Law and Gender Commons^™

The Voice Of The Unheard: An Evaluation Of And Proposed Solution To The Special Educational Needs Of Hearing Children Of Deaf Parents, Julie Ruschin

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

Spoken language acquisition depends on aural exposure to the language. A child must hear a language spoken. But more than this, the child must have the language directed at her in conversational context. Because spoken language acquisition requires something that may be beyond the capabilities of the State, and because language acquisition is an educational issue, the responsibility for providing a program to ensure that hearing children of deaf parents master spoken English rests on the State. The State should create programs to ensure that these children are properly exposed to spoken English during the brief period in life in …

Founder's Remarks Commemorating The 15th Anniversary, Deborah Kochan

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

No abstract provided.

Stoning Single Nigerian Mothers For Adultery: Applying Feminist Theory To An Analysis Of Gender Discrimination In International Law, Sarah Crutcher

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

In 2003, an Islamic Sharia court in northern Nigeria sentenced Amina Lawal to death by stoning for having sex outside of marriage. After the man Lawal named as the father of her baby was acquitted for lack of evidence, the international community pressured Nigeria to oppose the ruling by adhering to its own constitutional provisions, and international law prohibiting torture and gender discrimination. This article explores the fundamental conflicts between international human rights law and Islamic law as implemented by Sharia courts. The author cites the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, jus cogens and customary international law, …

The Admissibility Of Tape Recordings In Criminal Trials Involving Domestic Disputes: California's Proposition 8 And Title Iii Of The Federal Omnibus Crime Control And Safe Streets Act, Lee Ashely Smith

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

Domestic cases of eavesdropping and wiretapping pose a special problem for laws that were initially meant to govern police misconduct and espionage. California voters passed Proposition 8 but its passage led to many additional questions including whether the law truly champions victims' rights and whether it protects innocent defendants. Federal law, by comparison, sets a minimum standard of one-party consent for the admissibility of wiretap or eavesdropping evidence in criminal trials. This standard has been shown to permit parental wiretaps without allowing purely clandestine recording of another's activities, including spouses and domestic partners. In short, privacy rights are protected to …

Consent Engendered: A Feminist Critique Of Consensual Fourth Amendment Searches, Dana Raigrodski

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

This essay examines the inherent power imbalances that characterize police-individual encounters and questions the notion of consensual searches. Albeit feminist challenges to the notion of consent in other areas of the law, there has not been a feminist scrutiny of consent and agency as employed within search and seizure law. Therefore, this essay builds on feminist critique of rape laws and domestic violence to challenge the Court's dichotomized view of coercion and consent in its search and seizure cases and to offer a feminist concept of agency under conditions of subordination.

Lighting The Lantern: Visions Of A Virtual All-Women's Law School, Nancy E. Shurtz

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

"Lighting the Lantern: Visions of a Virtual All-Women's Law School" is a fictional narrative of a hypothetical all women's law school. It is written in non-traditional form in the hope that it will prompt the reader to view the law, academic institutions and societal constructs in ways more consistent with an evolving society that should embrace all differences, whether those differences are gender or racially based.

The mission of the All Women's Law School is threefold: "First, to teach specific lawyering skills and disseminate knowledge in a context designed to help students function effectively in the existing culture while working …

The Child Status Protection Act: Does Immigration Math Solve The Family Unity Equation, Shane Dizon

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

This note focuses on the Child Status Protection Act, passed by Congress in 2002 to allow individuals who turn 21 while their permanent residence paperwork is pending to preserve their eligibility as children. The note addresses the various reactions of the enforcing government authorities, practitioners, and courts since the Act's passage. In addition, the author explores the Act's place among other recent legislation and government agency policies purporting to advance the theme of family unity in immigration. Ultimately, the author suggests that the statutory stop-the-clock approach embodied by the Act seems not only inconsistent with its predecessors, which have expanded …

A Hometown Dilemma: Addressing Th E Sexual Harassment Of Undocumented Women In Meatpacking Plants In Iowa And Nebraska, Amanda Clark

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

Sexual harassment of undocumented women workers continues to be a systemic problem within the meatpacking industry. In Iowa and Nebraska, the state legislature, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, labor unions, and local advocacy organizations are working to address the problem of sexual harassment within the meatpacking industry. This note addresses the ongoing issues facing women in the meatpacking industry in Iowa and Nebraska, in particular the unique concerns facing undocumented and immigrant women workers. It also looks to the Supreme Court holding in Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Inc. v. NLRB to determine the applicability of that case to Title VII sexual …

Are Women More Ethical Lawyers – An Empirical Study, Patricia W. Moore, Kevin M. Simmons

Faculty Articles

We first noticed a possible "gender gap" in attorney discipline when we ran across the Oklahoma Disciplinary Commission's annual report for the year 2000. Women currently constitute 27% of Oklahoma attorneys, but 0% of the disciplined attorneys—none of the seventeen named—were women. Wondering whether the Oklahoma figures were aberrational, we attempted to locate research concerning gender and attorney discipline. But there have been few such studies, although “[p]robably no issue in the social sciences receives more attention than the difference between men and women.”

