Law Commons^™

True Feminism: Identifying The Real Threats To Women, Cynthia Noland Dunbar

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Feminism And Child Custody Under Chapter Two Of The American Law Institute's Principles Of The Law Of Family Dissolution, Margaret F. Brinig

Margaret F Brinig

No abstract provided.

The Legacy Of Jane Larson: The Politics Of Practicality And Surprise, Martha Ertman

Martha M. Ertman

Jane Larson's work and life enriched my own and others. Her intellectual framework - applying legal economic ideas of consent to feminist theory, backed up by legal history - suggest surprising practical solutions to problems ranging from the injuries of adultery and prostitution to housing in border towns.

For Nontraditional Names' Sake: A Call To Reform The Name-Change Process For Marrying Couples, Meegan Brooks

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In a large number of states, women are encouraged to take their husbands’ surnames at marriage by being offered an expedited name-change process that is shorter, less expensive, and less invasive than the statutory process that men must complete. If a couple instead decides to take an altogether-new name at marriage, the vast majority of states require that each spouse complete the longer statutory process. This name-change system emerged from a long history of naming as a way for men to dominate women. This Note emphasizes the need for name-change reform, arguing that the current system perpetuates antiquated patriarchal values …

Addressing Early Marriage: Culturally Competent Practices And Romanian Roma (“Gypsy”) Communities, Judith Hale Reed

Judith A Hale Reed

Early marriage affects many communities around the world. Examples of commonly practiced early marriage can be found today in the U.S., India, Syria, and many other places. Although most countries have instituted minimum age laws for marriage, so that legal marriage can only occur after an age set by law, early marriage is still practiced for tradition, control, security, and other reasons. This article explores the harms of early marriage and the international instruments meant to defend against these harms in Part II. Part III reviews theoretical perspectives from legal anthropology and presents a case study of early marriage in …

Feminism And The Nation-State In Japan, Vera C. Mackie

Vera Mackie

The first Japanese edition of the book appeared at the height of debates about the interpretation of the Asia-Pacific War, debates which were also linked to conflicts about how the past should be represented in school textbooks.2 Much of this controversy revolved around the issue of enforced military prostitution/military sexual slavery.3 In 1991 Kim Hak-Sun (1924–1997) was one of the few women to come out in public in her own name to narrate her experiences in the enforced military prostitution system and demand an apology and compensation from the Japanese government. She was soon joined by survivors from Korea and …

Sexual Violence Against Men And Women In War: A Masculinities Approach, Valorie K. Vojdik

Scholarly Works

Rape and sexual violence against men in war remains largely invisible, yet pervasive across time and place. The silence around male rape raises critical questions about male bodies, gender, and power that have been largely ignored by legal scholars and international courts. While feminist and human rights scholars have theorized rape of women as a weapon of war, they have largely ignored sexual violence against men. Following the mass rape of women in former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, international tribunals recognized that sexual violence against women can constitute a weapon of war and a crime against humanity. In both conflicts, men …

Book Review: Legal Tenderness, Martha M. Ertman

Martha M. Ertman

No abstract provided.

The Other Marriage Equality Problem, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

This article introduces the term “the other marriage equality problem” to invite attention to a marriage equality issue distinct from gay men's and lesbians’ access to the institution of civil marriage. That problem is captured in warnings about the growing class-based marriage divide and the “diverging destinies” of children that flow from these emerging patterns of family life, sometimes referred to as “the reproduction of inequalities.” Growing family inequality warrants attention for many reasons, including the crucial role that families, along with other institutions of civil society, play in sustaining the American experiment in “ordered liberty.” Strikingly, such warnings coexist …

Intimate Liability: Emotional Harm, Family Law, And Stereotyped Narratives Of Interspousal Torts, Fernanda Nicola

Fernanda G. Nicola

Tort liability expanded in the twentieth century, a shift scholars generally attribute to the reorganization of tort law around the fault principle. In privileging compensation and deterrence, this reconfiguration ended various restrictions on liability, long viewed as arbitrary, including limits to the recovery for emotional harm and interspousal immunities. Tort and family law scholars alike portray the end of such immunities as a milestone for gender equality. Their elimination enables spouses and partners to secure compensation for emotional and physical abuse arising in intimate relationships. Yet, tort law is not operating in this way. On the contrary, by endorsing a …

Sex Is Less Offensive Than Violence: A Call To Update Obscenity Jurisprudence, Rachel Simon

Rachel Simon

This article addresses the gender bias presented by the disparate treatment of sex and violence under current obscenity jurisprudence. Under the controlling standard set forth by the Supreme Court in Miller v. California, sexual works may readily be regulated as obscenity, while violent works unequivocally may not. This article posits that this disparate treatment is the product of entrenched stereotypes about the way men and women “should” react to sex and violence, and notes the hypocrisy of failing to apply the same reasoning to assessments of violent versus sexual material.

