Law and Gender Commons^™

Gender Equality And Women's Issues In Vietnam: The Vietnamese Woman—Warrior And Poet, Wendy N. Duong

Washington International Law Journal

Exploration of women's issues in Vietnam strengthens the emerging voice of the "exotic other female" in contemporary international feminist discourse. Any women's movement in Vietnam today must be cast as the revitalization of the Vietnamese woman's collective cultural identity, rather than as a Western imported feminist doctrine. The Vietnamese woman's collective cultural identity is based on the history and cultural folklores of Vietnam, including expressions of feminist ideas in law and literature, and a long history of warfare and collective sufferings, wherein women have been seen as martyrs, national treasures, and laborers in war and in peace. The advocacy of …

Women Defenders In The West, Barbara Allen Babcock

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Dialectics And Domestic Abuse, Katharine K. Baker

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Fighting Back Against The Taliban: The Case For Restoring Afghan Men And Women's Right To Self-Determination, Shannon A. Wiley

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

No abstract provided.

Women At War: An Evolutionary Perspective, Kingsley R. Browne

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Alice In Legal Wonderland: A Cross-Examination Of Gender, Race And Empire In Victorian Law And Literature, Kristin (Brandser) Kalsem

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Lewis Carroll's 1865 scene of a recalcitrant Alice in the courtroom, defying the court's authority as she grows (literally) into a large and threatening presence, dramatizes what was becoming an increasingly common Victorian spectacle: a woman questioning and critiquing the law and claiming a place for herself within its institutions. Women have played a significant (but much overlooked) role in legal history and, in this paper, I argue for the importance of examining various narratives of the past (including literary accounts) that explored women's relationship to the law.

Against the backdrop of several legal cases in which women sought entry …

Child Care Needs Survey Report

ADVANCE Library Collection

No abstract provided.

Project Summary, Anthony Chen

ADVANCE Library Collection

No abstract provided.

Reconsidering The Abuse That Dare Not Speak Its Name: A Criticism Of Recent Legal Scholarship Regarding Same-Gender Domestic Violence, Ryiah Lilith

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This article argues that while recent legal scholarship effectively disputes the applicability of a gendered model of domestic violence to same-gender abuse, it goes too far in embracing a completely gender-neutral model. Part I explains the theoretical problems with the non-gendered model of domestic violence by examining in detail the research which is most often cited in legal writings in support of this model. Part II briefly explores the pragmatic implications for lesbian and gay male victims of domestic violence when law enforcement policies such as mandatory arrest are based on a model of domestic violence which ignores contexts such …

Mainstream Legal Responses To Domestic Violence Versus Real Needs Of Diverse Communities, Elizabeth Murno, Jessica F. Vasquez

Fordham Urban Law Journal

Keynote speaker Marcia Ann Gillespie, editor-in-chief of Ms. Magazine, discussed the importance of getting to the root of what makes violence against women. She stressed the importance of looking at what makes men act violent, taking down barriers of reporting violence, and analyzing other contributing factors. Panelist Aurora Salamone from the New York City Department for the Aging then discussed domestic abuse against elders, stressing that domestic violence in the household does not all the sudden stop at a certain age. Panelist Kimberly A. Madden from from the Jewish Association for Services of the Aged discussed how violence against elders …

Issues In Representing Immigrant Victims

Fordham Urban Law Journal

Panelist Emira-Habiby Browne, executive director of the Arab American Family Support Center discussed the misunderstood community of Arab women adn the cultural barriers they experience when they come to America and particularly when they become victims of domestic violence. Panelist Margaret Retter, Executive Director of Din Legal Center Inc., discussed the cultural obstacles that stand in the way of Jewish women who are being abused and the obstacles they face in getting out of that situation. Panelist Julie Dinnerstein, staff Immigration Attorney at the Sanctuary for Families, gave a nuts-and-bolts discussion on remedies available to immigrant battered women. She discussed …

Little Sisters Book And Art Emporium V. Minister Of Justice: Sex Equality And The Attack On R. V. Butler, Janine Benedet

All Faculty Publications

Scholars and philosophers spend much of their time discussing what pornography means and whether it can be defined. This debate persists despite the fact that most men, regardless of their sexual orientation, seem to understand quite well what pornography is, and what it is for: they produce it commercially, buy it in magazines, rent it in videos, and search for it on the Internet. The pornography industry has the distinct advantage of selling a product that, in legal terms, is considered "expression," and therefore a product that has been declared worthy of constitutional protection under section 2(b) of the Canadian …

