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Full-Text Articles in Law
Beyond Culture: Human Rights Universalisms Versus Religious And Cultural Relativism In The Activism For Gender Justice, Cyra Akila Choudhury
Beyond Culture: Human Rights Universalisms Versus Religious And Cultural Relativism In The Activism For Gender Justice, Cyra Akila Choudhury
Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Between Tradition And Progress: A Comparative Perspective On Polygamy In The United Satates And India, Cyra Akila Choudhury
Between Tradition And Progress: A Comparative Perspective On Polygamy In The United Satates And India, Cyra Akila Choudhury
Faculty Publications
Both the United States and India have had longstanding experiences with polygamy and its regulation. In the United States, the dominant Protestant majority has sought to abolish Mormon practices of polygamy through criminalization. Moreover, the public policy exception has been used to deny recognition of plural marriages conducted legally elsewhere. India’s approach to polygamy regulation and criminalization has been both similar to and different from that of the United States. With a sizable Muslim minority and a legal framework that recognizes religious law as family law, India recognizes polygamy in the Muslim minority community. However, it has criminalized it in …
Exporting Subjects: Globalizing Family Law Progress Through International Human Rights, Cyra Akila Choudhury
Exporting Subjects: Globalizing Family Law Progress Through International Human Rights, Cyra Akila Choudhury
Faculty Publications
This article examines the global export of domestic U.S. legal projects and strategies in the realm of family law and gender justice to South Asia. While such projects have undoubtedly achieved substantial gains for women in the U.S., there have also been costs. At a remove of two decades, scholars have now begun to theorize those costs and argue that feminism needs to reconsider its commitments to particular projects that have been held central to women’s emancipation. Yet much of these critiques have not reached the transnational women’s movements that are led by U.S. feminist activists and scholars. Relying on …
(Mis)Appropriated Liberty: Identity, Gender Justice And Muslim Personal Law Reform In India, Cyra Akila Choudhury
(Mis)Appropriated Liberty: Identity, Gender Justice And Muslim Personal Law Reform In India, Cyra Akila Choudhury
Faculty Publications
This article argues that in order to emancipate Indian-Muslim women from an outdated family legal code, their position at the intersection of gender and a minority religion must be taken seriously. Proposals for reform that have been suggested by Western liberal, secular feminists that ignore the importance of women's religious affiliation fail to do this. Moreover, by making assumptions about the strength of secularism in India, the willingness of the state to enact legal reforms driven by gender concerns, and by failing to acknowledge the limits of formal rights alone in changing norms, these scholars do not account for the …