Law and Gender Commons^™

Legal Scapegoating Of Transgender People, Democratic Vulnerability, And The Problem Of Judicial Blinders, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past decade, lawmakers have proposed an extraordinary number of restrictions on transgender people across nearly every area of public and private life — bathrooms, health care, athletics, education, identity documents, military service, prisons, and more. This Article argues that these measures are best understood as legal scapegoating, meaning the use of law to galvanize public discomfort and hostility toward a targeted group. While demagogic rhetoric can also galvanize those reactions, the concrete restrictions of a legal scapegoating effort raise two further risks, one for democratic governance and the other for judicial review. First, legal scapegoating normalizes government’s use …

Legalist Verses Realist Accounts Of United States V. Skrmetti, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

Although the Supreme Court is increasingly adopting an understanding of sex discrimination that is biologically focused and/or formalistic, this Article argues that the Court does not consistently apply that conception when doing so benefits transgender Americans. The Court’s conclusion in United States v. Skrmetti that no facial sex classification exists in Tennessee’s law banning gender-affirming care for transgender—but not cisgender—minors is irreconcilable with its conclusion five years earlier in Bostock v. Clayton County that Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination prohibits employers from firing employees just because they are transgender. Perhaps tellingly, only Justice Gorsuch, Bostock’s author, and Chief Justice …

Brief Of Amici Curiae Scholars For The Advancement Of Children’S Constitutional Rights In Support Of Respondents: St. Mary Catholic Parish V. Roy, Catherine Smith, Tanya Washington, Robin Walker Sterling, Suzette Malveaux, Barbara Bennett Woodhouse, Sara S. Hildebrand, Abigail L. Fleming, Jeremiah Chin

Scholarly Articles

This Court should consider those most directly impacted by the decision in this case: the intended beneficiaries of Colorado’s Universal Preschool Program (“UPK”), Colorado’s children. To paraphrase Shakespeare, though they be but little, they are constitutional rights-bearers and are thus entitled to be free from state-funded discrimination.

Amici are scholars of children and the law, education law, family law, and anti-discrimination law. Amici draw this Court’s attention to the significant harms children in the LGBT community would bear should Colorado be compelled to allow state-funded religious schools to discriminate against preschoolers. Exempting religious schools from the State’s equal-opportunity and antidiscrimination …

Not A Pretty Picture: Race, Gender, And Inequality In The Legal Profession And Legal Education, Tanina Rostain

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Responding to renewed interest in law school as a path to a career “to do well and do good,” this essay examines Nelson, Dinovitzer, Garth, Sterling, Wilkins, Dawe, and Michelson’s The Making of Lawyers’ Careers and its account of inequality and opportunity in the American legal profession. Based on a 20-year study of more than 2,000 lawyers, the book traces how credentials, race, gender, class, and law school selectivity profoundly shape career trajectories. The essay situates those findings within the divide in private practice between corporate practice and people law and interrogates the professional ideology—rooted in the lawyer’s traditional role …

Brief Of Public Health And Health Law Scholars As Amici Curiae Urging Affirmance In Support Of Plaintiffs-Appellees, Rachel L. Zacharias, Zeinab Bakhet, Kevin Costello, Maya Manian

Amicus Briefs & Court Filings

INTRODUCTION: Physicians’ use of their judgment and expertise to prescribe drugs and devices for purposes other than those approved by the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”)—colloquially known as off-label use—is an indispensable feature of modern medicine. The FDA approves drugs as “safe and effective for specific indications.” Christopher M. Wittich, Christopher M. Burkle & William L. Lanier, Ten Common Questions (and Their Answers) About OffLabel Drug Use, 87 Mayo Clinic Procs. 982, 982 (2012). Federal law then generally leaves prescribing decisions, including off-label use of FDA-approved drugs and devices for a patient’s particular indication, to physicians acting under state law …

#Metoo Vs. Anti-Dei, Nicole Porter

Faculty Publications

Nine years ago, the entire country was talking about the #MeToo movement, which can be credited with the unseating of hundreds of powerful men and changing the way we talk about and address sexual harassment in the workplace. In 2026, continued progress of the #MeToo movement might be threatened by a new movement-the Trump Administration's attack on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives. This article discusses the ways in which the #MeToo movement conflicts with the anti-DEI movement. Specifically, it addresses how employers will respond to pressure to dismantle DEI programs, offices, and training, and how those responses will affect …

