Law and Gender Commons^™

Testing Sex, Rachel Rebouché

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Evidentiary Rules Of Engagement In The War Against Domestic Violence, Erin R. Collins

Law Faculty Publications

Our criminal justice system promises defendants a fair and just adjudication of guilt, regardless of the character of the alleged offense. Yet, from mandatory arrest to "no-drop" prosecution policies, the system's front-end response to domestic violence reflects the belief that it differs from other crimes in ways that permit or require the adaptation of criminal justice response mechanisms. Although scholars debate whether these differential responses are effective or normatively sound, the scholarship leaves untouched the presumption that, once the adjudicatory phase is underway, the system treats domestic violence offenses like any other crime.

This Article reveals that this presumption is …

Abortion And The Constitutional Right (Not) To Procreate, Mary Ziegler

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Beginning Of The End Of Coverture: A Reappraisal Of The Married Woman's Separate Estate, Allison Anna Tait

Law Faculty Publications

Before statutory enactments in the nineteenth century granted married women a limited set of property rights, the separate estate trust was, by and large, the sole form of married women's property. Although the separate estate allowed married women to circumvent the law of coverture, historians have generally viewed the separate estate as an ineffective vehicle for extending property rights to married women. In this Article, I reappraise the separate estate's utility and argue that Chancery's separate estate jurisprudence during the eighteenth century was a critical first step in the establishment of married women as property-holders. Separate estates guaranteed critical financial …

Virginia's Gap Between Punishment And Culpability: Re-Examining Self-Defense Law And Battered Woman's Syndrome, Kendall Hamilton

Law Student Publications

This comment argues that in order for Virginia's criminal justice system to properly punish women who kill their abusers, effectively restoring their right to self-defend when necessary, Virginia must make two fundamental changes to its self-defense laws. First, Virginia's criminal justice system must advocate for the admission of expert testimony relating to battered woman's syndrome ("BWS"). This reform must be uniformly applied throughout our court system. Second, as Virginia's self-defense laws require both a reasonable fear and an overt act, the subjective standard for reasonable fear must also extend to the overt act requirement. This comment explains the significance of …

Virginia's "War On Women": How Forcing Women To Have An Ultrasound Before Abortion Is Unconstitutional, Alison B. Linas

Law Student Publications

This comment will discuss how the ultrasound bill, like similar ones in other states, is unconstitutional for two reasons....Part II of this comment will focus on the Supreme Court's role in shaping abortion policy....Part III will describe Virginia’s new ultrasound requirement and how the above-mentioned Supreme Court decisions affect the new bill’s legality. Part III(A) will lay out the relevant portions of the bill and discuss its legislative history. Part III(B) will analyze the bill through Casey’s undue burden lens....Part III(C) will argue that requiring a woman to have a mandatory medical procedure effectively prevents her from refusing medical care, …

Breastfeeding In Custody Proceedings: A Modern-Day Manifestation Of Liberal And Conservative Family Traditions, Kate Baxter-Kauf

Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest

This Comment contends that cultural and legal representations of breastfeeding in custody determinations highlight contradictory notions of motherhood and family that mirror liberal and conservative family traditions thought to be long dead.

Motherhood And The Constitution: (Re)Thinking The Power Of Women To Facilitate Change, Angela Mae Kupenda

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

However, this essay suggests a different, or additional, approach. Rather than focusing on the many barriers to equality originating from others, this essay focuses on women's power to forge equality. Some of this power is cloaked, unharnessed, and underutilized. This essay is intended to challenge women to reconstitute the power of motherhood as a means of transforming not only families, but also law and society. This essay suggests the power of women to be mothering teachers and teaching mothers. Women have a choice, even an affirmative duty, to unharness their power to facilitate change and shape a status quo of …

Breastfeeding In Custody Proceedings: A Modern-Day Manifestation Of Liberal And Conservative Family Traditions, Kate Baxter-Kauf

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

This Comment contends that cultural and legal representations of breastfeeding in custody determinations highlight contradictory notions of motherhood and family that mirror liberal and conservative family traditions thought to be long dead.

