Law Commons^™

Viewpoint: Post-Feminist Legal Profession? Not So Fast, Drucilla S. Ramey

Publications

Just the other day I had occasion to dine with a group of remarkable women of a certain age who had recently been featured by this newspaper as "Women Leaders in the Law: Blazing the trail for 35-plus years." Right there you knew, of course, that these were women who had stayed the course, who had early and often resisted the siren call of a more conventional path, and who collectively called to mind the rallying cry of an earlier time: "This is what a feminist looks like."

Having individually and together fought their way to the top of their …

How Money For Legal Scholarship Disadvantages Feminism, Martha T. Mccluskey

Journal Articles

A dramatic infusion of outside money has shaped legal theory over the last several decades, largely to the detriment of feminist theory. Nonetheless, the pervasive influence of this funding is largely ignored in scholarly discussions of legal theory. This denial helps reinforce the marginal position of feminist scholarship and of women in legal theory. Conservative activists and funders have understood the central role of developing community culture and institutions, and have helped shift the prevailing framework for discussion of many questions of theory and policy through substantial investments in law-and-economics centers and in the Federalist Society. Comparing the institutional resources …

Compassion And Coalitions: A Review Of Reshaping The Work Family Debate: Why Men And Class Matter By Joan Williams, Carolyn Shapiro

All Faculty Scholarship

Reshaping the Work-Family Debate: Why Men and Class Matter by Joan Williams is illuminating, intellectually challenging, and insightful. It is not, however, a typical law professor book. Neither academic inquiry nor policy analysis (although it contains elements of both), Reshaping the Work-Family Debate is more of a manifesto. Williams seeks measurable and meaningful change in the family and work lives of Americans, even if that change is imperfect or incomplete, and she sees theoretical or ideological rigidity as one obstacle to such change.

Williams believes that coalition-building is essential to addressing the work family challenges she identifies. Although she has …

Which Wave Are You? Comments On The Collected Essays From The Seminar “To Do Feminist Legal Theory”, Deborah W. Post

Deborah W. Post

No abstract provided.

The Feminist Pervasion: How Gender-Based Scholarship Informs Law And Law Teaching, Deseriee Kennedy, Ann Bartow, F. Carolyn Graglia, Joan Hemingway

Deseriee A. Kennedy

This is an edited, annotated transcript of a conference panel discussion on feminism, sex, and gender in law, legal education, and legal scholarship. The transcript reflects widely divergent views of the place of feminism, sex, and gender in the law and legal scholarship. Moreover, the panelists differ as to the role feminism has played in the lives of women as law students and practicing attorneys. In the latter part of the transcript, the panelists' remarks focus in on hotly debated issues surrounding possible gender (or sex) and racial bias in LSAT testing and the innate abilities of women and men …

Transversal Feminism And Transcendence, Deseriee A. Kennedy

Deseriee A. Kennedy

No abstract provided.

Chivalry Is Not Dead: Murder, Gender, And The Death Penalty, Steven Shatz, Naomi Shatz

Steven F. Shatz

Exporting Subjects: Globalizing Family Law Progress Through International Human Rights, Cyra Akila Choudhury

Michigan Journal of International Law

In our popular culture and social consciousness, women are no longer the second-class citizens they used to be. Magazines, television advertisements, and billboards featuring women show us how we have achieved independence, wealth, desirability, and our intelligence. We are no longer the supporting role in movies and entertainment but stars in our own right. For this, we can thank both changing society and the unrelenting work of many women who refused to bring the coffee for the boss. The women's movement in the United States has made large gains for women through the use of social activism and legal action. …

Food Sovereignty Is A Gendered Issue, Margaret Ellinger-Locke

Margaret Ellinger-Locke

“Food sovereignty is about ending violence against women.” This slogan of La Vía Campesina’s, an international movement of peasant farmers, offers a perspective on the power dynamics of the food system from farm to fork. Transforming power imbalances is the work of food sovereignty, or democratic control over the food system, and this article offers a way forward for policy makers, regulators, and eaters everywhere.

The Body Of The Goddess: Women’S Trans-National And Cross-Religion Eco-Spiritual Activism, Laura Corradi

Societies Without Borders

A counter-tendency to the virtualization of social relations and the deepening of the separation between body, mind and spirit may be represented by the re-birth of Goddesses’ worship, which calls for a re-embodiment of women’s spirituality and feminist politics. This work starts from representations of the body of the Goddess – in different ages and parts of the world – in their relation with the four elements. Through the iconological analysis of female divinities we realize that each of them also represents specific aspects of womanhood. An exploratory research on the contemporary religious experience of the Goddess indicates the existence …

Feminist Debate In Taiwan's Buddhism: The Issue Of The Eight Garudhammas, Chiung Hwang Chen