Toward A Gender-Responsive International Arbitration Ecosystem: A Multilayered Diagnostic Framework, Yejoo Moon

Cornell Law Library Cantwell Prize for Exemplary Student Research Papers

This paper examines gender inequality within the international arbitral ecosystem and proposes a diagnostic framework for understanding its persistent, multilayered nature. It does so on the basis that gender responsiveness is central to the legitimacy of international arbitration, given its role in global governance and its reliance on perceived neutrality and representativeness. Part I maps the current landscape of gender representation, showing that despite increasing awareness and institutional initiatives, women remain significantly underrepresented, particularly in party appointed and co-arbitrator roles. It highlights persistent structural patterns, including reliance on a narrow repeat pool of arbitrators and uneven progress across appointment types …

Sex On Trial, Nathalie Greenfield, Sandra L. Babcock

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

On January 21, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized in Andrew v. White that the State’s introduction of sexualizing evidence in a woman’s capital trial may violate due process. In Brenda Andrew’s case, prosecutors presented evidence about her sexual relationships, clothing, and style of underwear as proof that she was guilty of capital murder. Our research, supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, reveals for the first time that the prosecution’s tactics in Brenda Andrew’s case were far from unique. Based on a systematic review of the trial transcripts of every woman currently on death row in the …

The Political Transformation Of Corporate America, 2001–2022, Reilly S. Steel

Faculty Scholarship

This article reconciles conflicting views about the political landscape of corporate America with new data on the revealed political preferences of 97,469 corporate directors and executives at 9,005 different U.S. companies. Driven largely by turnover, I find that average observed ideology for directors and executives has shifted meaningfully to the left over time, changing from modestly conservative in 2001 to roughly centrist by 2022. This finding supports a middle-ground position between conventional wisdom casting “big business” as a conservative stronghold and revisionist views holding the opposite. Counterfactual simulations and a difference-in-differences design suggest multifaceted reasons for these changes, and hand-collected …

Antidiscrimination, Not Anti-Dei: The Real Story Of The Supreme Court's Recent Title Vii Precedent, Madeline H. Meth

Faculty Scholarship

For several years, my colleague and I had been litigating employment discrimination cases with facts that shocked our friends and family. For example, we fought Dallas County over a women-work-the-weekend policy that required women detention officers to work weekends while male colleagues took the weekends off. Likewise, we challenged the City of Cleveland when it moved our client, an emergency medical services supervisor, from the day shift to the night shift explicitly because he is Black. Then, in April 2024, in one of our client’s cases, Muldrow v. City of St. Louis, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overruled the …

Protecting Cultural Personality, J. Janewa Osei-Tutu

Articles

When companies use cultural symbols or cultural heritage from an indigenous or local community without their knowledge or permission, it can lead to claims of cultural appropriation, particularly in the fashion industry. Yet, the law provides little to no remedy. Trademarks and geographical indications can be used to protect collective cultural identities. However, these intellectual property laws are not helpful if the affected cultural group has not commercialized its identity by offering goods or services to the public. This Article contributes to the literature by theorizing a dignitary-based intellectual property model for protecting cultural identities. It draws on the U.S. …

Conflict As Catalyst: The Role Of Conflict In Creating Political Space For Women, Christie S. Warren

Faculty Publications

Although the benefits associated with the presence of women in political decision-making positions are uncontested, global statistics relating to the number of women in political leadership roles paint a disappointing picture of underutilized resources. While rights-based advocacy, quotas, and economic incentives are commonly posited as effective strategies to increase the number of women active in public spaces, several studies have shown that the law alone is not sufficient to bring about changes in gender norms unless the underlying structural constructs that perpetuate inequalities privileging dominant groups are addressed first. Conflict, especially when driven by rejection of those inequalities, can hasten …

Sex, Gender, And The Blogosphere: Looking Back At The Feminist Law Professors Blog, 2006-2024, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The Feminist Law Professors blog began in 2006 as a modest effort to make feminist legal scholars more visible to one another and to the broader world. What emerged from this effort was a dynamic, collectively imagined space that bore witness to generational shifts in feminist legal thought, the rise and fall of blogging culture, and the enduring challenges of feminist community-building. This Essay reflects on the origins, evolution, and legacies of the Feminist Law Professors blog, situating it within its legal, cultural, and technological moments. It also offers my reflections--as one of two blog editors--on the risks and rewards …

