Law Commons^™

Woman Scorned?: Resurrecting Infertile Women's Decision-Making Autonomy, Jody L. Madeira

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Legal scholarship portrays women as reproductive decision makers in conflicting ways. The distinctions between depictions of infertile women and women considering abortion are particularly striking. A woman seeking infertility treatment, even one who faces no legal obstacles, is often portrayed as so emotionally distraught and desperate that her ability to give informed consent is potentially compromised. Yet, the legal academy has roundly rejected similar stereotypes of pregnant women considering abortion, depicting them as confident and competent decision makers. This Article argues that legal scholars' use of a "desperate woman" stereotype denies women's ability to critically assess the health risks and …

Legal Education, Social Justice And The Law School Dean: Latinas At The Center, Margaret E. Montoya

Faculty Scholarship

The opening of LatCrit XVI in San Diego, CA, on October 9, 2011, coincided with the events that are identified as the start of the global expression of the Occupy Movement. The Occupy Movement began to gain media attention on September 17, 2011, in Zuccotti Park in New York City. By October 9, protests had taken place or were ongoing in eighty-two countries and over 600 communities in the United States. The broad theme for LatCrit XVI was "Global Justice" and the conference was billed as "an opportunity to explore theories, histories, and futures of global justice. Of particular importance …

Beyond Best Practices For Legal Education: Reflections On Cultural Awareness - Exploring The Issues In Creating A Law School And Classroom Culture, Antoinette M. Sedillo Lopez

Faculty Scholarship

If law schools are to prepare students for the reality of practice, it is useful to help students become aware of cultural issues that can affect client representation by examining the culture that the law school creates. The culture created by faculty, students, administration, and staff will affect the law student's acculturation as a legal professional as well as the law student's psychological well-being. This issue was addressed briefly in Best Practices for Legal Education (Best Practices), but not developed. This essay explores some of the challenges and opportunities of bringing cross-cultural issues into a law school classroom and some …

Revisiting Mothering? – A Mother's Thoughts: A Response To Darren Rosenblum's Unsex Mothering: Toward A Culture Of New Parenting, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

I came to motherhood (“am2”?) late in life. Mothering is the most complex, difficult, challenging work in which I have ever engaged. It also is the most rewarding, exciting, frightening, all consuming work that I will ever do. I would not trade this life for anything.

The night before this essay was due, I was up late (well, late for me, the mother of a seven-year-old boy Nikolai and six-month-old twins Natalia Luz and Nadal Sergio) working on the last set of edits — putting the finishing touches, if you will — on the draft of my musings on Rosenblum’s …

Mixed Messages: The Intersection Of Prenatal Genetic Testing And Abortion, Rachel Rebouché, Karen Rothenberg

UF Law Faculty Publications

This article, prepared for the 2011 Wiley A. Branton Symposium at Howard Law School, provides a snapshot of how current law and practice generate mixed messages about prenatal genetic testing and abortion. The ability to screen and to test for genetic conditions prenatally is expanding, not only because of technological innovations but also because of increased legal and financial incentives. At the same time that prenatal genetic testing is expanding, abortion – one option pregnant women have after testing – is contracting. Federal and state legislation restricts abortion services, for example, by reducing or prohibiting funding; banning the types or …

Redefining The Black Face Of Affirmative Action: The Impact On Ascendant Black Women, Kevin D. Brown, Renee E. Turner

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The racial and ethnic ancestries of blacks benefiting from affirmative action is changing, as foreign-born blacks and blacks with a non-black parent constitute disproportionately large percentages of blacks attending many selective higher education institutions. Coupled with the challenges arising from the educational achievement levels of black males during the past two decades, Brown and Turner examine the implication of these developments and the likelihood that they are creating further disadvantages for black women lawyers.

