Law and Gender Commons^™

The State And The Patriarch: Rewriting Charan Lal Sahu, Rakesh Shrouti, Rajkumar Keswani, Nasrin Bi And Others V. Union Of India (1990) 1 Scc 613, Sannoy Wright Das, Ananyaa Alexander Mazumdar

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In this contribution, as part of the Indian Feminist Judgement Project, we reconsider the decision of the Supreme Court of India in the Charan Lal Sahu case that followed the Bhopal gas leak tragedy. We present a dissenting opinion on the case, finding that the law empowering the State to supplant the victim-survivors as plaintiffs was unconstitutional. Alongside, we offer a brief commentary on why this finding comports with what a feminist judge on the bench might have decided. We consider a variety of ways in which feminist criticism of the majority decision might proceed, and how this criticism informs …

Civil Disobedience In The Face Of Texas’S Abortion Ban, Alexi Pfeffer-Gillett

Scholarly Articles

This Article uses Texas’s abortion ban to demonstrate why civil disobedience is the best strategy against such private-enforcement schemes. It proceeds in three parts. Part I demonstrates that Texas’s private enforcement scheme in fact directly implicates state court officials and potentially state police forces. It then explains why bringing about the involvement of state courts and police through civil disobedience will put SB8 on constitutionally weaker ground. Part II details potential arguments against civil disobedience as a means of challenging private enforcement schemes. This Part also explains why relying on the federal government to challenge such laws will be insufficient. …

Little Sisters Of The Poor V. Pennsylvania: The Not So Little Effect Of Interfering With The Aca's Contraceptive Mandate, Sabrina Rubis

Women, Leadership & Equality

No abstract provided.

Introductory Remarks, Michael Rogers, Hannah Hamley, Rayshaun D. Williams

Seattle University Law Review

Introductory Remarks.

The Road To Bostock, John Towers Rice

FIU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Foreword, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Foreword.

The Deans' Roundtable, Dean Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Dean Danielle Conway, Dean Tamara Lawson, Dean Mario Barnes, Dean L. Song Richardson

Seattle University Law Review

The Deans' Roundtable.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Wise Legal Giant, Thomas A. Schweitzer

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Menstruation And The Bar Exam: Unconstitutional Tampon Bans, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Some states have policies that prevent bar exam candidates from bringing their own menstrual products to the test. Via social media, awareness of these policies achieved new heights in the weeks leading up to the July 2020 bar exam. While states adopted different approaches to administering the bar exam during the COVID-19 pandemic, a small number of jurisdictions responded to public criticism by permitting test-takers to bring menstrual products with them to exams. Not all states have adopted permissive policies, however. This essay explains why outright bans on menstrual products at the bar exam likely are unconstitutional. So-called alternate policies, …

Compared To What? Menstruation, Pregnancy, And The Complexities Of Comparison, Emily Gold Waldman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

When crafting a sex discrimination argument, finding the right comparison can be crucial. Indeed, comparison-drawing has been a key strategy for advocates challenging the constitutionality of the tampon tax. In their 2016 lawsuit challenging New York’s tampon tax, the plaintiffs alleged that the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance had imposed a “double standard” when deciding which products would be considered tax-free medical items and which would not. Similar arguments were made in the subsequent challenge to Florida's tampon tax. In both cases, the arguments had powerful rhetorical force, helping to effectuate legislative repeal of the tampon taxes …

Era Joint Resolution On Timeline For Ratification, Ben Cardin, Lisa Murkowski

Center for Gender & Sexuality Law

Removing the deadline for the ratification of the equal rights amendment.