Racing To Safety: Tax Policy For Ai Safety-By-Design, Mirit Eyal, Yonathan Arbel

Articles

The White House recently announced its vision of artificial intelligence (AI) policy: AI development is a race and America must win it. To that end, a new America's AI Action Plan directs federal agencies and states to remove regulatory barriers to AI development and accelerate innovation. This approach leaves limited room for regulatory measures that would address the safety risks of powerful AI systems: their behavior in novel domains remains unpredictable, their decision-making opaqueness, and their alignment with human values is uncertain. While experts warn of large-scale accidents, policymakers find themselves in a bind: Regulate AI and cede ground to …

An Analysis Of Global And Regional Human Rights Standards On Gender-Based Violence, Tamar Ezer, Denisse R. Cordova Montes

Articles

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Women In Law Leadership Lecture Welcomes Victims' Rights Attorney Carrie Goldberg To Roger Williams University School Of Law 3-19-2026, Mikayla Larguinha

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Federal Appeals Court Rules West Virginia Medicaid Coverage Exclusion Of ‘Sex-Change’ Surgery Is Legal, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

2026 Ruth Bader Ginsburg Contest Winners Announced At Rwu Law Women In Law Leadership Lecture 3-4-2026, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Skrmetti And The Problem Of Incidental Intent, Martin J. Katz

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The modern Supreme Court has defined “discriminatory intent” as a strict-liability concept. It does not matter why the government sorts people by a protected characteristic, such as race or sex; it matters only that the government does sort people by such a characteristic. This principle is the key holding of affirmative-action cases, such as Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College. Yet, in the recent case United States v. Skrmetti, the Court seemed to focus not on the question of whether the government sorted people by sex (it did), but on the question …

The Untold Story Of 150 Years Of Women In State Judiciaries, Elizabeth D. Katz

UF Law Faculty Publications

A focus on the U.S. Constitution and federal judges has obscured a longer and more complex history of women serving on state benches — and how state constitutions mattered in their rise.

Misjudging A Reasonable Jury: Evidence That Courts Dismiss Meritorious Harassment Claims, Elizabeth C. Tippett, Jamillah Bowman Williams

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Courts assessing summary judgment motions in Title VII harassment claims commonly grant the motion on the basis that the alleged harassment is insufficiently “severe or pervasive” to meet the legal standard. This mixed-methods study empirically tests whether there is a gap between how judges and potential jurors assess the same set of facts on the severe or pervasive element of a Title VII harassment claim. We presented study participants with facts from 80 federal harassment cases. In each case, the defendant employer moved to dismiss the case, arguing that no reasonable jury would find the alleged harassment sufficiently severe or …

Book Review: Jessica Lake, Special Damage: The Slander Of Women And The Gendered History Of Defamation Law, Tracy A. Thomas

Akron Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Lecture 01-28-2026, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Women In Law And The Draft, Thomas Helgerman, Benjamin David Pyle

Faculty Scholarship

Between 1964 and 1973, women’s representation in full-time law school programs rose fivefold, from 3.7% to 20.1%. This paper examines whether Vietnam War draft policy contributed to this increase. In 1968, men enrolled in law school lost eligibility for 2-S student deferments, threatening law schools’ tuition revenues and incentivizing schools to admit more women to stabilize enrollment. To test this mechanism, we construct a school-by-year dataset of enrollment counts split by women/men and full-time/part-time status. Using a uniform adoption difference-in-differences design, we find that women’s representation rises by 2 percentage points in full-time programs relative to part-time programs (which were …

Situating Stillbirth Within A Reproductive Justice Methodology Amidst Perilous Politics, Jamie Abrams

Book Reviews

Stillbirth and the Law, published in 2025 by the University of California Press, offers both a deeply personal and rigorously insightful examination of how law, medicine, and policy intersect around stillbirth. Jill Lens brings her full self to this work in ways that reflect deep feminist roots cultivated over years of Lens’s impressive scholarly production. Lens channels her lived experience of stillbirth into a comprehensive analysis that combines data, theory, law, narrative, policy, and pragmatic solutions.

The reader leaves the book equally feeling Lens’s deep love and longing for her son, Caleb, and equipped with a lengthy list of tools, …

“No One Can Hear You Scream”: Intimate Partner Violence And Family Justice Centers In Rural America, Jordan Stevenson

Legal Writing Competition Winners

In rural Kentucky, where cars are a necessity to traverse the rugged Appalachian Mountains and sparsely populated farmlands, “Barbara’s” abusive husband couldn’t let her get away—so he set her car aflame. Although census-defined rural areas contain only 20% of the United States population, some studies have found that intimate partner violence is more common and severe in rural areas than urban or suburban regions. 