Lucas Rosa V. Park West Bank And Trust Company, Katherine M. Franke

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In July of 1998 something rather mundane happened: Lucas Rosa walked into Park West Bank in Holyoke, Massachusetts and asked for a loan application. Since it was a warm summer day, and because she wanted to look credit-worthy, Rosa wore a blousey top over stockings. Suddenly, the mundane transformed into the exceptional: When asked for some identification, Rosa was told that no application would be forthcoming until and unless she went home, changed her clothes and returned attired in more traditionally masculine/male clothing. Rosa, a biological male who identifies herself as female was, it seems, denied a loan application on …

Amicus Curiae Brief Of Now Legal Defense And Education Fund And Equal Rights Advocates In Support Of Plaintiff-Appellant And In Support Of Reversal In The United States Court Of Appeals For The First Curcuit Lucas Rosa V. Park West Bank And Trust Company On Appeal From The United States District Court For The District Of Massachusetts, Katherine M. Franke

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

By dismissing the plaintiffs complaint under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act ("ECOA") on the ground that "the issue in this case is not [Rosa's] sex, but rather how he chose to dress when applying for a loan" (Bench Order at 1), the lower court erroneously established that there are no set of facts in which clothing-based sex stereotyping can form the basis of a legitimate claim of sex discrimination in access to credit. This view of the meaning and scope of the ECOA runs contrary to well-established Supreme Court precedent which prohibits, inter alia, the adverse treatment of a …

Law As A Tool For A Sexual Revolution: Israel's Prevention Of Sexual Harassment Law- 1998, Tzili Mor

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Discussion of the newly enacted law will outline the theoretical underpinnings and their effect on the resultant version (Part III), followed by the legislative history, including the Knesset and the public debate surrounding the bill (Part IV), and the impact of that debate on the final outcome of the law (Part V). Part VI will pay particular attention to the innovative approach of the law as a whole and some of the revolutionary specific provisions within. In particular, the legislative framework will be considered in the context of a nation founded and conducted on traditional religious tenets of Judaism. Finally, …

United Nations Convention Documents In Light Of Feminist Theory, R. Christopher Preston, Ronald Z. Ahrens

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This article proposes that language identifying human rights of women in U.N. Conference documents has its origin in several different feminist theories. An understanding of these theories can help to clarify meaning, resolve inconsistencies, and predict the future direction of language in U.N. documents. Part I examines three prominent feminist theories and their relation to international law. Part II examines the history of women's rights in U.N. documents and examines the influence of feminist theory on the document language. Using the Women and the Economy section of the Fourth World Conference on Women, Platform for Action (Platform for Action), Part …

Women's Annotated Legal Bibliography

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Re/Forming And Influencing Public Policy, Law And Religion: Missing From The Table, Laura M. Padilla

Faculty Scholarship

Taking a leap to be at a table from which Mexican American women have always been absent, and are still not invited, takes tremendous courage, knowing that much personal sacrifice will be required. This Essay addresses why Mexican American women have been absent from the tables of influence in the worlds of public policy, religion, and law, and how they can establish their presence as part of an anti-subordination agenda.

Brief For The Plaintiff-Appellant Lucas Rosa In The United States Court Of Appeals For The First Circuit Lucas Rosa V. Park West Bank And Trust Company On Appeal From The United States District Court For The District Of Massachusetts, Jennifer L. Levi, Mary L. Bonauto

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The District Court fundamentally misconceived the law as applicable to the Plaintiffs claim by concluding that there may be no relationship, as a matter of law, between telling a bank customer what to wear and sex discrimination. It also misapplied Rule 12(b)(6) to the extent that it resolved any factual questions beyond the allegations of the Complaint regarding the basis of the Bank's different treatment of the Plaintiff. Finally, because the District Court incorrectly dismissed the single federal claim in Plaintiffs Complaint, it improperly dismissed Plaintiffs pendant state claims for want of federal court jurisdiction.

Epilogue, Jennifer L. Levi

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The First Circuit reversed the district court's order dismissing Lucas Rosa's claim against Park West Bank. The appeals court's reversal seems to be part of an emerging nationwide rejection of cases from the 1970s and 1980s in which courts summarily dismissed sex discrimination claims brought by transgender plaintiffs, no matter how squarely the facts appeared to present a clear-cut case of discrimination based on sex. Creating what appeared to be a "transgender" exception to sex discrimination law, those earlier courts ignored what the First Circuit recognized here-that a bank officer who tells an applicant to go home, change, and return …

Foreword: Politics, Pragmatism And The Courts, Anthony E. Varona

Articles

No abstract provided.