We thus embarked upon a national study of disciplinary actions decided in 2000. After collecting, coding, …

Roe's Legacy: The Nonconsensual Medical Treatment Of Pregnant Women And Implications For Female Citizenship, April L. Cherry

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

In this Essay, I demonstrate how I have come to the conclusion that the "compelling state interest" language used by the Court in Roe has been used to constrain and derogate women's citizenship. In Part I, I detail Roe's holding and describe some of the arguments, which use Roe as precedent, that seek to justify limits on health care decision making by pregnant women. I argue that because Roe does not address situations outside of the abortion context, it leaves intact women's common law and constitutional liberty rights to direct their medical care. Therefore, the state cannot constitutionally compel medical …

Sexual Harassment: An International Human Rights Perspective., Christine M. Chinkin

Book Chapters

This chapter considers sexual harassment in the workplace from the perspective of international human rights law. Adopting a human rights approach locates sexual harassment in the context of women’s economic and social rights and more broadly in the wider frame of international imperatives such as the maintenance of international peace and security and global economic development. Sexual harassment has come onto the international agenda comparatively recently, and the story comprises both the inclusion of prohibitions within legal instruments and significant silences, especially where breaking the silence requires intrusion into state policies relating to militarism, trade and investment liberalization, and the …

Outsider Jurisprudence And The “Unthinkable” Tale: Spousal Abuse And The Doctrine Of Duress, Deborah Waire Post

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Race, Gender, And Work/Family Policy, Nancy E. Dowd

UF Law Faculty Publications

Family leave is not an end in itself, but rather is part of a much bigger picture: work/family policy. The goal of work/family policy is to achieve a good society by supporting families. Ideally, families enable children to develop to their fullest capacity and to contribute to their communities and society. Public rhetoric in the United States has always strongly supported families. Our policies, however, have not. In the area of work/family policy, the United States continues to lag behind every other advanced industrialized country, as well as many developing countries, in the degree to which we provide affirmative support …

Piercing The Prison Uniform Of Invisibility For Black Female Inmates, Michelle S. Jacobs

UF Law Faculty Publications

In Inner Lives: Voices of African American Women In Prison, Professor Paula Johnson has written about the most invisible of incarcerated women — incarcerated African American women. The number of women incarcerated in the United States increased by seventy-five percent between 1986 and 1991. Of these women, a disproportionate number are black women. The percentages vary by region and by the nature of institution (county jail, state prison or federal facility), but the bottom line remains the same. In every instance, black women are incarcerated at rates disproportionate to their percentage in the general population. In Inner Lives, …

Beyond Imminence: Evolving International Law And Battered Women's Right To Self-Defense, Shana Wallace

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying (Cases): Gender Stereotypes And Sexual Harassment Since The Passage Of Title Vii, Miriam A. Cherry

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article, which is part of a symposium on the 40th Anniversary of Title VII appearing in the Hofstra Labor and Employment Law Journal, evaluates the progress of women in the workforce by critically analyzing the musical "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying." Written in the early 1960s and made into a 1967 movie, How to Succeed follows the adventures of J. Pierrepont Finch, a window washer who, with the aid of a sarcastic self-help book, schemes his way up the corporate ladder. It also includes the sexual exploits of the exclusively male executive corps among the female …

Employment Protection For Domestic Violence Victims, Deborah A. Widiss, Wendy R. Weiser

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Critical Race Histories: In And Out, Darren L. Hutchinson

Faculty Articles

Insider critiques of CRT also require critical assessment. Recent internal critics complain that racial identity discourse, including multidimensionality theory, marginalizes more important attention to material, class, or economic issues. If their claim holds true, the material harm critics serve a vital purpose: because racial injustice causes and interacts with economic deprivation, any progressive racial justice movement should interrogate class and economic inequality concems. Nevertheless, the analysis of the material harm critics suffers because it dichotomizes class and multidimensionality. Although these critics bifurcate multiplicity and class analysis, multiplicity theories relate to class analysis in two important respects. First, poverty has multidimensional …

Progress And Progression In Family Law, Martha Albertson Fineman

Faculty Articles

The process and nature of change in our family formation seems unlikely to be derailed. The policy question for those concerned with the institution of the family in today's world should not be how we can resuscitate marriage and thus save society, but rather how we can support all individuals who create intimate, caring relationships, regardless of the form of those relationships. Continued inattention to the social and economic dislocations and the emerging family needs produced in the wake of changes in family formation can be disastrous, not only to individual families, but also to society.