Neither “Post-War” Nor Post-Pregnancy Paranoia: How America’S War On Drugs Continues To Perpetuate Disparate Incarceration Outcomes For Pregnant, Substance-Involved Offenders, Becca S. Zimmerman

Pitzer Senior Theses

This thesis investigates the unique interactions between pregnancy, substance involvement, and race as they relate to the War on Drugs and the hyper-incarceration of women. Using ordinary least square regression analyses and data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates, I examine if (and how) pregnancy status, drug use, race, and their interactions influence two length of incarceration outcomes: sentence length and amount of time spent in jail between arrest and imprisonment. The results collectively indicate that pregnancy decreases length of incarceration outcomes for those offenders who are not substance-involved but not evenhandedly -- benefitting white …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Reclaiming The Long History Of The "Irrelevant" Nineteenth Amendment, Tracy A. Thomas

Akron Law Faculty Publications

The Nineteenth Amendment has been called an “irrelevant” amendment. The women’s suffrage amendment has been deemed insignificant as a constitutional authority, reduced to a historical footnote. In the Supreme Court canon, it has been diminished as a text that “merely gives the vote to women.” With the accomplishment of that simple task, the amendment has been assumed to offer little guidance to modern constitutional analysis or gender equality. The Nineteenth Amendment has become a “constitutional orphan,” disconnected from its historical origins and precedential place in constitutional jurisprudence. This constricting view of the Nineteenth Amendment ignores the structural implications and significant …

Abortion Rights In The Supreme Court: A Tale Of Three Wedges, Jennifer S. Hendricks

Publications

No abstract provided.

Transgender Rights & The Eighth Amendment, Jennifer Levi, Kevin M. Barry

Faculty Scholarship

The past decades have witnessed a dramatic shift in the visibility, acceptance, and integration of transgender people across all aspects of culture and the law. The treatment of incarcerated transgender people is no exception. Historically, transgender people have been routinely denied access to medically necessary hormone therapy, surgery, and other gender-affirming procedures; subjected to cross-gender strip searches; and housed according to their birth sex. But these policies and practices have begun to change. State departments of corrections are now providing some, though by no means all, appropriate care to transgender people, culminating in the Ninth Circuit’s historic decision in Edmo …

An Abortion Law Preformed, Joanna Erdman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article engages the transcribed testimony of Carolyn Egan and Janice Patricia Tripp in R v Morgentaler as a critical moment of lawmaking. There is something revealing, often amusing, and sometimes devastating, when a lawyer asks a non-lawyer, in this case, a social worker: “What is the law?” The article focuses on those moments in their testimony when Egan and Tripp answered questions about the 1969 abortion law that made the law itself, its rules and procedures, the subject of examination, and in doing so, constructed new meanings of the law and social action in relation to it in the …

Wolastoqiyik And Mi’Kmaq Grandmothers - Land/Water Defenders Sharing And Learning Circle: Generating Knowledge For Action, Sherry Pictou, Janet Conway, Angela Day

Reports & Public Policy Documents

This report is a summary of the Grandmothers/Defenders’ stories and are interwoven with corresponding news articles, press releases, and other public documents. This is followed by an overview of some of the critical common issues and importantly, strategies for moving forward proposed by the Grandmothers/Defenders.

The Grandmother’s Report is a collection of stories told by Wolastoqiyik Grandmother/Defenders against the Sisson Mine in New Brunswick and Mi’kmaq Grandmothers against the Alton Gas project in Nova Scotia at the event, Indigenous Grandmothers Sharing and Learning Circle: Generating Knowledge for Action, held at the Tatamagouche Centre in Nova Scotia, January 26 to 27, …

Agonistic Privacy & Equitable Democracy, Scott Skinner-Thompson

Publications

This Essay argues that legal privacy protections—which enable individuals to control their visibility within public space—play a vital role in disrupting the subordinating, antidemocratic impacts of surveillance and should be at the forefront of efforts to reform the operation of both digital and physical public space. Robust privacy protections are a touchstone for empowering members of different marginalized groups with the ability to safely participate in both the physical and digital public squares, while also preserving space for vibrant subaltern counterpublics. By increasing heterogeneity within the public sphere, privacy can also help decrease polarization by breaking down echo chambers and …

Towards A Law Of Inclusive Planning: A Response To “Fair Housing For A Non-Sexist City”, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