Lena Olive Smith: A Minnesota Civil Rights Pioneer, Ann Juergens

Faculty Scholarship

Lena Olive Smith and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) created a spirited partnership in the public interest during the 1920s and 1930s. Throughout their long collaboration, this woman lawyer, her clients, and the Minneapolis branch of a national grassroots organization faced similar challenges: to stay solvent, to end segregation and increase equality, and to live with dignity. This article is divided into four sections. The first three roughly correspond with stages in Smith’s life and work. Part II briefly chronicles Smith’s first thirty six years, 1885 to 1921, as a single African-American woman in the …

Keeping Feminism In Its Place: Sex Segregation And The Domestication Of Female Academics, Nancy Levit

Faculty Works

The thesis of Keeping Feminism in Its Place is that women are being "domesticated" in the legal academy. This occurs in two ways, one theoretical and one very practical: denigration of feminism on the theoretical level and sex segregation of men and women on the experiential level intertwine to disadvantage women in academia in complex and subtle ways.

The article examines occupational sex segregation and role differentiation between male and female law professors, demonstrating statistically that in legal academia, women are congregated in lower-ranking, lower-paying, lower-prestige positions. It also traces how segregation by sex persists in substantive course teaching assignments. …

Foreword, Heather Kirlin, Dominique Tauzin

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

No abstract provided.

School Liability For Peer Sexual Harassment After Davis: Shifting From Intent To Causation In Discrimination Law, Deborah L. Brake

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

In this article, Professor Brake discusses the Supreme Court's decision in Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, which recognized student-on-student sexual harassment as a form of actionable discrimination under Title IX, as part of a larger tension in discrimination law between intent and causation as the guiding principle for defining unlawful discrimination. She argues that the liability standard adopted by the Davis Court properly focused on the question of whether schools cause sex-based harm, rather than inquiring into the bias or subjective intent of school officials. Although the deliberate indifference requirement the Court adopted sets a tougher liability standard …

Combating Fetal Substance Abuse And Governmental Foolhardiness Through Collaborative Linkages, Therapeutic Jurisprudence And Common Sense: Helping Women Help Themselves, David C. Brody, Heidee Mcmillin

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

Annually thousands of babies are born exposed to alcohol or illicit drugs while in their mother's womb. While the government has addressed the problem by punishing pregnant women and their children, the number of affected infants continues to rise. This is largely due to states taking gendered, punitive and illogical actions, which are antithetical to the social, scientific and medical research that has shown that treatment, not punishment, is the appropriate means to deal with the problem. Instead of addressing the problem honestly in search of a practical solution, states have focused on casting blame and meting out punishment upon …

United States Asylum Law In The Context Of Sexual Orientation And Gender Identity: Justice For The Transgendered, Fatima Mohyuddin

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

This article examines the recognition given to sexual minorities through United States asylum law. This article begins with a general explanation of the evolution of asylum law and an overview of the different categories of persons eligible to apply for asylum, particularly persons facing persecution as a social group. Then the article discusses the traditional construction of gender and sexuality in lieu of persons who do not fit into the dimorphic, male/female, gender and sexual categories. These sexual minorities often face extreme hardship, government persecution and death in their home countries for stepping outside of culturally imposed sexual and gender …

Reinforcing The Myth Of The Crazed Rapist: A Feminist Critique Of Recent Rape Legislation, Christina E. Wells, Erin Elliott

Faculty Publications

Part I of this article reviews these new legislative provisions, discussing their requirements as well as the general impetus behind their enactment. Part II discusses both the history of rape prosecution and feminist efforts in the 1970s and 1980s to eliminate barriers to successful rape prosecutions. This part also elaborates upon the myth of the crazed rapist and its relationship to feminist reform efforts. Part III explains how the current legislation is rooted in and reinforces that myth by encouraging unsupportable distinctions among rape defendants. Finally, Part IV discusses the feminist response to such laws and argues for a more …

Women, Writing & Wages: Breaking The Last Taboo, Jan M. Levine, Kathryn M. Stanchi

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Gender And Legal Writing: Law Schools’ Dirty Little Secrets, Kathryn M. Stanchi, Jan M. Levine

Scholarly Works

While great strides have been made by legal writing professors in the past two decades, many law schools-perhaps most accurately, many law school deans-try to avoid the investments needed to provide their students with professional, high-quality instruction in legal research and legal writing. Law professors, including women law professors, have reacted to their deans' decisions to maintain the status quo largely by quiet acquiescence- although in some cases they openly support that stance. Legal writing seems to be just too hard, and too demanding in time and energy, to be taught by doctrinal law professors, most of whom are men …