Law and Gender Commons^™

Being Gay In Lubbock: The Equal Access Act In Caudillo, Sarah Orman

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

The Equal Access Act which prohibits high schools from discriminating among extracurricular clubs on the basis of viewpoint, was originally intended to protect the rights of high school students to hold prayer groups and other religious-oriented meetings on campus. In an unintended (but not unexpected) twist, the Act has expanded from protecting religious expression to ensuring equal access for groups of gay and lesbian students. This Note examines the history and purpose of the Equal Access Act, focusing on a recent case in which a federal district court upheld the decision of Lubbock High School to deny access to members …

Honor Thy Mother: The Supreme Court's Jurisprudence Of Motherhood, Laura Oren

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

The United States Supreme Court's views about motherhood must be teased out from holdings it fails to connect into a coherent whole. The Justices have considered issues relating to women's physical and social reproductive roles in four major areas: comparative family relationships (unwed mothers versus unwed fathers), dependent mothers, mothers in the workplace, and the right to choose or refuse to become a mother. Despite some positive developments and much lip service, the Court's jurisprudence of motherhood fails to follow one of the fundamental precepts of our culture - "Honor Thy Mother."

On Justitia, Race, Gender, And Blindness, I. Bennett Capers

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Essay focuses on Justitia's more problematic attributes. Like Justitia's blindfold, which has been described as "the most enigmatic" of her traits. Is the blindfold merely emblematic of Justitia's purported impartiality, her claim to algorithmic justice? As law professor Costas Douzinas and art historian Lynda Nead have asked, does the blindfold enable Justitia "to avoid the temptation to see the face that comes to the law and put the unique characteristics of the concrete person before the abstract logic of the institution"? Or does the blindfold signify something more, a second sight of sorts? Maybe that Justitia, unable to see, …

Networks And Narratives: An Exploration Of Their Relationship And Potential For Understanding The Actual Experiences Of Women With Hiv/Aids, Purity N. Irungu

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This study set out to examine literature relating to social network theory and narrative theory in order to explore how their potential connection could be used in future to understand and improve the actual life-experiences of women infected by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). The thesis was done entirely by library research using secondary sources but is original in its intent. It includes a critical examination of some of the work of earlier researchers, including Lockhart's (2000) anthropological study of the social construction of `risk' of AIDS in urban Tanzania. Much previous research studied …

The United States As Global Sheriff: Using Unilateral Sanctions To Combat Human Trafficking, Janie Chuang

Michigan Journal of International Law

By situating the U.S. rise to dominance in historical and political context, this Article underscores the significance of U.S. unilateralism for international anti-trafficking law and policy.

Lessons Unlearned: Women Offenders, The Ethics Of Care, And The Promise Of Restorative Justice, Marie Failinger

Faculty Scholarship

The steep rise in female offenders since the 1960s has finally caused criminologists, lawyers, judges, and others to consider why they have not learned more about women offenders’ lives, in order to better understand and explain why they enter, and how they proceed through the criminal system. This article focuses on the reality that women’s relationality, and particularly their relationships with men in their lives, profoundly affect the behavior that lands them in the criminal justice system. This article argues that restorative justice, which is essentially grounded on an ethical understanding of crime and treats the offender as an interacting …

Sexual Labor And Human Rights, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol, Jane E. Larson

UF Law Faculty Publications

In this Article, we engage the current human rights debate that dichotomizes prostitution either as a modern form of slavery or as the exercise of the right to work. This framework effectively sets up a coercion/consent polarity. These poles raise fundamental human rights issues; both the prohibition against slavery and the right to work are matters addressed by and central to the international human rights paradigm. Yet we argue in this Article that the human rights issues raised by prostitution cannot properly be studied nor moved towards meaningful resolution in the context of the prevailing polarity. Prostitution in its current …

Revisiting Anna Moscowitz's Kross's Critique Of New York City's Women's Court: The Continued Problem Of Solving The "Problem" Of Prostitution With Specialized Criminal Courts, Mae C. Quinn

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This article explores New York City's non-traditional, judicially based response to prostitution. This article first recounts the history of New York City’s Women’s Court. It then examines the work of the Midtown Community Court, the “problem-solving court” established in 1993 to address criminal issues, like prostitution, in Midtown Manhattan. It also discusses the renewed concerns about sex work in New York and describe the movement, propelled by modern reformers, to address prostitution through specialty courts. It then contrasts the shared features and attributes of the Women’s Court and Midtown Court models. Finally, the article urges modern reformers to step back …

Progressive Minnesota? A Perspective On Women's Issues In The Legislature, Aviva Breen

William Mitchell Law Review

No abstract provided.