Motherhood And The Constitution: (Re)Thinking The Power Of Women To Facilitate Change, Angela Mae Kupenda

Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest

However, this essay suggests a different, or additional, approach. Rather than focusing on the many barriers to equality originating from others, this essay focuses on women's power to forge equality. Some of this power is cloaked, unharnessed, and underutilized. This essay is intended to challenge women to reconstitute the power of motherhood as a means of transforming not only families, but also law and society. This essay suggests the power of women to be mothering teachers and teaching mothers. Women have a choice, even an affirmative duty, to unharness their power to facilitate change and shape a status quo of …

How (Not) To Talk About Abortion, Meredith J. Harbach

Law Faculty Publications

In this essay, I aim to have a conversation about how we converse- how we talk-about abortion and related issues. In the process, I want to consider how we might come together to discover issues of shared commitment and values and transform the existing abortion debate. I begin with a review of some of the more notable abortion-related rhetoric during the 2012 Virginia General Assembly, and contrast that rhetoric with the discourse in my classroom. I then consider whether and how we might move forward together toward a more meaningful and productive dialogue on these issues.

How House Bill 2063 And The Expansion Of Access To Protective Orders Could Have Saved Yeardley Love's Life, Amy Weiss

Law Student Publications

This paper will examine Virginia protective order law before the enactment of House Bill 2063, how Yeardley Love’s death was a catalyst for reform of the law, how the law will change under House Bill 2063, and possible future developments in legislative reform that could further help victims of intimate partner violence.

Mancession Or Momcession? Good Providers, A Bad Economy, And Gender Discrimination, Allison Anna Tait

Law Faculty Publications

Against this backdrop of precarious and disappearing work, two new elements became important: who was out of work, and how those still employed were navigating bad jobs. These questions laid the foundation for a flood of stories concerning unemployment and bad employment. Unsurprisingly, gender played a leading role in the debates. This article will discuss these two concerns--employment and workplace discrimination-as they intersect with gender and gender stereotypes.

Please Check One--Male Or Female?: Confronting Gender Identity Discrimination In Collegiate Residential Life, Katherine A. Womack

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Issue 4: Table Of Contents

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Common Law Is Not Just About Contracts: How Legal Education Has Been Short-Changing Feminism, Charles E. Rounds Jr.

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Marriage And Divorce: Legal Foundations, Azizah Y. Al-Hibri

Law Faculty Publications

A six-volume work, this set constitutes a major revision and massive expansion of the 1995 Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World. In addition to covering Islamic societies in the modern world from the eighteenth century to the present, as the earlier four-volume set did, it will add a depth of historical background going back to the pre- Islamic era. The new reference also covers the full geographical extent of Islam by focusing not only on the countries in which Islam is dominant, but also on regions in which Muslims live as minorities, such as Europe and the Americas.

The Slave, The Fetus, The Body: Articulating Biopower And The Pregnant Woman, Kevin Kuswa, Paul Achter, Elizabeth Lauzon

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

Many slaveholders attempted to justify the institution of slavery in the United States by claiming that the practice of slavery was actually in the interests of the slaves themselves. Not only are these arguments invalid because they justify inhumane treatment and the imprisonment of innocent human beings, they also contain a dangerous paternalism (a “speaking for”) that has not vacated the social sphere. Indeed, this same logic—the notion that bodies can be regulated and controlled for their own protection—is presently being used to speak for the fetus in order to justify fetal rights. Borrowing from Berlant (1997), these fetal rights …

Family Model And Mystical Body: Witnessing Gender Through Political Metaphor In The Early Modern Nation-State, Allison Anna Tait

Law Faculty Publications

The preferred political metaphor in the constitutionalist context was the mystical political body, a concept that defined a system in which power was shared and the well-being of the community was linked to the well-being of the individual. Within the mystical political body, the theoretical possibility exists for women not only to occupy a civic space through organic (and organological) association but also to articulate their perspective and its consequences for the political community in a civically approved way. In the mystical body, women approach a citizenship status impossible within the traditional family framework and their witnessing is closely associated …

