Law and Gender Commons^™

Violence Against Women And Legal Education: An Essay For Mary Joe Frug, Elizabeth M. Schneider

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Contradiction And Revision: Progressive Feminist Legal Scholars Respond To Mary Joe Frug, Elizabeth M. Schneider, Judi Greenberg, Martha Minow

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Two Legal Constructs Of Motherhood: "Protective" Legislation In Mexico And The United States, Antoinette M. Sedillo Lopez

Faculty Scholarship

The theme of this symposium, "Reconstructing Motherhood," requires an examination of laws designed to further traditional motherhood roles. Societal constructs of motherhood-women as child bearers and nurturers-have profoundly affected women's involvement in paid employment. Conversely, women's participation in paid employment affects how women experience motherhood. For example, a woman who does not work outside the home has a dramatically different mothering experience than a woman who works outside the home and leaves her children with a day-care provider. The legal system can affect the relationship between motherhood and employment opportunities for women by means of employment laws and policies. Sometimes …

Patriarchy, Paternalism, And The Masks Of Fetal Protection., A. Kimberley Dayton

Faculty Scholarship

This essay is a response to John Kennedy's defense of Johnson Controls, Inc.'s fetal protection policy which was struck down last year in International Union, UAW v. Johnson Controls, Inc. A unanimous Supreme Court held in the case that the policy, which excluded women from a "fetotoxic" workplace, violated the federal employment discrimination laws. The Court's decision was issued only a day before Kennedy was scheduled to debate the issue of whether Title VII bars fetal protection policies with Professor Elinor Schroeder at the Kansas Journal's first symposium on March 21-22. 1991. The Court's decision rendered the technical statutory issues …

Thelma And Louise And Bonnie And Jean: Images Of Women As Criminals, Susan Herman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

National Institutes Of Health Workshop Statement. Reproductive Genetic Testing: Impact On Women, Karen H. Rothenberg, Elizabeth Thomson

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

M Is For The Many Things, Carol Sanger

Faculty Scholarship

People have gotten quite a few things about mothers and motherhood wrong over the last 700 or so years. Educators, historians, jurists, philosophers, physicians, social workers, and theologians have been telling us what mothers are like: what they need, how they feel, what pleases them, how and how well they think. Mothers didn't love their children in the fifteenth century and loved them too much in the 1950s. Black mothers felt no pain in childbirth, and white mothers felt no pleasure in intercourse. The obligations of motherhood, physical and social, have been used to explain why women should not work, …

Race, Gender, And Sexual Harassment, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw

Faculty Scholarship

I would like to thank Anita Hill and express my deep respect to her for having the courage to shatter the silence on sexual harassment. I am certain that I speak for millions of women in saying that I have been inspired and renewed by her strength and integrity.

I have looked forward to addressing you tonight on a critical issue at this very important juncture in our political history. Sexual harassment has captured our attention over the last several weeks and has of course galvanized women in a way that scarcely could have been imagined only a few short …

The Reasonable Woman And The Ordinary Man, Carol Sanger

Faculty Scholarship

Nineteen ninety-one was a seismic year for sexual harassment. The first localized shift occurred in January, when the Ninth Circuit established that the standard by which sexual harassment in the workplace would be judged was no longer the reasonable man or even the reasonable person but rather the reasonable woman. In October a larger audience felt a much stronger jolt when Anita Hill spoke before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Hill testified that Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her while she worked for him at the Department of Education and at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Her testimony …

Feminist Jurisprudence - The 1990 Myra Bradwell Day Panel, Elizabeth M. Schneider, Lucinda Finley, Carin Clauss, Joan Bertin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Criminal Abortion Revisited, Samuel W. Buell

Faculty Scholarship

This note focuses on the issue of the state's application of the criminal law as a sanction against women who choose to have abortions. History reveals that pre-Roe criminal-abortion law-both by its terms and in its application-expressed an incoherent attitude toward the culpability of these women. While criminal-abortion laws treated the abortionist as a serious felon, sending him to prison for up to twenty years,' the same statutes either did not cover the woman seeking an abortion, or, if the statutes did deem her a criminal, prosecutors and courts refused or neglected to hold her liable criminally. The law instead …

Dissolving The Sameness/Difference Debate: A Post-Modern Path Beyond Essentialism In Feminist And Critical Race Theory, Joan C. Williams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Note, Sex(Ual Orientation) And Title Vii, I. Bennett Capers

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Feminist Jurisprudence: Why Law Must Consider Women's Perspectives, Ann Juergens

Faculty Scholarship

A growing number of scholars are asking how the law would be different if it took women's points of view and experiences into account. Feminist Jurisprudence argues that we must look at the norms embedded in our legal system and rethink the law. It is about being inclusive of women, and of all people who differ from the norms of the law as it is today. The endeavor will necessarily shake up established relations between family, the workplace and the state. Lawyers, judges, and legislators should get ready for the changes.

The Death Penalty And Gender Discrimination, Elizabeth Rapaport

Faculty Scholarship

Despite the paucity of research on the death penalty and gender discrimination, it is widely supposed that women murderers are chivalrously spared the death sentence. This supposition is fueled by the relatively small number of women who are condemned. This article argues that women are represented on contemporary U.S. death rows in numbers commensurate with the infrequency of female commission of those crimes which our society labels sufficiently reprehensible to merit capital punishment. Additionally, preliminary investigation suggests that death-sentenced women are more likely than death-sentenced men to have killed intimates, although the explanation for this disparity is not yet at …

Evidence Engendered, Kit Kinports

Faculty Scholarship

Part I of this article briefly describes feminist legal theory and its evolution. Part II then discusses the extent to which evidence as a whole is a gendered topic that reflects predominantly male traits and ideals, and Part III analyzes various specific evidentiary doctrines from a feminist perspective. Finally, Part IV examines way of incorporating feminist theories in teaching an evidence course.