People, especially women, in rural areas experience intimate partner violence in unique ways tied to their geographic and cultural context. Consequently, organizations, courts, and law enforcement struggle to meet the needs of affected populations in rural …

International Declaration On Gender Apartheid And Its Destructive Consequences, Georges Abi-Saab, Belquis Ahmadi, Hala Alkarib, Waheeda Amien, Penelope Andrews, Zainah Anwar, Marzia Babakarkhail, Cecilia Bailliet, Manizha Bakhtari, Karima Bennoune, Laurence Boisson De Chazournes, Roya Boroumand, Terry Boullata, Charlotte Bunch, Rebecca J. Cook, Roberta Clarke, Radhika Coomaraswamy, Suraya Dalil, Wesahl Domingo, Shirin Ebadi, Yakin Ertük, Alda Facio, Stephanie Farrior, Hannah Garry, James Thuo Gathii, Richard Goldstone, Pablo De Greiff, Mozn Hassan, Yoko Hayashi, Helena Kennedy, Sisi Khampepe, Fawzia Koofi, Viviana Krsticevic, Joanna Lewis, Marina Mahathir, Haanya Malik, Elham Manea, Gay J. Mcdougall, Juan E. Méndez, Davood Moradian, Denis Mukwege, Nadia Murad, Elizabeth Odio Benito, Thandi Orleyn, Mikiko Otani, Tamana Zaryab Paryani, Pragna Patel, Fausto Pocar, Javaid Rehman, Mary Robinson, Kenneth Roth, Albie Sachs, Mariam Safi, Gita Sahgal, Sima Samar, Habiba Sarabi, Fatou Sou, Leigh Toomey, Melanne Verveer, Zarqa Yaftali, Ganna Yudkivska

Other Publications

The Declaration is the result of an 18-month process of global consultation with leading experts, including a series of virtual consultations with women human rights defenders (WHRDs) from Afghanistan in spring 2025 and an in-person convening of United Nations (UN) experts, Afghan and South African WHRDs, civil society representatives, and international law experts at the University of Michigan Law School in September 2025.

This effort builds on the precedent of other experts’ declarations, signed on to by leading international legal and human rights experts, which were very influential in developing a human rights jurisprudence on a range of issues, and …

Confronting Inequality: Three Eras Of Gender And Tax Scholarship, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Tax law is not neutral--it encodes social values and reinforces certain longstanding hierarchies. For over fifty years, legal scholarship at the intersection of gender and tax has exposed how seemingly neutral tax laws perpetuate gender inequality. This Article uses the metaphor of quilting to trace the evolution of this scholarly field across three distinct eras.   Part I names and defines the designing era (1971-1986), which began with Grace Blumberg's writing on the gendered impact of tax laws on marriage, labor, and caregiving; she framed taxation as a tool of social control over women. Blumberg's work laid the foundation for other …

Incarceration As Sexualized Violence, Leigh S. Goodmark

Faculty Scholarship

Sexual violence—rape, sexual assault, strip and body cavity searches, surveillance, and reproductive abuse—is a regular occurrence in women’s prisons. Some of that violence is clearly illegal; some occupies a legally gray middle ground; and some is considered essential to the operation of the prison system. All of it, however, could violate the law if the victims were not incarcerated. Sexual violence is so pervasive within women’s prisons that incarceration can only be understood as a form of sexualized violence. Given the certainty that people incarcerated in women’s prisons will experience some form of sexual abuse, continued incarceration can only be …

Help-Seeking For Technology-Facilitated Sexual Violence: Insights From Canadian Young Adults Across Three Forms Of Harm, Jennifer L. Mcarthur, Anita M. Aucoin, Kayla J. Goruk, Julie Blais, Alexa Dodge, Suzie Dunn

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Technology-facilitated sexual violence (TFSV) encompasses a range of harmful digital sexual behaviors, each with unique characteristics and potential impacts on victim-survivors, as well as varying responses from support systems. To address this growing issue, it is necessary to understand the help-seeking behaviors of those affected by the different types of TFSV and the unique barriers they encounter. This study draws on interview (n = 17) and survey (n = 468) data from adults in Canada to compare the help-seeking behaviors and barriers across image-based sexual abuse, image-based sexual harassment, and sexual-, gender-, and sexuality-based harassment. Qualitative findings suggested …