking Race in “Post-Racial” America (2013) is the latest installment in Devon Carbado and Mitu Gulati’s decade-plus collaboration regarding issues of race and employment. This review lauds the book’s comprehensive treatment of the double bind that racial minorities—especially blacks—experience within principally white institutions. In this volume, the authors expand on their prior employment-centered work to consider, for example, Barack and Michelle Obama’s presence on the national political stage, racial identity and performance in the context of higher education admissions, and racial profiling by law enforcement. With a focus on intra-racial diversity, Carbado and Gulati begin to gesture to …

Urbanormativity, Spatial Privilege, And Judicial Blind Spots In Abortion Law, Lisa Pruitt

Lisa R Pruitt

State laws regulating abortion have proliferated dramatically in recent years. Twenty-two states adopted 70 different restrictions in 2013 alone. Between 2011 and 2013, state legislatures passed 205 abortion restrictions, exceeding the 189 enacted during the entire prior decade. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recently upheld as constitutional several such restrictions, parts of Texas H.B. 2 (2013), in Planned Parenthood of Texas v. Abbott. That court is currently considering the constitutionality of a similar Mississippi law. These and other recent cases raise issues likely to be heard soon by the U.S. Supreme Court. Among the regulations at …

Who's Afraid Of White Class Migrants? On Denial, Discrediting, And Disdain (And Toward A Richer Conception Of Diversity), Lisa R. Pruitt

Lisa R Pruitt

The Good The Bad And The Ugly, Lisa Pruitt

Lisa R Pruitt

This is a contribution to a collection of reflections by former chairs of the AALS Section on Women in Legal Education. The collection spans four decades, beginning with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg's reflections on her year as chair in 1972 and continuing through Danne L. Johnson's 2011 term as Chair. Professor Pruitt was Chair of the Section in 2010.

Deconstructing Cedaw’S Article 14: Naming And Explaining Rural Difference, Lisa Pruitt

Lisa R Pruitt

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is the first human rights instrument to recognize explicitly rural-urban difference. It does so by enumerating specific rights for rural women in Article 14 and also by mentioning their needs in relation to Article 10 on education. In this Essay, I examine the Convention’s Travaux Préparatoires to better understand the forces and considerations that led to the inclusion of Article 14 and its recognition of rural people and places. I also assess Article 14’s particular mandates in light of both that drafting history and CEDAW’s other provisions, …

Judging Parents, Judging Place: Poverty, Rurality, And Termination Of Parental Rights, Lisa Pruitt, Janet Wallace

Lisa R Pruitt

Parents are judged constantly, by fellow parents and by wider society. But the consequences of judging parents may extend beyond community reputation and social status. One of the harshest potential consequences is the state’s termination of parental rights. In such legal contexts, the state assesses parents’ merits as parents in relation to a wide array of their characteristics, decisions and actions, including where the parents live.

Among those parents judged harshly in relation to geography are impoverished parents who live in rural places. We argue that such judgments are unjust because poor rural parents often do not have ready access …

The Geography Of The Class Culture Wars, Lisa Pruitt

Lisa R Pruitt

This Essay is a contribution to a colloquy about Joan C. Williams’s book, Reshaping the Work-Family Debate: Why Men and Class Matter (Harvard University Press 2010). Williams argues that class matters because socially conscious progressives need working class allies to achieve work-family reform for the benefit of all. Williams calls us not only to think about class and recognize it as a significant axis of stratification and (dis)advantage, but also to treat the working class with respect and dignity. Williams writes of the “class culture wars” between social progressives (mostly within the “professional/managerial class”) and the white working class. She …

The Geography Of The Class Culture Wars, Lisa R. Pruitt

Lisa R Pruitt

No abstract provided.