An Uninvited Guest: The Federal Death Penalty And The Massachusetts Prosecution Of Nurse Kristen Gilbert, John P. Cunningham

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Strategies For Combating Sexual Harassment: The Role Of Labor Unions, Ann C. Hodges

Law Faculty Publications

This article will discuss the role that unions do play and the role that they can play in eliminating workplace harassment. First, the article will discuss the problem of harassment in the workplace, documenting its frequency and analyzing its forms. Section II will include an examination of harassment in the unionized workplace. Section III will propose a number of reasons that unions should take the lead in addressing workplace harassment, some focused on workers' rights and others on union selfinterest. Finally, in Section IV, the article will recommend several approaches for unions that desire to be in the vanguard of …

Love Doesn't Pay: The Fiction Of Marriage Rights In The Workplace, James A. Sonne

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Transforming Society Through Law: St. George Tucker, Women's Property Rights And An Active Republican Judiciary, Mark D. Mcgarvie

Law Faculty Publications

Few people in America in the 1790s considered women to be equal to men legally and socially. Believers in gender equality were even rarer among elite southern males who lived in a society that relied upon patriarchal authority and prescribed roles, behaviors, and attitudes for its social leaders. In this context, St. George Tucker's personal and judicial expressions of women's rights evince an unusually progressive perspective that places him in the vanguard of social and legal reform in the early republic. This directly rebuts Christopher Doyle's assertions in his examination of Tucker's commitment to gender equality and social reform. It …

Untying The Knot: An Analysis Of The English Divorce And Matrimonial Causes Court Records, 1858-1966, Danaya C. Wright

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

An Islamic Perspective On Domestic Violence, Azizah Y. Al-Hibri

Law Faculty Publications

In this Article, the author addresses the traditional Islamic view of domestic violence. To understand the Islamic perspective on domestic violence, the author will explore the Islamic view of gender relations, especially within the family. This view is rooted in the Qur'an, which is examined in this Article.

Sex Offender Registration And Community Notification Laws: Will These Laws Survive?, Kimberly B. Wilkins

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Islamic Law Vs. Patriarchal Systems: A Woman's Perspective, Azizah Y. Al-Hibri

Law Faculty Publications

It is best to understand Islam through its core concept,· adalah (justice). This is a complex concept that thoroughly permeates the Islamic worldview. It is not reducible to retributive justice, because it is a higher-order concept whose backbone is the Mizaan (balance and harmony).

Force And Colonial Development In Eastern Uganda, Carol Summers

History Faculty Publications

This article explores why and how administrators and missionaries in Eastern Uganda came to associate progress and development with the need to whip, coerce, and imprison women, developing new institutions for the violent control of wives that went far beyond more common patterns of informal patriarchal control. New Native Courts took over from husbands in arranging for troublesome wives to be whipped. New mission associations of church, teachers’ and evangelists’ groups, and church men’s groups worked to establish Christian patriarchal control over wives who rejected husbands and Christ. Both officials and missionaries understood clearly that the government and missions needed …

Muslim Women's Rights In The Global Village: Challenges And Opportunities, Azizah Y. Al-Hibri

Law Faculty Publications

In this age of information technology that shrank our world into a global village, it is fair to ask how this recent development has impacted Muslim women's rights across the world. Having just traveled through nine Muslim countries, ranging from Pakistan and Bangladesh to the Gulf States, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon, I would answer that it is leading, slowly but surely, to reassessment and change.' Attempts to accelerate the pace of this change, however, without full understanding of its complex topology, and the deep-rooted commitment by most Muslim women to spiritual and cultural authenticity, could halt or even reverse this …

The Imminent Demise Of Interspousal Tort Immunity, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

During the decade of the 1980s, I extensively explored the doctrine of interspousal tort immunity in the United States. I examined the origins and development of the concept; how the notion survived intact in every jurisdiction throughout the nation until 1914; the first successful efforts to abolish immunity during the teens; the slow pace of abrogation in the five decades between 1920 and 1970; and the steady decline of the doctrine thereafter. Indeed, only a small number of states in the country still retain any form of interspousal tort immunity, even though some jurisdictions evince concern about certain issues involving …