Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Law Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Series

Law and Gender

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Fiction

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

Looking For Law In All The Wrong Places: Outlaw Texts And Early Women's Advocacy, Kristin (Brandser) Kalsem Jan 2003

Looking For Law In All The Wrong Places: Outlaw Texts And Early Women's Advocacy, Kristin (Brandser) Kalsem

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Recent Supreme Court decisions such as Atkins v. Virginia and Lawrence v. Texas specifically address the linkages between shifting cultural attitudes and the evolution of law. In this Article, I examine the mutually constitutive relationship between legal and cultural developments from a historical perspective and illustrate the necessity of looking to sources that I define as outlaw texts in order to access invaluable information about the process of legal change.

To demonstrate how a study of outlaw texts can enrich our understanding and critical consideration of law and legal history, this Article presents detailed analyses of specific examples of nineteenth-century …


Alice In Legal Wonderland: A Cross-Examination Of Gender, Race And Empire In Victorian Law And Literature, Kristin (Brandser) Kalsem Jan 2001

Alice In Legal Wonderland: A Cross-Examination Of Gender, Race And Empire In Victorian Law And Literature, Kristin (Brandser) Kalsem

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Lewis Carroll's 1865 scene of a recalcitrant Alice in the courtroom, defying the court's authority as she grows (literally) into a large and threatening presence, dramatizes what was becoming an increasingly common Victorian spectacle: a woman questioning and critiquing the law and claiming a place for herself within its institutions. Women have played a significant (but much overlooked) role in legal history and, in this paper, I argue for the importance of examining various narratives of the past (including literary accounts) that explored women's relationship to the law.

Against the backdrop of several legal cases in which women sought entry …