No Penis, No Problem, Kay L. Levine

Fordham Urban Law Journal

Over the past century and a half, the gendered essence of statutory rape has become deeply embedded in the purpose of the statute, extending its tentacles far beyond the statutory language, such that we can no longer extricate the male-on-female image from the formal law's requirements for prosecution. The reality of statutory rape is, however, far more complex than the traditional gender construct implies. Female sex abusers and male victims exist, in substantial numbers and varieties. Part I documents the statutory rape law's gendered essence, explaining the formal law's traditional gendered classification scheme, the Supreme Court's approval of that approach, …

Women As Perpetrators: Does Motherhood Have A Reformative Effect On Prostitution? , Lynne Marie Kohm

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This article explores whether motherhood may have any restorative effect on prostitution. Section I provides an overview of the crime of prostitution. It analyzes the underlying themes of autonomy, power, authority, and control, and considers whether prostitution is an example of the ultimate loss of these qualities, or an exercise of complete freedom and liberty in autonomy. Section II discusses how motherhood affects the life of a prostitute. It analyzes current social science research and studies and explores maternal responsibilities in terms of potential work interruption, new personal roles, and anxieties associated with the work/family/crime triad. It also considers the …

Sex Before Violence: Girls, Dating Violence, And (Perceived) Sexual Autonomy, Cheryl Hanna

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This article explores the phenomenon of girl violence by examining teen dating violence and girls' experiences with intimate abuse both as victims and as perpetrators. While there is a tendency to view women's experiences as victims of violence as separate and distinct from their experiences as victims of violence, the two phenomena are interrelated. A girl's violent victimization can lead her to victimize someone else, just as her own violence can lead her to violent victimization. These conversations about young women and sexual behavior are especially important for lawyers and advocates. While the implementation of legal strategies such as civil …

The Construction Of Pregnant Drug-Using Women As Criminal Perpetrators, Nancy D. Campbell

Fordham Urban Law Journal

Despite clear lack of intent to harm those whom they carry, drug-using pregnant women have been constructed de facto criminal perpetrators. However, drug use falls short of being prima facie evidence of intent to harm, particularly in social circumstances where drug-using economics are endemic. The cases in this article signal the limits of tolerance and the increasingly conditional nature of public welfare provision by raising the specter of a generation of urban mothers - and grandmothers - unable to care for their kids. These cases also reflect the policy-making role into which hospitals and the courts have stepped in the …

Mad Women And Desperate Girls: Infanticide And Child Murder In Law And Myth, Elizabeth Rapaport

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This article first offers a comparison between the stereotype dominated understanding of infanticide and child homicide in the United States and the statistical landscape it obscures. It then turns to the history of the crime of infanticide, a history which confirms that a fascination with deviant women as long dominated the story of infanticide. The article concludes with the exploration of the "Good Mother Defense." That exploration reveals the extent to which the fate of a woman tried for child homicide hinges on whether the jury sees her as a good mother, rather than on the prosecutors' ability to prove …

Rare & Inconsistent: The Death Penalty For Women, Victor L. Streib

Fordham Urban Law Journal

Previous studies of the national landscape around the death penalty for women have identified and analyzed past themes and issues.22 This Article brings the analysis current through 2005, beginning with a reprise of the conversations about gender bias and disparity in the death penalty system. It appears that female offenders have always been treated differently from male offenders in the death penalty system, sometimes for reasons that are easily justifiable but too often simply because of sex bias. The next section of this Article explores the current death penalty era, identifying those women who have been sentenced to death, those …

Mother Of Atrocities: Pauline Nyiramasuhuko's Role In The Rwandan Genocide, Carrie Sperling

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This article describes Pauline Nyiramasuhuko's role in the Rwandan genocide and her case before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). It explores a woman's ability to be equally involved in atrocities by exploring Pauline's case. Her case challenges the myth than women, by their nature, are incapable of being warriors, and that somehow their roles as women and mothers prohibit them from planning or participating in depraved violence.

Sexual Abuse Of Women In United States Prisons: A Modern Corollary Of Slavery, Brenda V. Smith

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This paper addresses the sexual abuse of women in custody as a more contemporary manifestation of slavery. Part II situates the sexual abuse of women in custody and women slaves in their historical context. Part II also charts the creation of the first penitentiaries in the United States and the "Reform Movement," led by Quaker women who were also involved in the abolition movement, and later in the suffrage movement. It further examines the impact that women's entry into male prisons as workers in the 1970s and 1980s - pursuant to Title VII - had on the sexual abuse of …

Victimizing The Abused?: Is Termination The Solution When Domestic Violence Comes To Work?, Nicole Buonocore Porter

Faculty Publications

Domestic violence occurs in the workplace more frequently than one might presume. Workplace violence is the number one cause of death for women in the workplace in part because of domestic violence spillover, where an abuser harms his victim as well as any co-workers who try to intervene.

The conflict between domestic violence and the workplace is often exposed in its rawest state when a victim of domestic violence is considered to be a threat to the workplace by her employer.

