Law and Gender Commons^™

Two Colored Women's Conversation About The Relevance Of Feminist Law Journals In The Twenty-First Century, Taunya Lovell Banks, Penelope Andrews

Articles & Chapters

This is a critique by two non-white law professors in the form of a conversation about the relevance offeminist law journals on their lives and scholarship. We conclude that the impression that feministscholarship now is accepted in mainstream law reviews may be illusory and thus there is a continuing need for feminist law journals. In the past rather than creating a new type of journal, feminist law journals tend to replicate the traditional law journal model. Only the focus is different. Twenty years later not only do race and sexuality continue to separate us, but increasingly, careerism as well. The …

Slavery And The Roots Of Sexual Harassment, Adrienne D. Davis

Scholarship@WashULaw

In recent years, feminist scholars and activists have demonstrated the ways that U.S. slavery functioned as a system of gender supremacy. It entailed the dominance of men over women as well as whites over blacks. Adding the gender lens has shed immense light on the ways that sex, law, and power operated in the racially supremacist enslaving South. In recent years, this literature has emphasized the ways that slavery's sexual and racial subordination converged around the bodies of enslaved black women. One project within this literature characterizes slavery as a "sexual political economy" to make explicit the connections between its …

Women's Rights: Reframing The Issues For The Future, Ariana Dubler, Anika Rahman, Kathy Rodgers, Jane M. Spinak

Faculty Scholarship

Good morning and welcome, everyone, to our panel on Women's Rights: Refraining the Issues for the Future. I am Kathy Rodgers. I'm from the class of 1973 of Columbia Law School, and I'm looking around this room – this is not what room A and B looked like back then! Everybody has a microphone, which is great, because we hope to have some good interactive discussion with all of you this morning.

I am also, in addition to being a Columbia Law alum, the president of NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund here in New York. For over thirty-two years, …

Thinking About Feminism, Social Justice, And The Place Of Feminist Law Journals: A Letter To The Editor, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

Dear Editors:

You, like the editors who came before you, have staked a place in an invigorating and challenging conversation about the transformative potential of feminist approaches to social justice.1 As you envision and edit your journal, fundamental questions about the purpose of feminist scholarship and the value of retaining an autonomous space for feminist jurisprudence loom large.

Not surprisingly, The Bluebook will provide little guidance on these topics. Instead, consistent with the feminist enterprise,2 you will need to search out sources, both within and outside of the law school library, to spark your critical thinking. Ideally these will ensure …

Learning From Conflict: Reflections On Teaching About Race And Gender, Susan Sturm, Lani Guinier

Faculty Scholarship

In 1992 had been teaching for four years at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. I taught voting rights and criminal procedure, subjects related to what I had done as a litigator. Preparing for class meant reading many of the same cases I had read preparing for trial. Some were even cases I had tried. Teaching offered me a fresh chance to read those cases with new interest. I could see the subtle linkages between cases that I had not previously noticed. From the distance of the academy, I observed the evolution of the doctrine without feeling overcome by the …

A Brief History Of Gender Law Journals: The Heritage Of Myra Bradwell's Chicago Legal News, Richard H. Chused

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Resisting Medicine/Remodeling Gender, Dean Spade

Faculty Articles

In this article, Dean Spade explores the problematic role of medicine in pushing for trans rights. Spade uses a combination of personal narrative of his own interaction with the healthcare system and his experience with legal advocacy on behalf of transgender and gender nonconforming clients. He reveals how the medicalization of trans identity, by categorizing it as a mental health disorder called Gender Identity Disorder, serves to reaffirm that everyone should either be male or female. Spade further asserts this medicalization can be problematic when advocating for the legal rights of gender nonconforming individuals. For example, he points out that …

Gender, Human Rights, And Peace Agreements, Christine M. Chinkin

Articles

I would first like to thank the organizers for the very great honor of being asked to present the annual Schwartz Lecture in 2002. It is especially apposite to discuss issues of international peace agreements in Ohio, not far from Dayton which is famous as the location of the process that brought an end to the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. However this lecture is going to examine issues that were not explored at Dayton, that is, some relationships between gender, peace agreements, and international human rights. In addition, because the function of peace agreements in today's world has become the broader …

Proliferation, Katharine B. Silbaugh

Faculty Scholarship

In the spirit of intellectual inquiry, the editors have chosen to hold a symposium asking how the unique mission of the journal is to be justified. Self-assessment is a courageous undertaking. Here we see exemplified one of the great benefits of journals with a well-defined perspective: student editors take the mission of the journal seriously. They are not self-satisfied. They have chosen this perspective, not fallen into it, and they are willing to investigate whether it is worth their commitment. From this comes the simple answer-as long as there are students dedicated to the mission of feminist law journals, authors …

Engaging With The State: The Growing Reliance On Lawyers And Judges To Protect Battered Women, Jane C. Murphy

All Faculty Scholarship

The passage of the federal Violence Against Women Act of 2000 (“VAWA II”) marked an important milestone in the evolution of the domestic violence movement. VAWA II created, among other things, a complex system for state and federal funding in all fifty states to provide civil legal assistance to battered women. Its passage completed a process that began in the early 1980s when domestic violence advocates shifted their focus from grass roots efforts to help battered women and their children leave abusive partners to building alliances with government and advocating for legal remedies to assist battered women. This paper looks …

The Andrea Yates Trial: What Is Wrong With This Picture?, Marie Galanti

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article critically examines the Andrea Yates trial, arguing that it highlights significant flaws in the legal system, media coverage, and societal attitudes toward mental illness and gender roles. The trial underscores the ambiguity in legal definitions of insanity, the unequal treatment of mothers who commit infanticide, and the problematic intersection of law and media, which can undermine justice and perpetuate harmful stereotypes. The case serves as a cautionary tale about the failure of the legal system to address mental health adequately and the media's role in sensationalizing tragedy for public consumption.