Noah Kazis’s important article, Fair Housing for a Non-sexist City, shows how law shapes the contours of neighborhoods and embeds forms of inequality, and how fair housing law can provide a remedy. Kazis surfaces two dimensions of housing that generate inequality and that are sometimes invisible. Kazis highlights the role of planning and design rules – the seemingly identity-neutral zoning, code enforcement, and land-use decisions that act as a form of law. Kazis also reveals how gendered norms underlie those rules and policies. These aspects of Kazis’s project link to commentary on the often invisible, gendered norms that shape …

Finding A New Home For The Abortion Right Under The Ninth Amendment, Allison N. Kruschke

ConLawNOW

This essay advocates locating the foundation of the constitutional right to an abortion in the Ninth Amendment. Using the Ninth Amendment to recognize the right to an abortion, this article argues, is a better path than using the Fourteenth Amendment because it takes the determination of whether an abortion is a protected right outside the moral realm. The analysis under the Fourteenth Amendment of whether a right is “deeply rooted in the tradition” of the United States inevitably stirs a debate about whether the public considers abortion morally acceptable. In recognizing the right to an abortion under the Ninth Amendment, …

Rwu Law News: The Newsletter Of Roger Williams University School Of Law 12-2020, Barry Bridges, Michael M. Bowden, Nicole Dyszlewski, Louisa Fredey

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Dispute Settlement Under The African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement: A Preliminary Assessment, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement (AfCFTA) will add a new dispute settlement system to the plethora of judicial mechanisms designed to resolve trade disputes in Africa. Against the discontent of Member States and limited impact the existing highly legalized trade dispute settlement mechanisms have had on regional economic integration in Africa, this paper undertakes a preliminary assessment of the AfCFTA Dispute Settlement Mechanism (DSM). In particular, the paper situates the AfCFTA-DSM in the overall discontent and unsupportive practices of African States with highly legalized dispute settlement systems and similar WTO-Styled DSMs among other shortcomings. Notwithstanding the transplantation of …

Court-Packing In 2021: Pathways To Democratic Legitimacy, Richard Mailey

Seattle University Law Review

This Article asks whether the openness to court-packing expressed by a number of Democratic presidential candidates (e.g., Pete Buttigieg) is democratically defensible. More specifically, it asks whether it is possible to break the apparent link between demagogic populism and court-packing, and it examines three possible ways of doing this via Bruce Ackerman’s dualist theory of constitutional moments—a theory which offers the possibility of legitimating problematic pathways to constitutional change on democratic but non-populist grounds. In the end, the Article suggests that an Ackermanian perspective offers just one, extremely limited pathway to democratically legitimate court-packing in 2021: namely, where a Democratic …

Enough Is As Good As A Feast, Noah C. Chauvin

Seattle University Law Review

Ipse Dixit, the podcast on legal scholarship, provides a valuable service to the legal community and particularly to the legal academy. The podcast’s hosts skillfully interview guests about their legal and law-related scholarship, helping those guests communicate their ideas clearly and concisely. In this review essay, I argue that Ipse Dixit has made a major contribution to legal scholarship by demonstrating in its interview episodes that law review articles are neither the only nor the best way of communicating scholarly ideas. This contribution should be considered “scholarship,” because one of the primary goals of scholarship is to communicate new ideas.

Law School News: Bright Anniversaries In Uncertain Times 10/06/2020, Nicole Dyszlewski, Louisa Fredey

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Law Library Blog (October 2020): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Ruth Bader Ginsburg And Rwu Law 09/23/2020, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

You Must Present A Valid Form Of (Gender) Identification: The Due Process And First Amendment Implications Of Tennessee's Birth Certificate Law, Brooke Lowell

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

This Note analyzes Tennessee’s prohibition against transgender people changing their gender markers on their birth certificates under both Fourteenth Amendment Substantive Due Process and the First Amendment. Part I discusses the relevant terms related to transgender rights, the importance of birth certificates, and the relevant laws at play. Part II focuses on the Substantive Due Process argument. It lays out the foundational cases and then applies them to analyze whether gender identity is a fundamental right. Part III explores the First Amendment analysis, focusing on gender as speech. It also discusses how government speech affects the analysis. The Note concludes …