Law and Gender Commons^™

Maternity Rights: A Comparative View Of Mexico And The United States, Roberto Rosas

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Women play a large role in the workplace and require additional protection during pregnancy, childbirth, and while raising children. This article compares how Mexico and the United States have approached the issue of maternity rights and benefits. First, Mexico provides eighty-four days of paid leave to mothers, while the United States provides unpaid leave for up to twelve weeks. Second, Mexico allows two thirty-minute breaks a day for breastfeeding, while the United States allows a reasonable amount of time per day to breastfeed. Third, Mexico provides childcare to most federal employees, while the United States provides daycares to a small …

Article: Anti- Love Jihad Law: An Analysis Of Women’S Religious And Marital Rights, Snehal Sharma

Gender and Women's Studies Faculty Publications

In November 2020, Uttar Pradesh government enacted an ordinance – ‘Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance, 2020’. Since the ordinance has made the process of religious conversion and interfaith marriage complicated and prolonged in the state, it is commonly known as ‘anti- love jihad law’. This paper analyses and lays out the potential impact of this ordinance on inter-religious marriages, and how it conflicts with women’s religious, marital, and bodily autonomy. Here the author discusses the procedures of anti-conversion ordinance along with the Special Marriage Act (1954) and personal laws related to marriage to assess their impact on inter-religious couples …

Protecting The Child Bride: Following Texas' Middle Ground Approach, Wendy Tolson Ross

Faculty Works

Child marriages historically affect girls more so than boys. In fact, in 2010, the Center for Disease Control reported that for the preceding five-year period, 4% of teen girls and 1% of teen boys married before age eighteen. As a result, feminists have traditionally fought to police girls' chastity throughout time. However, further discussion of this is outside of the discussion of this paper. This paper will focus on the concern of "child brides," or minors under the age of eighteen.

At the heart of this child marriage problem are two concerns: 1) protection of the underage and immature minor …

#Blacklivesmatter: From Protest To Policy, Jamillah Bowman Williams, Naomi Mezey, Lisa O. Singh

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In summer 2020, mass protests spread across the globe challenging police brutality and racial injustice and demanding change. Fueled by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd, these protests drew 15 million to 26 million participants in the United States alone to participate in late May and June of 2020. The sheer scale of these protests made them the largest movement in U.S. history. While there has been some consensus that this unprecedented protest movement pushed social awareness and changed the national conversation around race, existing research has yet to clearly …

Amplified Speech, Erin L. Miller

Cardozo Law Review

This Article introduces the concept of amplification into First Amendment law. Amplification, or the size of the audience reached by speech, lies at the heart of many contemporary free speech struggles. Yet the concept is surprisingly absent as a category of analysis from constitutional doctrine and virtually undiscussed in legal scholarship. Amplification deserves its own set of legal rules and doctrines, because the right to amplify one’s speech serves the two core types of First Amendment interests—those of audiences and those of speakers—differently than the right to choose the content of one’s speech. The higher the degree of amplification, the …

Equal Justice Under Law: Navigating The Delicate Balance Between Religious Liberty And Marriage Equality, Meg Penrose

Faculty Scholarship

This Article discusses the current state of the law and offers thoughts on its future. Part Il provides a brief overview of the legal landscape involved in the clash between religious liberty and same-sex marriage From Justice Scalia's seminal religious liberty test to the evolution of same- sex marriage, Part Il describes the current law. Part III introduces the reader to public accommodations laws. After providing this brief history, Part Ill discusses three Supreme Court cases that could have resolved the religious liberty versus marriage equality question. Part IV looks ahead and draws analogies to the 1960s religious liberty objections …

Law School News: Announcing The 2nd Annual Rbg Contest For K-12 Students 10-27-2021, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Two Types Of Empirical Textualism, Kevin Tobia, John Mikhail

Brooklyn Law Review

Modern textualist and originalist theories increasingly center interpretation around the “ordinary” or “public” meaning of legal texts. This approach is premised on the promotion of values like publicity, fair notice, and democratic legitimacy. As such, ordinary meaning is typically understood as a question about how members of the general public understand the text—an empirical question with an objective answer. This essay explores the role of empirical methods, particularly experimental survey methods, in these ordinary meaning inquiries. The essay expresses optimism about new insight that empirical methods can bring, but it also cautions against the view that these methods will deliver …

Shifting Antitrust Laws And Regulations In The Wake Of Hospital Mergers: Taking The Focus Off Of Elective Markets And Centering Health Care, Maya Inka Ureño-Dembar

Brooklyn Law Review

Access to health care requires access to a care center and access to comprehensive health care services. Rampant hospital mergers are uniquely poised to reduce both the number of hospitals, requiring patients to travel further, and the services provided within a newly merged hospital, namely reproductive health services. This phenomenon is clearly seen through the merging of secular and nonsecular hospitals, which often result in patients being forced to travel much further for reproductive health care. In the United States’ current model, health care is not a right, but is treated as a commodity. As such, it is governed by …