From Private Violence To Mass Incarceration: Thinking Intersectionally About Women, Race, And Social Control, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw

Faculty Scholarship

The structural and political dimensions of gender violence and mass incarceration are linked in multiple ways. The myriad causes and consequences of mass incarceration discussed herein call for increased attention to the interface between the dynamics that constitute race, gender, and class power, as well as to the way these dynamics converge and rearticulate themselves within institutional settings to manufacture social punishment and human suffering. Beyond addressing the convergences between private and public power that constitute the intersectional dimensions of social control, this Article addresses political failures within the antiracism and antiviolence movements that may contribute to the legitimacy of …

Of Wife And The Domestic Servant In The Arab World, Lama Abu-Odeh

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The author asserts to avoid common misunderstandings on the relevance of Sharia to modern women in the Arab World that a) Shari’s relevance to the lives of modern women in the Arab World has been largely confined to the area of family law, b) in the modern nation state Sharia has been codified, i.e., certain rules derived from Islamic jurisprudence on the family have been selected and passed as laws, each nation state having its own unique combination of such rules, c) the courts and the judges who adjudicate disputes on family law are either secular courts/judges, or judges trained …

Sexual Harassment 2.0, Mary Anne Franks

Articles

Sexual harassment is a complex and evolving practice. The rise of sexual discrimination in cyberspace is only one of the most recent and most striking examples of the phenomenon's increasing complexity. Sexual harassment law, however, has not kept pace with this evolution. Discrimination law has not been adequately "updated" to address new and amplified practices of sex discrimination. Its two principal limitations are (1) it treats only sexual harassment that occurs in certain protected settings (e.g. the workplace or school) as actionable and (2) it assumes that both the activity and the resulting harm of sexual harassment occur in the …

Finding Women In Early Modern English Courts: Evidence From Peter King's Manuscript Reports, Lloyd Bonfield

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Beyond Microfinance: Creating Opportunities For Women At The Base Of The Pyramid, Deborah Burand

Articles

A growing number of innovative social entrepreneurs are tackling this problem by creating 'busmesses in a bag' mspired by the world's largest direct seller of beauty products - Avon. These very small franchise or consignment businesses are affordable enough to be acquired and operated by women living at the base of the economic pyramid. Just as commercial franchise networks such as Avon have helped people with httle or no experience grow mto successful business owners around the world, microfranchise and microconsignment networks may hold similar promise.

Comparative Pragmatism, Rachel Rebouché

UF Law Faculty Publications

Although several commentators have previously suggested that the United States and Germany now share more commonalities than differences, this Article challenges the conventional wisdom by suggesting that the United States and Germany have moved in the opposite direction on a spectrum of available abortion services. In the United States, the constitutional right to an abortion is unrealizable for many women due to restrictive state and federal laws and the absence of providers in many areas. In Germany, by contrast, despite the country’s formal recognition of fetal rights, early abortion is widely available and often funded by the government. In short, …

The Law Of Gender Stereotyping And The Work-Family Conflicts Of Men, Stephanie Bornstein

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article looks back to the early equal protection jurisprudence of the 1970s and Ruth Bader Ginsburg's litigation strategy of using men as plaintiffs in sex discrimination cases to cast a renewed focus on antidiscrimination law as a means to redress the work-family conflicts of men. From the beginning of her litigation strategy as the head of the ACLU Women's Rights Project, Ginsburg defined sex discrimination as the detrimental effects of gender stereotypes that constrained both men and women from living their lives as they wished-not solely the minority status of women. The same sex-based stereotypes that kept women out …

Pregnancy As 'Disability' And The Amended Americans With Disabilities Act, Jeannette Cox

School of Law Faculty Publications

The recent expansion of the Americans with Disabilities Act’s (ADA) protected class invites reexamination of the assumption that pregnant workers may not use the ADA to obtain workplace accommodations. The ADA’s scope now includes persons with minor temporary physical limitations comparable to pregnancy’s physical effects. Accordingly, the primary remaining justification for concluding that pregnant workers may not obtain ADA accommodations is that pregnancy is a physically healthy condition rather than a physiological defect. Drawing on the social model of disability, this Article challenges the assumption that medical diagnosis of “defect” must be a prerequisite to disability accommodation eligibility. The social …

"The Birth Of Death": Stillborn Birth Certificates And The Problem For Law, Carol Sanger

Faculty Scholarship

Stillbirth is a confounding event, a reproductive moment that at once combines birth and death. This Essay discusses the complications of this simultaneity as a social experience and as a matter of law. While traditionally, stillbirth didn't count for much on either score, this is no longer the case. Familiarity with fetal life through obstetric ultrasound has transformed stillborn children into participating members of their families long before birth, and this in turn has led to a novel demand on law.