First, reliance on “community standards” to define what material …

Sex Wars Redux: Agency And Coercion In Feminist Legal Theory, Kathryn Abrams

Kathryn Abrams

No abstract provided.

Sex Wars Redux: Agency And Coercion In Feminist Legal Theory, Kathryn Abrams

Kathryn Abrams

No abstract provided.

An Incomplete Revolution: Feminists And The Legacy Of Marital-Property Reform, Mary Ziegler

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

As this Article shows, the conventional historical narrative of the divorce revolution is not so much incorrect as incomplete. Histories of the divorce revolution have focused disproportionately on the introduction of no-fault rules and have correctly concluded that women's groups did not play a central role in the introduction of such laws. However, work on divorce law has not adequately addressed the history of marital-property reform or engaged with scholarship on the struggle for the Equal Rights Amendment to the federal Constitution. Putting these two bodies of work in dialogue with one another, the Article provides the first comprehensive history …

Baring Inequality: Revisiting The Legalization Debate Through The Lens Of Strippers' Rights, Sheerine Alemzadeh

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The debate over legalization of prostitution has fractured the feminist legal community for over a quarter century. Pro-legalization advocates promote the benefits attending government regulation of prostitution, including the ability to better prosecute sex crimes, increase public health and educational resources for individuals in the commercial sex trade, and apply labor and safety regulations to the commercial sex industry in the same manner as they are applied to other businesses. Some anti-legalization advocates identify themselves as "new abolitionists," and argue that government recognition of prostitution reinforces gender inequality. Often, this debate is framed in the hypothetical: What would happen if …

Pregnant Pause: The Interplay Of Gendered Expectations And Pregnancy In Legal Education, Ilya Iussa

Ilya Iussa

PREGNANT PAUSE: THE INTERPLAY OF GENDERED EXPECTATIONS AND PREGNANCY IN LEGAL EDUCATION

Abstract

Is the law student biased against pregnant women? No systematic empirical study exists that can confirm whether law or university students in fact evidence bias towards visibly pregnant professors. This article, thus, reviews scholarship in the social sciences that identifies the occurrence, pervasiveness, cause and effects of student bias towards professors that do not exemplify the “normal professor body.”

This article reflects upon my interactions with law students as their professor during the course of my recent pregnancy and posits that certain perceptions held by my students …

The Legacy Of Jane Larson: The Politics Of Practicality And Surprise, Martha M. Ertman

Faculty Scholarship

Jane Larson's work and life enriched my own and others. Her intellectual framework - applying legal economic ideas of consent to feminist theory, backed up by legal history - suggest surprising practical solutions to problems ranging from the injuries of adultery and prostitution to housing in border towns.

Multidimensionality Is To Masculinities What Intersectionality Is To Feminism, Athena D. Mutua

Journal Articles

Committed to intersectionality theory in her feminist work, the scholar Juliet Williams expressed the sentiment that “multidimensionality is to masculinities theory, what intersectionality is to feminism.” She did so in the context of a debate about whether intersectionality theory might capture the complexity of men’s lives, particularly men of color’s lives, as well as does multidimensionality theory, given that the latter is based in large part on the former. This paper, briefly explores the intellectual history of multidimensionality theory, concedes that intersectionality, a powerful analytical tool that has matured and gone global, could easily be used and is in part …

(Re)Pinning Our Hopes On Social Media: Pinterest And Women's Discursive Strategies, Katherine Gantz

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

Pinterest, the theme-based image-sharing website, has seen a predominantly female usership since its launch in 2010. Unique in both its design and its demographics in the US, the site has generated distinctive patterns of use, posing new questions about how women are claiming this particular spot in social media as their own. Supported by both feminist linguistic and social science research, this article undertakes a discussion of Pinterest's implicit and explicit gendered protocols of usership, which result in what I argue is an emerging women's online rhetoric. Through the examination of images and accompanying comments taken from the site, I …

What's Feminism Got To Do With It? Examination Of Feminism In Women's Everyday Lives, Claire Carter

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

In recent decades there has been considerable debate about the role and meaning of feminism in younger women's lives. Feminism can be understood as an empowering discourse, fostering critical awareness and resistance to dominant social norms. However, it can also be experienced as regulatory and disciplinary, clearly defining who and what constitutes a "good" feminist. Utilizing Michel Foucault's principle of care of the self, this paper analyzes women's body practices in relation both to women's interpretation of feminism and to dominant feminist discourses. The complexities of negotiating diverse social identities, as well as women's desire for a happier life and …