Judging Parents, Judging Place: Termination Of Parental Rights In Rural America, Lisa R. Pruitt, Janet L. Wallace

Lisa R Pruitt

Parents are constantly judged, by fellow parents and by wider society. But the consequences of judging parents sometimes extend beyond community reputation and social status. When law and legal institutions get involved, such judgments may result in the termination of parental rights. In these legal contexts, parents’ merits as parents are typically assessed in relation to a wide array of their decisions and actions, including where they live.

Among those judged harshly in relation to geography are impoverished parents who live in rural places. Yet judgments of these parents are particularly unfair in that poor rural parents often do not …

Judging Parents, Judging Place: Poverty, Rurality And Termination Of Parental Rights, Lisa R. Pruitt, Janet L. Wallace

Lisa R Pruitt

Parents are constantly judged, by fellow parents and by wider society. But the consequences of judging parents sometimes extend beyond community reputation and social status. When law and legal institutions get involved, such judgments may result in the termination of parental rights. In these legal contexts, parents’ merits as parents are typically assessed in relation to a wide array of their decisions and actions, including where they live.

Among those judged harshly in relation to geography are impoverished parents who live in rural places. Yet judgments of these parents are particularly unfair in that poor rural parents often do not …

Judging Parents, Judging Place: Termination Of Parental Rights In Rural America, Lisa R. Pruitt, Janet L. Wallace

Lisa R Pruitt

Parents are constantly judged, by fellow parents and by wider society. But the consequences of judging parents sometimes extend beyond community reputation and social status. When law and legal institutions get involved, such judgments may result in the termination of parental rights. In these legal contexts, parents’ merits as parents are typically assessed in relation to a wide array of their decisions and actions, including where they live.

Among those judged harshly in relation to geography are impoverished parents who live in rural places. Yet judgments of these parents are particularly unfair in that poor rural parents often do not …

Cedaw And Rural Development: Empowering Women With Law From The Top Down, Activism From The Bottom Up, Lisa R. Pruitt

Lisa R Pruitt

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is one of the most widely ratified human rights treaties in history, yet many view it as a failure in terms of what it has achieved for women. In spite of the lack of a meaningful enforcement mechanism and various other shortcomings, however, CEDAW has inspired feminist activism around the world and helped raise women’s legal consciousness. While CEDAW itself is widely viewed as a product of feminist activism in the international arena, this essay explores the Convention’s role as a source of — and tool for …

How You Gonna’ Keep Her Down On The Farm, Lisa R. Pruitt

Lisa R Pruitt

Gender, Geography & Rural Justice, Lisa R. Pruitt

Lisa R Pruitt

Like other legal scholars, feminists often think about social change over time, using history as a lens to reveal disadvantage and injustice. They have demonstrated, for example, that the public/private divide and related separate spheres ideology are socially contingent developments based on evolving perceptions of women and gender roles. Shifts in such perceptions have thus informed legal changes, and vice versa.

I argue in this Article that a more grounded and more nuanced understanding of women’s lived realities requires legal scholars to engage not only history, but also geography. Because spatial aspects of women’s lives implicate inequality and moral agency, …

Migration, Development And The Promise Of Cedaw For Rural Women, Lisa Pruitt

Lisa R Pruitt

This Article explores the potential of international development efforts and human rights law to enhance the livelihoods of rural women in the developing world. In particular, the Article takes up the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which enumerates in Article 14 specific rights for rural women as a class. Pruitt’s focus here is on Article 14’s guarantees in relation to land ownership, education, development planning, access to credit, marketing facilities and technology, and other rights that are linked closely to women’s role as the architects of food security. While CEDAW has attracted enormous …

Place Matters: Domestic Violence And Rural Difference, Lisa R. Pruitt

Lisa R Pruitt

This Article considers the phenomenon of domestic violence in relation to the rural-urban axis. Written for a symposium commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Feminism and Legal Theory Project at the University of Wisconsin, it assesses the difference that rurality makes to the occurrence, investigation, prosecution, and judicial decision-making regarding this crime. Among the factors analyzed are spatial or geographic isolation, along with the social isolation and lack of anonymity it fosters; severe economic disadvantage; the entrenched nature of rural patriarchy; and legal actors who are often ill-informed about domestic violence and constrained by limited resources. These rural differences are …