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

In 2001, during an academic conference on Humanistic Buddhism in Taipei, Venerable Shi Zhaohui, accompanied by a few Buddhist clergy and laypeople, tore apart a copy of the Eight Garudhammas (Eight Heavy Rules), regulations that govern the behavior of Buddhist nuns. Zhaohui's symbolic act created instant controversy as Taiwan's Buddhist community argued about the rules' authenticity and other issues within Buddhist monastic affairs. This paper examines the debate over the Eight Garudhammas and situates the debate within Taiwan's cultural terrain as well as the worldwide Buddhist feminist movement. I argue that while Zhaohui's call resulted in the abolishment of the …

White Male Heterosexist Norms In The Confirmation Process, Theresa M. Beiner

Faculty Scholarship

Justice Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearing took a controversial turn when commentators picked up on a reference in the New York Times to a portion of a speech she gave in 2001. In that speech, then Judge Sotomayor opined that, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." That statement, along with her participation in the per curiam decision in Ricci v. DeStefano, caused a minor storm during her confirmation. More recently, former Harvard Dean and former …

Feminism, Power, And Sex Work In The Context Of Hiv/Aids: Consequences For Women's Health, Aziza Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines the involvement of feminists in approaches to sex work in the context of HIV/AIDS. The paper focuses on two moments where feminist disagreement produced results in favor of an "anti-trafficking" approach to addressing the vulnerability of sex workers in the context of HIV. The first is the UNAIDS Guidance Note on Sex Work and the second is the "anti-prostitution pledge" found in the Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. This article also examines the anti-sex work position articulated by abolitionist feminists and demonstrates the unintended consequences of the abolitionist position on women's health. By examining the actual …

When Men Are Harmed: Feminism, Queer Theory, And Torture At Abu Ghraib, Aziza Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

In this Article I explore the assertions of "anti-imperialist" feminist scholars who critique "imperial feminism" for its support of the war on terror (WOT). I bring into this analysis the proposition by queer theorists that feminist reliance on male/ female subordination has the potential to not only obscure harm in times of war but also to perpetuate it. As a case study, I focus on the Abu Ghraib prison photos that depict, in part, female soldiers torturing male Iraqi prisoners. In conducting this analysis, I reveal the analytical limitations of dominance and cultural feminists, particularly with regard to male harm …

Women Behind The Wheel: Gender And Transportation Law, 1860-1930, Margo Schlanger

Book Chapters

Gender difference is only infrequently mentioned in recent negligence cases. To contemporary (mostly non-essentialist) eyes, gender difference seems to appear only mildly relevant to tort law's area of concern: care and harm to others and self. But in the early days of modern tort law, when gender differences loomed larger in the consciousness of American jurists, and unabashedly so, judicial opinions more frequently grappled with how negligence doctrine ought to take account of female difference. This chapter explores opinions published between approximately 1860 and 1930 that illuminate this issue in cases involving women drivers and passengers of cars and wagons. …

Unbound By Theory And Naming: Survival Feminism And The Women Of The South African Victoria Mxenge Housing And Development Association, Becky Jacobs

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

The emergence of a uniquely African formulation of feminism is one of the most energizing developments in feminist theory and discourse in recent history. As African women confront unprecedented economic and political challenges, they also are questioning, and, in some instances, redefining, individual and societal orthodoxies of gender and family roles. This Article will examine the discourse on African feminism and will consider the practical utility of feminist theory in the context of one extraordinary group of South African women, the members of the Victoria Mxenge Housing and Development Association. The discussion will review the historical context in which the …

Disability Trouble, Brad Areheart

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

In the 1960s, the term “gender” emerged in the academic literature to indicate the socially constructed nature of being a man or woman. The gender/sex binary soon became standard academic fare, with sex representing biology and gender representing sex’s social construct. However, in the 1980s feminists became concerned the gender/sex binary – by effectively designating sex as non-social – left room for biological determinism. These feminists made “gender trouble” in part by arguing biological sex was a social concept. The resulting scholarship on sex and gender enriched feminist thought and catalyzed civil rights through an expansion of legal protections.An almost …

Unbound By Theory And Naming: Survival Feminism And The Women Of The South African Victoria Mxenge Housing And Development Association, Becky Jacobs

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

The emergence of a uniquely African formulation of feminism is one of the most energizing developments in feminist theory and discourse in recent history. As African women confront unprecedented economic and political challenges, they also are questioning, and, in some instances, redefining, individual and societal orthodoxies of gender and family roles. This Article will examine the discourse on African feminism and will consider the practical utility of feminist theory in the context of one extraordinary group of South African women, the members of the Victoria Mxenge Housing and Development Association. The discussion will review the historical context in which the …

Feminism, Power, And Sex Work In The Context Of Hiv/Aids: Consequences For Women's Health, Aziza Ahmed

Aziza Ahmed

No abstract provided.