Dissatisfied with the issuance of a stillborn death certificate, bereaved parents of stillborn babies have successfully lobbied state legislatures …

The Gendered Aspects Of Social Justice Work And Occupational Segregation In The Legal Academy: A Review Of 2003, Barbara Cox

Faculty Scholarship

My service as chair of the Section on Women in Legal Education ("Section") was rather unusual. I started serving on the Executive Committee in 1999 and became Chair-Elect in 2001. Veryl Miles (Catholic) was Chair for 2001 but became Deputy Director of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) in August that year, so I served out her term as Interim Chair from August 1 to December 31, 2001. Then I became Chair-Elect again in 2002 (because I was on sabbatical that year and could not serve as Chair) and Vernellia Randall agreed to step in as Chair. I served …

Sex On The Bench: Do Women Judges Matter To The Legitimacy Of International Courts?, Nienke Grossman

All Faculty Scholarship

This article seeks to advance our understanding of international courts' legitimacy and its relationship to who sits on the bench. It asks whether we should care that few women sit on international court benches. After providing statistics on women's participation on eleven of the world's most important courts and tribunals, the article argues that under-representation of one sex affects normative legitimacy because it endangers impartiality and introduces bias when men and women approach judging differently. Even if men and women do not think differently, a sex un-representative bench harms sociological legitimacy for constituencies who believe they do nonetheless. For groups …

Feminist Legal Scholarship: A History Through The Lens Of The California Law Review, Katharine T. Bartlett

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay describes the evolution of feminist legal scholarship, using six articles published by the California Law Review as exemplars. This short history provides a window on the most important contributions of feminist scholarship to understandings about gender and law. It explores alternative formulations of equality, and the competing assumptions, ideals, and implications of these formulations. It describes frameworks of thought intended to compensate for the limitations of equality doctrine, including critical legal feminism, different voice theory, and nonsubordination theory, and the relationships between these frameworks. Finally, it identifies feminist legal scholarship that has crossed the disciplinary bound-aries of law. …

Do Female “Firsts” Still Matter?: Why They Do For Women Of Color, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Amber Shanahan-Fricke

Faculty Scholarship

This Article argues that diversifying the federal judiciary with more women and men of color, but particularly with more women of color, is essential to moving forward and strengthening this country’s democracy. Specifically, this Article responds to arguments by prominent feminists that having female “firsts” on the bench is not as critical as having the “right” women on the bench—“right” meaning those women who are invested in and supportive of what are traditionally viewed as women’s issues. In so responding, this Article acknowledges the appeal of such arguments regarding judicial service from the “right” women, but contends that, while achieving …

Why We Need Race Conscious Admissions, Deborah N. Archer

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Introduction, Katherine M. Franke

Faculty Scholarship

Each year Columbia Law School’s Center for Gender Sexuality Law selects a scholar whose work has made an important impact on the study and practice of gender and/or sexuality law. For 2010 we selected Judith Butler, the Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. In March of 2010, we held a Symposium recognizing the multiple domains of theory and activism in which Butler’s mark has been profound, and oft times paradigm shifting.

Columbia Law School has the great fortune of having developed one of the deepest and most diverse faculties …

Intuition And Feminist Constitutionalism, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

In any constitutional system, we must ask, as a foundational inquiry, when and why a government may distinguish between groups of constituents for purposes of allocating benefits or imposing penalties. For feminists and others with a stake in challenging inequalities, the rationales that a society deems acceptable for justifying these classifications are centrally important. Heightened scrutiny jurisprudence for sex-based and other distinctions may help capture some of the rationales that rest on stereotypes and outmoded biases. However, at the end of the day, whatever level of scrutiny is applied, the critical question at any level of review is whether, according …