Law Commons^™

From Multiculturalism To Technique: Feminism, Culture, And The Conflict Of Laws Style, Karen Knop, Ralf Michaels, Annelise Riles

Annelise Riles

The German Chancellor, the French President, and the British Prime Minister have each grabbed world headlines with pronouncements that their states' policies of multiculturalism have failed. As so often, domestic debates about multiculturalism, as well as foreign policy debates about human rights in non- Western countries, revolve around the treatment of women. Yet feminists are no longer even certain how to frame, let alone resolve, the issues raised by veiling, polygamy, and other cultural practices oppressive to women by Western standards. Feminism has become perplexed by the very concept of "culture." This impasse is detrimental both to women's equality and …

Reframing Domestic Violence Law And Policy: An Anti-Essentialist Proposal, Leigh Goodmark

Leigh S. Goodmark

This Article focuses on a central failure in domestic violence law and policy reform—the creation of a body of law and set of policies based on outmoded notions of what domestic violence is, the identities of the women who experience violence, the identities of their partners, and what such women need and want. The theoretical underpinnings of domestic violence law and policy largely are to blame for this excessively narrow and problematic view of domestic violence.

A Provocative Defense, Aya Gruber

Aya Gruber

It is common wisdom that the provocation defense is, quite simply, sexist. For decades, there has been a trenchant feminist critique that the doctrine reflects and reinforces masculine norms of violence and shelters brutal domestic killers. The critique is so prominent that it appears alongside the doctrine itself in leading criminal law casebooks. The feminist critique of provocation embodies several claims about provocation's problematically gendered nature, including that the defense is steeped in chauvinist history, treats culpable sexist killers too leniently, discriminates against women, and expresses bad messages. This article offers a (likely provocative) defense of the provocation doctrine. While …

Masculinity And Title Ix: Bullying And Sexual Harassment Of Boys In The American Liberal State, Nancy C. Cantalupo

Nancy C Cantalupo

This article examines two recent “hot topics” related to Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 (“Title IX”): sex-segregated schooling and gender-based violence including sexual harassment and bullying. First, in 2006, the Department of Education suspended Title IX’s prohibition of sex-segregated education in K-12 public schools amidst some sex segregation advocates’ claims that a “feminized” educational system causes sex discrimination against boys. Second, over the last decade an increasing number of boys have sued or complained against their schools for sex discrimination in the form of gender-based violence (including same-sex bullying, sexual harassment, hazing, and sexual violence).

This article …

Hiv, Violence Against Women, And Criminal Law Interventions, Aziza Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

The growing calls for the “securitization of body and property,”[ii] documented by Jonathan Simon in his book Governing Through Crime, illustrates a deep tension in our understanding of the role of criminal law as a tool for societal transformation.[iii] For some, including communities of color, the criminal legal system is a place where inequality flourishes;[iv] for others, including those feminists who have support criminal law interventions, it has become a tool to realize equality.[v] The Trafficking Victims Protection Act, reauthorized in 2013 as an amendment to the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA),[vi] relies heavily on the criminal law to obtain …

I Am/I Am Not: On Angela Harris's Race And Essentialism In Feminist Legal Theory, Mary Anne Franks

Articles

In 1990, Angela Harris wrote an article that interrogated the limitations of feminist legal theory. Nearly a quarter of a century later, the insights and challenges Harris offered in Race and Essentialism in Feminist Legal Theory continue to reverberate. The influence of her ideas can be seen in the fractured and passionate conversations about gender, race, and solidarity occurring both inside and outside of academia. In recent years, we have witnessed an explosion of debate of these topics in social media forums such as Twitter and Facebook. Far from being trivial, the intensity and persistence of these conversations suggest a …