What Is The Matter With Antigone?, Emily A. Hartigan

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Multidimensionality Is To Masculinities What Intersectionality Is To Feminism, Athena D. Mutua

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Neofeminism, Aya Gruber

Publications

Today it is prosaic to say that "feminism is dead." Far from being moribund, feminist legal theory is breaking from its somewhat dogmatic past and forging ahead with new vigor. Many modern feminist legal scholars seek innovative ways to better the legal, social, and economic status of women while simultaneously questioning some of the more troubling moves of second-wave feminism, such as the tendency to essentialize the woman's experience, the turn to authoritarian state policies, and the characterization of women as pure objects or agents. These "neofeminists" prioritize women's issues but maintain a strong commitment to distributive justice and recognize …

Moving Beyond "Slaves, Sinners, And Saviors": An Intersectional Feminist Analysis Of Us Sex-Trafficking Discourses, Law And Policy, Carrie N. Baker

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This article analyzes stories and images of sex trafficking in current mainstream US public discourses, including government publications, NGO materials, news media, and popular films. Noting the similarities and differences among these discourses, the first part demonstrates that they often frame sex trafficking using a rescue narrative that reiterates traditional beliefs and values regarding gender, sexuality, and nationality, relying heavily on patriarchal and orientalist tropes. Reflecting this rescue narrative, mainstream public policies focus on criminal justice solutions to trafficking. The second part suggests alternative frameworks that empower rather than rescue trafficked people. The article argues that the dominant criminal justice …

Feminism And The Nation-State In Japan, Vera C. Mackie

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The first Japanese edition of the book appeared at the height of debates about the interpretation of the Asia-Pacific War, debates which were also linked to conflicts about how the past should be represented in school textbooks.2 Much of this controversy revolved around the issue of enforced military prostitution/military sexual slavery.3 In 1991 Kim Hak-Sun (1924–1997) was one of the few women to come out in public in her own name to narrate her experiences in the enforced military prostitution system and demand an apology and compensation from the Japanese government. She was soon joined by survivors from Korea and …

Feminism, Masculinities, And Multiple Identities, Martha Albertson Fineman

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Underneath Her Pantsuit: A Reflection On Hanna Rosin's The End Of Men, Aziza Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

In her book, The End of Men, ¹ Hanna Rosin argues that women have “surpassed” men. This new reality necessitates a reevaluation of marriage, family, sex, and gender roles.² To further her claim, Rosin dedicates a chapter of her book to the topic of violence committed by women. She argues that women are becoming more violent³ :

The new [trope] taps into a fear that as they gain more power, women will use violence and their new specialized skills to get what they want. Singular and exotic though these cases may be, they raise the broader unsettling possibility …

Intersectionality: Mapping The Movements Of A Theory, Devon Carbado, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, Vicki M. Mays, Barbara Tomlinson

Faculty Scholarship

Very few theories have generated the kind of interdisciplinary and global engagement that marks the intellectual history of intersectionality. Yet, there has been very little effort to reflect upon precisely how intersectionality has moved across time, disciplines, issues, and geographic and national boundaries. Our failure to attend to intersectionality’s movement has limited our ability to see the theory in places in which it is already doing work and to imagine other places to which the theory might be taken. Addressing these questions, this special issue reflects upon the genesis of intersectionality, engages some of the debates about its scope and …

“Rugged Vaginas” And “Vulnerable Rectums”: The Sexual Identity, Epidemiology, And Law Of The Global Hiv Epidemic, Aziza Ahmed

Aziza Ahmed

AIDS remains amongst the leading causes of death globally. Identity is the primary mode of understanding HIV and organizing in response to the HIV epidemic. In this Article, I examine how epidemiology and human rights activism co-produce ideas of identity and risk. I call this the “identity/risk narrative”: the commonsense understanding about an identity group’s HIV risk. For example, epidemiology offers the biological narrative of risk: anal sex and the weak rectal lining make men who have sex with men more vulnerable to HIV;while the fragility of a woman’s vaginal wall provides a biological foundation for women’s vulnerability. These biological …

Spirit Injury And Feminism: Expanding The Discussion, Nick J. Sciullo

Nick J. Sciullo

To discuss spirit injury, it is at first necessary to articulate a space in the theoretical diaspora to conceptualize spirit injury as a concept deeply tied to the historical tradition of several theoretical frameworks. “Spirit injury” is a phrase popularized by critical race feminist Adrien Katherine Wing. It is a term utilized in critical race feminism (CRF) that brings together insights from critical legal studies (CLS) and critical race theory (CRT). Wing’s training is as a lawyer and legal scholar, not as a communication scholar, yet her work may help communication scholars more keenly theorize harm and violence. Her scholarship …