Gender Wars: Selfless Women In The Republic Of Choice, Joan C. Williams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Parental Leaves And Poor Women: Paying The Price For Time Off, Maria O'Brien

Faculty Scholarship

This Article presents a critique of unpaid "parental" leaves and the parental leave legislation recently passed by Congress.1 Eight states have already enacted parental leave statutes of various kinds.' For the sake of simplicity and uniformity, however, this Article focuses on the proposed federal legislation3 and its anticipated effects on unemployed and underemployed women.4 Specifically, this Article argues that the debate about parental leave 5 has ignored the possibility that the cost of this mandated benefit is likely to be borne by poor, low-skill working women6 who will find that their job opportunities narrow as employers try to shift some …

Gender, Legal Education And Legal Careers, Antoinette M. Sedillo Lopez, Lee Teitelbaum, Jeffrey Jenkins

Faculty Scholarship

Much of the literature on the careers of women generally-as well as the smaller literature on the experiences of women in legal education and legal practice-supposes that women will follow different paths and have different experiences than men, and that this is and will be true because they are women. Some commentators on the relation between gender and the experience of legal professionals believe that women have distinctive modes of cognition or value orientations that shape their experience in the workplace, while others believe that social and cultural assumptions (held not only by employers but often by women themselves) are …

Race, Gender, And Sexual Harassment, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw

Faculty Scholarship

I would like to thank Anita Hill and express my deep respect to her for having the courage to shatter the silence on sexual harassment. I am certain that I speak for millions of women in saying that I have been inspired and renewed by her strength and integrity.

I have looked forward to addressing you tonight on a critical issue at this very important juncture in our political history. Sexual harassment has captured our attention over the last several weeks and has of course galvanized women in a way that scarcely could have been imagined only a few short …

Gestational Surrogacy And The Health Care Provider: Put Part Of The "Ivf Genie" Back Into The Bottle, Karen H. Rothenberg

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Gender Bias In The Classrom, Taunya Lovell Banks

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Women And Aids - Racism, Sexism, And Classism, Taunya L. Banks

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Sameness Feminism And The Work/Family Conflict, Joan C. Williams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

"Portrait Of A Lady": The Woman Lawyer In The 1980s, Stacy Caplow, Shira A. Scheindlin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Some Questions About Gender And The Death Penalty, Elizabeth Rapaport

Faculty Scholarship

No capital punishment statute classifies by gender, but it is arguable that gender bias infects the administration of capital punishment because the discretion of prosecutors, juries and judges is employed to the advantage of female murderers. Prior to Furman, capital punishment statutes typically gave sentencing authorities untrammelled discretion to mete out life or death. Although sentencing discretion has been substantially reduced in the modern death penalty regime, it remains arguable post-Furman that the sparseness of women on death row testifies to the discriminatory use of capital sentencing discretion. However, in light of the recent decision in McCleskey v. Kemp, in …

Women In The Aids Epidemic: A Portrait Of Unmet Needs, Arlene Zarembka, Katherine M. Franke

Faculty Scholarship

While rarely a month goes by that the topic of AIDS escapes discussion in the legal literature, a survey of legal publications reveals that the implications of AIDS for women has received scant treatment by legal commentators. Unfortunately, this neglect is not unique to the legal community, but reflects a larger societal disinterest in women with AIDS.

In fact, this epidemic looks quite different from the perspective of women. The medical, social, and legal needs of women affected by AIDS are in many ways needs that preexisted AIDS, but which have been magnified by the threat and implications of HIV …

Refocusing Abortion Jurisprudence To Include The Woman: A Response To Bopp And Coleson And Webster V. Reproductive Health Services, Barbara Cox

Faculty Scholarship

This Article seeks to refocus the abortion debate to include the impact of unwanted pregnancy on women. The first two sections of this Article challenge Bopp and Coleson's argument that a woman's right to choose an abortion enjoys no constitutional basis and that Roe should be reversed. A woman's constitutionally protected liberty and privacy rights are directly implicated by the state imposed pregnancy that results from restricted access to abortion. The third section disputes Bopp and Coleson's claim that the abortion right has become virtually inviolate, not subject to the state restrictions that the Court has allowed for other aspects …

Choosing One's Family: Can The Legal System Address The Breadth Of Women's Choices Of Intimate Relationships, Barbara Cox

Faculty Scholarship

In discussing the legal system's response to alternative families seeking an extension of traditional family benefits, this paper is divided into two main sections. The first section summarizes the Madison experience in trying to pass a comprehensive alternative family rights ordinance. It takes an in-depth look at the entire process from the grassroots pressures on the M.E.O.C. which resulted in formation of the task force to the Common Council's enactment of two minor sections of the proposed ordinance. It will analyze the political and legal process used in an effort to obtain significant reform in the definition of family within …

Charleston Policy: Substance Or Abuse, The , Kimani Paul-Emile

Faculty Scholarship

In 1989, the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) adopted a policy that, according to subjective criteria, singled out for drug testing, certain women who sought prenatal care and childbirth services would be tested for prohibited substances. Women who tested positive were arrested, incarcerated and prosecuted for crimes ranging from misdemeanor substance possession to felony substance distribution to a minor. In this Article, the Author argues that by intentionally targeting indigent Black women for prosecution, the MUSC Policy continued the United States legacy of their systematic oppression and resulted in the criminalizing of Black Motherhood.