Rural Families And Work-Family Issues, Lisa Pruitt

Lisa R Pruitt

This essay, an entry for the on-line Sloan Work and Family Encyclopedia, provides an overview of work-family challenges in the context of rural America. Among the issues addressed are lack of economic diversification and opportunity; deficits in human capital; the dearth of childcare, transportation and other services that facilitate employment; and the deeply entrenched character of gender roles in rural societies. The entry discusses not only concerns related to rural socioeconomic disadvantage, but also those arising from the distances that separate rural residents from work, educational opportunities, and services. The essay notes that rural families are sometimes disserved by policies …

Toward A Feminist Theory Of The Rural, Lisa R. Pruitt

Lisa R Pruitt

Feminists have often criticized law’s ignorance of women’s practical, lived experiences, even as they have also sought to reveal the variety among those experiences. This article builds on both critiques to argue for greater attentiveness to a neglected aspect of women’s situation: place. Specifically, Professor Pruitt asserts that the hardships and vulnerability that mark the lives of rural women and constrain their moral agency are overlooked or discounted by a contemporary cultural presumption of urbanism.

Professor Pruitt considers judicial responses to the realities of rural women’s lives in relation to three different legal issues: domestic violence, termination of parental rights, …

A Kinder, Gentler Law School? Race, Ethnicity, Gender, And Legal Education At King Hall, Lisa Pruitt

Lisa R Pruitt

Diversity is touted as a preeminent concern and important goal of the legal profession generally and of the UC Davis School of Law specifically. Known as King Hall (after Martin Luther King, Jr.), the UC Davis School of Law is relatively diverse compared to other law schools and enjoys a reputation as a kinder, gentler place to study law. This article and the study on which it is based investigate whether King Hall truly is, for students of various demographic backgrounds, the uniquely supportive community it purports to be. The article thus contributes to the burgeoning literature on the influence …

Her Own Good Name: Two Centuries Of Talk About Chastity, Lisa R. Pruitt

Lisa R Pruitt

Since the earliest days of U.S. legal history, women have sought legal redress for statements about their sexual behavior or otherwise about them as sexual beings. These female plaintiffs have typically employed defamation law to sue on the basis of communications that undermined their reputations for sexual propriety, which the law referred to as chastity. In this Article, Professor Pruitt tracks women’s use of defamation law from the earliest recorded cases to the turn of the twenty-first century, noting how changing society and evolving legal doctrines have altered judicial responses to these claims.

Defamation law was historically highly responsive to …

"On The Chastity Of Women All Property In The World Depends": Injury From Sexual Slander In The Nineteenth Century, Lisa R. Pruitt

Lisa R Pruitt

In this Article, Professor Pruitt discusses conceptions of the injury associated with defamation law, focusing in particular on sexual slander cases that were brought in the early nineteenth century, before statements that impugned a woman’s chastity were deemed slander per se. During this time, women had to prove so-called “special damages” in order to state a cause of action. Courts showed some flexibility in what they recognized as constituting “special damages,” even stretching to recognize pecuniary harm in damaged personal relationships. Nevertheless, courts refused to recognize injuries stemming from and related to emotional distress injuries, and they were often skeptical …

Law Review Story, Lisa Pruitt

Lisa R Pruitt

This essay is the story of the author’s election as editor-in-chief of the Arkansas Law Review and of her tenure in that role. The story implicates a range of legal issues including hate speech, sexual harassment, sex discrimination, defamation, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. It is also the tale of the author’s feminist epiphany and of the law school’s failure to respond to the harassment. It was published in the 50th anniversary issue of the Arkansas Law Review.

A Survey Of Feminist Jurisprudence, Lisa Pruitt

Lisa R Pruitt

This essay articulates a relatively early taxonomy of the various strands of feminist legal theory. Its reach is transnational, including references to works by some European and Australian scholars.