Law Commons^™

Feminist Lawmaking And Historical Consciousness: Bringing The Past Into The Future, Elizabeth M. Schneider

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Hearing Women Not Being Heard: On Carol Gilligan's Getting Civilized And The Complexity Of Voice, Elizabeth M. Schneider

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Law, Culture, And Harassment, Anita Bernstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

"The Woman In The Street:" Reclaiming The Public Space From Sexual Harassment, Deborah Thompson Eisenberg

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

By Reason Of Their Sex: Feminist Theory Postmodernism And Justice , Tracy E. Higgins

Faculty Scholarship

Both the Supreme Court's jurisprudence of gender and feminist legal theory have generally assumed that some identifiable and describable category of woman exists prior to the construction of legal categories. For the Court, this woman-whose characteristics admittedly have changed over time-serves as the standard against which gendered legal classifications are measured. For feminism, her existence has served a different but equally important purpose as the subject for whom political goals are pursued. To the extent that the definitions of the category diverge, the differences among definitions are played out in feminist critiques of the Court's gender jurisprudence, and, occasionally, in …

On Privilege, Antoinette M. Sedillo Lopez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Law And Language(S): Image, Integration And Innovation, Margaret E. Montoya

Faculty Scholarship

Examining the complex relationship between law and language enhances our understanding of the marginalization and subordination of linguistic Outsiders. This nexus between law and language has many manifestations. In this essay I discuss the biases about language that constrain traditional legal discourse while I explore strategies for its reframing by using the languages of Outsiders. Succinctly stated, this essay posits that traditional language norms create images or maintain stereotypes that stultify public discourse as well as impose cultural integration and linguistic assimilation with destructive consequences. The essay proposes that linguistic norms in law schools can be refashioned through pedagogical innovations …

Mascaras, Trenzas, Y Grenas: Un/Masking The Self While Un/Braiding Latina Stories With Legal Discourse, Margaret E. Montoya

Faculty Scholarship

This article uses Critical Race Theory methodologies, such as autobiographical narratives, and analytical approaches, such as critical pedagogy. Using personal narrative, this Article examines the various masks ("mascaras") used to control how people respond to us and the important role such masks play in the subordination of Outsiders. The first part of the Article tells stories; the second part of the Article unbraids the stories to reveal an imbedded message: that Outsider storytelling is a discursive technique for resisting cultural and linguistic domination through personal and collective redefinition. The Article explores how transculturation creates new options for expression, personal identity, …

Against Marriage, Steven K. Homer

Faculty Scholarship

What is marriage? In the debate surrounding same-sex marriage, the central term has gone undefined. Using the Hawaii Supreme Court's decision in Baehr v. Lewin as a starting point, this Note argues that marriage lacks legal as well as experiential coherence. A series of legal and social moves intended, on the one hand, to preserve the dominance of heterosexuality over gays and lesbians and, on the other, to allow, heterosexuals to escape the dominance of heterosexuality over themselves, has left little conceptual space for marriage. That is, to speak of "extending marriage" to same-sex couples creates the illusion that marriage …

Unburdening The Undue Burden Standard: Orienting Casey In Constitutional Jurisprudence, Gillian E. Metzger

Faculty Scholarship

"Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt." With these words in the 1992 case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Supreme Court ushered in a new era of abortion regulation. Speaking through a joint opinion authored by Justices O'Connor, Kennedy, and Souter, the Court indicated that from this point forth abortion regulations would be judged by an "undue burden" standard. According to this standard, an abortion regulation is unconstitutional if it "has the purpose or effect of placing a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion" of a nonviable fetus.

The Justices who wrote …

Curriculum Vitae (Feminae): Biography And Early American Women Lawyers, Carol Sanger

Faculty Scholarship

In this review, Carol Sanger examines the recent surge of interest in the lives of early women lawyers. Using Jane Friedman's biography of Myra Bradwell, America's First Woman Lawyer, as a starting point, Professor Sanger explores the complexities for the feminist biographer of reconciling for herself and for her subject conflicting professional, political, and personal sensibilities. Professor Sanger concludes that to advance the project of women's history, feminist biographers ought not retreat to the comforts of commemorative Victorian biography, even for Victorian subjects, but should instead strive to present and accept early women subjects on their own complex terms.