The New Labor Market For Lawyers: Will Female Lawyers Still Earn Less?, Joni Hersch

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article examines the persistent gender pay gap in the legal profession, despite women's increased representation, and identifies key factors contributing to this disparity. It highlights how structural and societal factors, such as work hours, family responsibilities, and discrimination, play significant roles. The analysis suggests that while younger cohorts show signs of narrowing the gap, systemic barriers and biases continue to affect women's earnings and career advancement. The study underscores the need for policies addressing these inequities to ensure equal opportunities and pay.

Book Review, Catherine Fisk

Faculty Scholarship

Reviewing Alice Kessler-Harris, In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century America (2001)

Human Capabilities And Human Authorities: A Comment On Martha Nussbaum’S Women And Human Development, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

What does it mean to be truly human? And, relatedly, what does it mean to be treated as truly human, and with dignity, by the state, or community, of which one is a part? To be fully human, Martha Nussbaum has argued for the better part of two decades, and argues in greater detail in “Women and Human Development”, is not only to be rational, and not only to be happy, but also to be capable - capable, for example, of loving others, of thinking rationally about one's own life, of engaging in dignified labor, of interacting with the natural …

Democracy Realized One Classroom At A Time, Peter Goodrich

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article critiques the traditional hierarchy and exclusivity of legal academic publishing, particularly in law reviews, by exploring the radical potential of publishing student seminar contributions. It argues that such collective expression challenges the conventional norms of legal scholarship, democratizes the classroom, and reimagines the relationship between teachers and students. The symposium discussed in the article exemplifies this shift, showcasing diverse voices and experiences that disrupt the homogeneous style and substance of traditional legal publishing.

Litigation Narratives: Why Jensen V. Ellerth Didn't Change Sexual Harassment Law, But Still Has A Story Worth Telling, Melissa Hart

Publications

No abstract provided.

Victim Wrongs: The Case For A General Criminal Defense Based On Wrongful Victim Behavior In An Era Of Victims' Rights, Aya Gruber

Publications

Criminal law scholarship is rife with analysis of the victims' rights movement. Many articles identify with the outrage of victims harmed by deviant criminal elements. Other scholarly pieces criticize the movement's denuding of defendants' constitutional trial rights. The point upon which proponents and opponents of the movement tend to agree, however, is that the victim should never be blamed for the crime. The helpless, harmed, innocent victim is someone with whom we can all identify and someone to whom we can all express sympathy. Victim blaming, by all accounts, is an act of legal heresy to feminists, victim advocates, and …

Sex Plus Age Discrimination: Protecting Older Women Workers, Nicole Buonocore Porter

Faculty Publications

There is little doubt that sexism and ageism still exist. To remedy these "isms," there are laws to protect both women and older workers from discrimination in the workplace, namely Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ("Title VII"), which prohibits sex discrimination as well as discrimination based on many other protected categories, and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 ("ADEA"), which prohibits age discrimination. Despite these protections, an older woman cannot bring a claim based on the fact that she feels she was discriminated against because she is an older woman. In other words, her …

Remarks From The 75th Anniversary Luncheon, Barbara Aronstein Black

Faculty Scholarship

I will try to make this reasonably brief, though not as brief as a commencement address I was once asked to give. The invitation stated that I was to speak on any topic of my choice. Anything at all. For five minutes. Reporting this to one of my sons – I can't remember which one – I said, "They say it has to be no longer than five minutes. What can I possibly say in five minutes that's worth saying?" To which my son replied, "Did they say it has to be worth saying?"

Well, I'd like to say something …

Placing The Adoptive Self, Carol Sanger

Faculty Scholarship

[A]doption law and practices are guided by enormous cultural changes in the composition and the meaning of family. As families become increasingly blended outside the context of adoption – with combinations of blood relatives, step-relatives, de facto relatives, and ex-relatives sitting down together for Thanksgiving dinner as a matter of course – birth families and adoptive families knowing one another may not seem so very strange or threatening at all. There will simply be an expectation across communities that ordinary families will be mixed and multiple. With that in mind, we should hesitate before establishing embeddedness as the source of …

Sexual Violence As Genocide: The Developing Law Of The International Criminal Tribunals And The International Criminal Court, Jonathan M.H. Short

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This note will explore the treatment of the two primary violent sexual acts, rape and forced pregnancy, in modern international criminal law; more specifically in its treatment as genocide. The woman as an individual is the primary sufferer of sexual violence during armed conflict, however sexual violence is a calculated means by which perpetrators seek to destroy an entire ethnic group. Sexual violence is both an attack against the woman and an attack against the ethnic group, and should be prosecuted as such. While crimes against individuals are best prosecuted as crimes against humanity or under domestic law, crimes committed …