Integrating Doctrine & Diversity Speaker Series: Book Release Kick Off Celebration 09-15-2021, Roger Williams University School Of Law, City University Of New York School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Twists & Swirls: Caregiving & Sexualization—Femininity Construct In Gendered Migration From Nigeria To Italy, Christiana Essie Sagay

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

With globalization, interconnectivity, and the possibilities of increased income through wage differentials comes the desirability to migrate for labour. Contrary to early migration theories, women are increasingly migrating for labour independent of male breadwinners. Therefore, "temporary and permanent movements are globalizing, accelerating, diversifying and feminizing." The influence of gender on migration has become so convoluted that culturally and socially constructed roles of masculinity and femininity motivate and inspire migration trends among many women migrating from Nigeria to Italy, creating a sort of gendered social agency. This piece offers an analysis of how social contexts and gendered expectations shape the desires …

What An Ethics Of Discourse And Recognition Can Contribute To A Critical Theory Of Refugee Claim Adjudication: Reclaiming Epistemic Justice For Gender-Based Asylum Seekers, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Abstract: Using examples drawn from gender-based asylum cases, this chapter examines how far recognition theory (RT) and discourse theory (DT) can guide social criticism of the judicial processing of women’s applications for protection under the Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) and subsequent protocols and guidelines put forward by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). I argue that these theories can guide social criticism only when combined with other ethical approaches. In addition to humanitarian and human rights law, these theories must rely upon ideas drawn from distributive, compensatory, and epistemic justice. Drawing from recent …

The Powers Of The Inter-American Court Of Human Rights Towards The Implementation Of Gender Justice Laws At The National Level In South America, Kiana Therrien-Tomas Miss

Bridges: An Undergraduate Journal of Contemporary Connections

Although South America is earning international attention as an innovative global leader in various fields, it currently remains a nation steeped in traditional beliefs and practices. Despite prevailing laws against domestic violence, countless Latin American women proceed to be failed by the legal system. As South American society produces its own theory of gender justice, apprised by local realities and universally accepted norms, women's rights advocates and the Supreme Court can represent a decisive role in forming the discourse. Throughout this work, I aim to contemplate the powers of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) towards the implementation of …

Eyes Wide Shut: Using Accreditation Regulation To Address The “Pass-The-Harasser” Problem In Higher Education, Susan Saab Fortney, Theresa Morris

Faculty Scholarship

The #MeToo Movement cast a spotlight on sexual harassment in various sectors, including higher education. Studies reveal alarming percentages of students reporting that they have been sexually harassed by faculty and administrators. Despite annually devoting hundreds of millions of dollars to addressing sexual harassment and misconduct, nationwide university officials largely take an ostrich approach when hiring faculty and administrators with little or no scrutiny related to their past misconduct. Critics use the term “pass the harasser” or more pejoratively, “pass the trash” to capture the role that institutions play in allowing individuals to change institutions without the new employer learning …

Pathways To Just, Equitable And Sustainable Trade And Investment Regimes, Tomaso Ferrando, Nicolas Perrone, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe, Kangping Du

Reports & Public Policy Documents

In this report we discuss what a Fair, Just and Equitable approach to the global, liberalized and hyper-competitive system of global trade and investments should be. The global market for goods and capital affect the life of producers and workers, stimulates the run towards cheaper products and puts farmers and workers against each other. The current vision of trade and investments is based on the silencing of gendered and reproductive labour and is responsible for the increase in inequality and relative poverty. Furthermore, it stimulates the extraction of commodities and contributes to the degradation of the planet, it has a …

Shelter From The Storm: Human Rights Protections For Single-Mother Families In The Time Of Covid-19, Theresa Glennon, Alexis Fennell, Kaylin Hawkins, Madison Mcnulty

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

COVID-19’s arrival, and the changes it has unleashed, reveal how longstanding legal and policy decisions produced structural inequalities that have left so many families, and especially single-parent families with children, all too insecure. The fragility of single-mother families is amplified by the multifaceted discrimination they face. While all single parents, including single fathers and other single relatives who are raising children, share many of these burdens, this Article focuses on the challenges confronting single mothers.

Federal policy choices stand in sharp contrast to the political rhetoric of government support for families. Social and economic policy in the twentieth century developed …

Confronting Eugenics Means Finally Confronting Its Ableist Roots, Robyn M. Powell

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

In September 2020, a whistleblower complaint was filed alleging that hysterectomies are being performed on women at an immigration detention center in alarmingly high rates. Regrettably, forced sterilizations are part of the nation’s long-standing history of weaponizing reproduction to subjugate socially marginalized communities. While public outrage in response to the whistleblower complaint was swift and relentless, it largely failed to acknowledge how eugenic ideologies and practices, including compulsory sterilizations, are ongoing and deeply entrenched in ableism. Indeed, a conversation that recognizes the ways in which eugenics continues to target people with disabilities is long overdue.