Of particular importance for …

Promoting Women's Access To Politics And Decision Making: The Role Of Tgnp And Other Advocacy Groups In The 2000 General Elections., Miranda Johnson, Aggripina Mosha

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

Paradoxes Of Health And Equality: When A Boy Becomes A Girl, Noa Ben-Asher

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Can a parent be legally required to control the gender of a child? What is the legal justification of a forced disintegration of a family? This Essay will try to address these issues, raised by an unusual legal dispute between parents who believed that they should raise their child as a girl, and a state agency that insisted on a masculine upbringing as a boy.

Masculinities At Work, Ann C. Mcginley

Scholarly Works

This article focuses on the study of masculinities, a body of theoretical and empirical work by sociologists, feminist theorists and organization management theorists. This work, much of which employment law scholars have ignored, studies the role of masculinities, which are often invisible, in creating structural barriers to the advancement of many women and some men at work. Masculinities comprise both a structure that reinforces the superiority of men over women and a series of practices, associated with masculine behavior, performed by men or women, that aid men to maintain their superior position over women. In their less visible form, masculinities …

Egyptian Feminism: Trapped In The Identity Debate, Lama Abu-Odeh

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article argues that if we wish to account for the limited gains made in the area of family law reform in Egypt in the twentieth century, it is crucial to relate the debate on family law with another debate, one revolving around the identity of the Egyptian legal system. Whereas the dispute over family law reform forced decisions on gender and the family, the contest surrounding identity centered on the ongoing and agonized struggle by Egyptians to define the nature of their country's contemporary cultural identity. The question of identity was often framed as a debate over the "character" …

Annotated Legal Bibliography On Gender

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Not If, But When?: Dismantling The Florida Adoption Act Of 2001, Andrew T. Binstock

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The note critiques the notice provision of the Adoption Act of 2001, arguing that it unjustly required single mothers to publish personal details in newspapers, violating privacy rights under the Due Process Clause and the Florida Constitution. The provision was ultimately invalidated by the Fourth District Court of Appeals, reflecting a broader tension between protecting fathers' rights and safeguarding mothers' privacy. The legislature's repeal of the notice requirement and the establishment of a voluntary putative father registry marked a shift toward balancing these interests while respecting reproductive autonomy.

Annotated Legal Bibliography On Gender

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Choosing Liberty Over Equality And Sacrificing Both: Equal Protection And Due Process In Lawrence V. Texas, Andrew J. Seligsohn

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article critiques the Supreme Court's decision in Lawrence v. Texas, arguing that the Court's reliance on substantive due process under the Due Process Clause, rather than the Equal Protection Clause, undermines the broader equality concerns faced by the LGBTQ+ community. By prioritizing liberty over equality, the Court missed an opportunity to establish a more robust legal foundation for future LGBTQ+ rights, leaving the decision vulnerable to challenge and failing to address the systemic discrimination against gays and lesbians.

Table Of Contents - Cardozo Women's Law Journal, Vol. 10, Iss. 3

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Toward Mythos And Mythology: Applying A Feminist Critique To Legal Education To Effectuate A Socialization Of Both Sexes In Law School Classrooms, Pollybeth Proctor

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article critiques the current state of legal education and the legal profession, arguing that they suffer from a decline in ethical standards, public service, and empathy. It proposes a feminist-inspired reform agenda to address these issues by incorporating values such as collaboration, context, emotions, ethics, and empathy into legal training. The analysis highlights the limitations of traditional teaching methods, particularly the Socratic method, which fosters an adversarial and narrow approach to legal reasoning. The article advocates for a balanced approach that integrates both rational and emotional intelligence to prepare holistic practitioners who prioritize justice and service.

Supreme Court Narratives On Equality And Gender Discrimination In Employment: 1971-2002, Vicki Lens

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article examines the Supreme Court's evolving approach to gender discrimination in the workplace, particularly during the 1970s and 1980s, as it grappled with the intersection of formal and substantive equality. The Court's decisions reflected the influence of the feminist movement and broader societal shifts, addressing issues such as pregnancy-related discrimination, sexual harassment, and workplace stereotypes. While the Court often invalidated discriminatory practices, its rulings also revealed tensions in balancing equal treatment with competing interests, such as military preparedness or employer liability. The analysis highlights how the Court's narrative on gender equality was shaped by legal doctrines, cultural values, and …