The initial reaction of most people when hearing of [a] hypothetical [in which an employer fires a domestic violence …

Equality With A Vengeance – Women Conscientious Objectors In Pursuit Of A "Voice" And Substantive Gender Equality, Noya Rimalt

Studio for Law and Culture

This article examines the story of female draft resistors in Israel. The story serves as a case study that can provide important insights into the inherent constraints of contemporary legal discourse in promoting substantive gender equality and into the relationship between specific legal arrangements and the invisibility of women in the public sphere. This case study also sheds a more complex light on the nature of separate legal arrangements for women, and raises important questions about the appropriate feminist agenda for social and legal change.

The Intimacy Discount: Prosecutorial Discretion, Privacy, And Equality In The Statutory Rape Caseload, Kay L. Levine

Faculty Articles

This Article proceeds as follows. It begins in Part I by presenting the structural and case-based factors that scholars have identified as relevant to prosecutorial decision-making in the United States. Part II considers the existing social science research documenting the relationship between intimacy and criminal Justice treatment. Part III explains the empirical study of California prosecutors on which this Article's data and conclusions are based. After introducing California's statutory rape prosecution program in Part IV, the Article describes in Part V how the program's underlying rationale led to the development and deployment of prosecutorial assessments of intimacy and exploitation in …

Child Marriage And Guardianship In Tanzania: Robbing Girls Of Their Childhood And Infantilizing Women, Aparna Polavarapu

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Intimate Homicide: Gender And Crime Control, 1880-1920, Carolyn B. Ramsey

Publications

The received wisdom, among feminists and others, is that historically the criminal justice system tolerated male violence against women. This article dramatically revises feminist understanding of the legal history of public responses to intimate homicide by showing that, in both the eastern and the western United States, men accused of killing their intimates often received stern punishment, including the death penalty, whereas women charged with similar crimes were treated leniently. Although no formal "battered woman's defense" existed in the late 1800s and early 1900s, courts and juries implicitly recognized one--and even extended it to abandoned women who killed their unfaithful …

The Obstacles In Women's Pathway To Principalship, Mahshid Pirouznia

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The research problem is to investigate the obstacles of women seeking the principalship in public education; and also to explore major changes of different obstacles to women's principalship because women's roles have changed over time. Different obstacles in women's pathway to principalship are: low self-image; lack of encouragement; myths about women's work; sex stereotyping; lack of aspiration; role conflict; low self-esteem; family responsibilities; lack of mobility; and hiring and promoting practices. The research questions are: 1. what are the barriers for women who did not obtain a principalship or assistant principalship. 2. what are the barriers for women who obtained …

Developing Practice Or Management Struggle? Barriers To Effective Youth Work Practice With Young Women Living With Violence [Thesis], Judith Kulisa

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The research process described in this thesis brought to consciousness, for myself, the researcher, and for the youth work practitioners involved, the limitations placed upon their ability to practice effective youth work by the divergent understanding of `youth work' held by those responsible for either managing or funding the services in which they worked. The study set out to discover why youth work practitioners were not identifying or responding to the needs of young women living with violence at home. The study sought to identify the problem and then to formulate practical strategies to enhance youth worker knowledge and skills …

The New "Fetal Protection": The Wrong Answer To The Crisis Of Inadequate Health Care For Women And Children, Linda C. Fentiman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article will expand upon the feminist critique by focusing on children's health as well as the health and liberty interests of their mothers. In the first part of this article, I examine the legal and cultural underpinnings of “fetal protection” and explore its current manifestations. In the second part, I place “fetal protection” in a broader context, documenting the ways in which American law currently promotes fetal life, while simultaneously neglecting the lives and health of born children. The third part of the article offers concrete recommendations about how government, both state and federal, can actually achieve the goal …

The Necessity Of Sex Change: A Struggle For Intersex And Transsex Liberties, Noa Ben-Asher

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article is composed of four Parts. The first Part explores two legal struggles for intersex and transsex goals. The main litigation propositions and structures of the two movements are contrasted, especially the meanings that the two movements offer for the terms “medical necessity,” “cosmetic surgery,” and “medical experimentation.” While Part I takes a critical approach to some of the strategies discussed, the main purpose is to describe the mirroring aspects of the two advocacy movements. The second Part locates these contemporary legal narratives regarding sex change in the broader history of sex change in the twentieth-century United States, emphasizing …

Latcrit At Ten Years, Margaret E. Montoya

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Mad Women And Desperate Girls: Infanticide And Child Murder In Law And Myth, Elizabeth Rapaport

Faculty Scholarship

This article first offers a comparison between the stereotype dominated understanding of infanticide and child homicide in the United States and the statistical landscape it obscures. It then turns to the history of the crime of infanticide, a history which confirms that a fascination with deviant women as long dominated the story of infanticide. The article concludes with the exploration of the "Good Mother Defense." That exploration reveals the extent to which the fate of a woman tried for child homicide hinges on whether the jury sees her as a good mother, rather than on the prosecutors' ability to prove …

Denial, Antoinette M. Sedillo Lopez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Defending The Future Voices Of Critical Race Feminism, Margaret E. Montoya

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.