This Article contextualizes how eugenics …

Tempering Glass Armor: A Demand For Improved Anti-Discrimination Housing Laws To Protect Homeless Transgender People, Jack Beasley

Student Scholarship

Homelessness is a nationwide problem that affects hundreds of thousands of people a year. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals face unique, additional issues in their day-to-day lives that heterosexual and cisgender individuals do not. Homeless shelters across the country are full of transgender youth and adults who are subject to more sexual violence, criminal acts, and discrimination than other homeless individuals in the same shelters. The Obama administration’s rule protecting homeless transgender people in shelters is in danger. In essence, Housing Secretary Ben Carson’s proposed rule would put homeless transgender people at a higher risk of discrimination. Agency …

Marriage Or License To Rape? A Socio-Legal Analysis Of Marital Rape In India, Vidhik Kumar

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Rape exposes the failure of society’s institutions which were established to provide better security to an individual in a society. These institutions sometimes not only failed to protect an individual from such grave assaults on their autonomy and privacy, but also sanctioned them by either providing them legitimacy by law or not illegitimating them. States often have either provided legal sanctity to rapes within marriage or have refrained from declaring it a crime, on account of it being a private sphere not open to interference. Rape within marriage or marital rape is a global problem, and it is argued that …

Early Survivor Voices And Primary Sources. Modern Slavery: A Documentary And Reference Guide By Laura J. Lederer, Sandra Morgan

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Foreword, Patricia E. Roberts

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Foreword written by Patricia E. Roberts upon her first year as the 10th dean of St. Mary's University School of Law in San Antonio, Texas.

Undocumented Domestic Workers: A Penumbra In The Workforce, Abigail A. Roman

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

Modernizing Discrimination Law: The Adoption Of An Intersectional Lens, Marisa K. Sanchez

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

The Ill-Treatment Of Their Countrywoman: Liberated African Women, Violence, And Power In Tortola, 1807–1834, Arianna Browne

Master's Theses

In 1807, Parliament passed an Act to abolish the slave trade, leading to the Royal Navy’s campaign of policing international waters and seizing ships suspected of illegal trading. As the Royal Navy captured slave ships as prizes of war and condemned enslaved Africans to Vice-Admiralty courts, formerly enslaved Africans became “captured negroes” or “liberated Africans,” making the subjects in the British colonies. This work, which takes a microhistorical approach to investigate the everyday experiences of liberated Africans in Tortola during the early nineteenth century, focuses on the violent conditions of liberated African women, demonstrating that abolition consisted of violent contradictions …

Law School News: Dean's Distinguished Service Award 2021: Ralph Tavares 05/28/2021, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Lynette Labinger: Doctor Of Laws, Honoris Causa 05-16-2021, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Profiling Beyond Race: Characteristics Associated With Traffic Stop Outcomes, Megan Anderson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Research related to profiling and the outcome of traffic stops has generally focused on the race of the individuals involved. Little research has examined other characteristics, such as age and socioeconomic status, that may also play a role in traffic stop outcomes. The current study sought to address this limitation in two ways: (1) determine whether the characteristics of age, sex, race, social class, and demeanor are profiled during traffic stops and (2) whether these characteristics influenced the outcome of the traffic stops with regard to tickets and vehicle searches. Secondary data were utilized from the 2015 Police-Public Contact Survey. …

A Comparison Of Gender-Based Violence Laws In Canada: A Report For The National Action Plan On Gender-Based Violence Working Group On Responsive Legal And Justice Systems, Jennifer Koshan, Janet Mosher, Wanda Wiegers

Commissioned Reports, Studies and Public Policy Documents

This report undertakes a comparison of laws related to gender-based violence across Canada with a view to identifying promising practices. We use the definition of gender-based violence from the United Nations as our frame, analyzing laws relating to “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual, or mental harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.” While the UN definition includes both intimate partner violence and sexual violence, our focus is largely on violence in the …

Intersectionality And Accessibility To Social Services, Nora Khuder

Thinking Matters Symposium

In times of a crisis the intersectionality of sex, class, and ability creates a vulnerable population. Many available “resources'' are exhausted, due to high demand. Intersectionality signifies the impact of multiple intersecting identities in society as a direct correlation to the specific and unique barriers of marginalized groups. Resources are currently limited due to the lack of representative data. Although many studies have been conducted, many researchers have failed to capture the need of social services in rural areas.

Third-Party Standing And Abortion Providers: The Hidden Dangers Of June Medical Services, Elika Nassirinia

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

Standing is a long held, judicially-created doctrine intended to establish the proper role of courts by identifying who may bring a case in federal court. While standing usually requires that a party asserts his or her own rights, the Supreme Court has created certain exceptions that allow litigants to bring suit on behalf of third parties when they suffer a concrete injury, they have a “close relation” to the third party, and there are obstacles to the third party's ability to protect his or her own interests. June Medical Services, heard by the Supreme Court on June 29, 2020, …