Law and Gender Commons^™

Moving Beyond "Slaves, Sinners, And Saviors": An Intersectional Feminist Analysis Of Us Sex-Trafficking Discourses, Law And Policy, Carrie N. Baker

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This article analyzes stories and images of sex trafficking in current mainstream US public discourses, including government publications, NGO materials, news media, and popular films. Noting the similarities and differences among these discourses, the first part demonstrates that they often frame sex trafficking using a rescue narrative that reiterates traditional beliefs and values regarding gender, sexuality, and nationality, relying heavily on patriarchal and orientalist tropes. Reflecting this rescue narrative, mainstream public policies focus on criminal justice solutions to trafficking. The second part suggests alternative frameworks that empower rather than rescue trafficked people. The article argues that the dominant criminal justice …

The Slutwalk Movement: A Study In Transnational Feminist Activism, Joetta L. Carr

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

In the past two years the term "slut" ricocheted through the North American media and showed up on signs and banners on every continent as young feminists and their allies launched a series of demonstrations under the name of SlutWalks. In January 2011, a Toronto police officer told students at York University that if women wanted to avoid rape they should not dress like sluts. This incident sparked international outrage, with protests spreading quickly throughout the world, and revealed the misogyny and victim-blaming vitriol that characterize contemporary patriarchal culture. In the wake of the global SlutWalk movement, important questions have …

Breaking The Gender Binary: Feminism And Transgressive Female Desire In Lucía Etxebarria's Beatriz Y Los Cuerpos Celestes And La Eva Futura/La Letra Futura, Lauren Applegate

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

The popular texts of Spanish author Lucía Etxebarria have created a polemical social phenomenon in contemporary Spain for their blatant depiction of a world of violence, drugs, and experimental sex of the late-millennium youth culture of Generación X. These topics, along with Etxebarria's public persona and feminist ideology, have fomented much public criticism and given rise to discussion of the current status of feminism, gender norms, and women's authorship in Spain today. This article analyzes Etxebarria's novel Beatriz y los cuerpos celestes and her collection of feminist essays La Eva futura/La letra futura, demonstrating that Etxebarria's depiction of female desire …

Third Wave Feminism's Unhappy Marriage Of Poststructuralism And Intersectionality Theory, Susan Archer Mann

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This article first traces the history of unhappy marriages of disparate theoretical perspectives in US feminism. In recent decades, US third-wave authors have arranged their own unhappy marriage in that their major publications reflect an attempt to wed poststructuralism with intersectionality theory. Although the standpoint epistemology of intersectionality theory shares some common ground with the epistemology of poststructuralism, their epistemological assumptions conflict on a number of important dimensions. This contested terrain has generated serious debates within the third wave and between second- and thirdwave feminists. The form, content, and political implications of their "unhappy marriage" are the subject of this …

Unprotected Sex: The Pregnancy Discrimination Act At 35, Deborah L. Brake, Joanna L. Grossman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Thirty-five years ago, Congress passed the Pregnancy Discrimination Act to overturn a Supreme Court decision refusing to recognize pregnancy discrimination as a form of discrimination based on sex. Now, three and a half decades later, women whose work lives are impacted by pregnancy are again finding themselves unprotected from discrimination. Lower court rulings have eviscerated the Act’s protections at the same time that an expansion of worker rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act should redound to the benefit of pregnant women by expanding the pool of comparators who receive accommodations. By following trends in discrimination law generally - equating …

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Equal Protection Clause: 1970-80, Wendy Webster Williams

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Professor Ruth Bader Ginsburg of Columbia Law School was the leading Supreme Court litigator for gender equality in the crucial decade, 1970-80. In addition to teaching her classes, producing academic articles, and co-authoring the first casebook on sex discrimination and the law, she worked on some sixty cases (depending on how one counts), including over two dozen cases in the Supreme Court. Rumor has it she did not sleep for ten years; her prodigious output gives the rumor some credence. Her impact on the law during that critical decade earned her the title "the Thurgood Marshall of the women's movement" …

A Private Underworld: The Naked Body In Law And Society, Lawrence M. Friedman, Joanna L. Grossman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

In general, the literature on privacy stresses, quite naturally, our right to keep things private, or to make our own decisions. The individual, the citizen, is the center of gravity. There is a great deal of material on the limits of privacy, on threats to privacy, and the like. In this Article, the authors want to discuss what one might call mandatory privacy: those aspects of life that we are required to keep secret, hidden, or private, the things that we must keep private, whether we want to or not. This is a subject that has been mostly, though not …

Toward A New Age Of Consumer Access Rights: Creating Space In The Public Accommodation For The Lgbt Community, Justin Muehlmeyer

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article advocates for an expanded interpretation of public accommodation laws to include LGBT individuals, arguing that current legal frameworks often fail to address their unique experiences of discrimination. It emphasizes the need to modernize the definition of public accommodations to encompass contemporary spaces where cultural interactions occur, such as schools and photography services, while proposing limited exemptions to accommodate religious beliefs. The analysis underscores the ongoing tension between anti-discrimination laws and First Amendment rights, highlighting the human impact of these legal battles through compelling cases and statistics.

Panel 1: Race To The Vote, Kristen Clarke, Keesha Gaskins, Ekow Yankah, Janai Nelson

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

Symposium: By the People, for the People... But Which People? (January 30, 2013)

Black Women's Post-Slavery Silence Syndrome: A Twenty-First Century Remnant Of Slavery, Jim Crow, And Systemic Racism--Who Will Tell Her Stories?, Patricia A. Broussard

Journal Publications

One hot summer's day in the late 1950s, a young mother put her three young children down for a nap. She also bathed and prepared four of her sister's children for naptime. This young woman had volunteered to care for her nephew and nieces while their mother, her younger sister, was in the hospital delivering her fifth child. A short while after putting all of the children in their beds, the children's father, her brother-in-law, knocked on the door. The young woman assumed that he had come over to see his children and to bring them news of their mother …

She Makes Me Ashamed To Be A Woman: The Genocide Conviction Of Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, 2011, Mark A. Drumbl

Michigan Journal of International Law

In the nearly twenty years since 1994, the international community and the Rwandan government have pushed to hold individual perpetrators accountable for the genocide. Judicialization has occurred at multiple levels. Over ninety persons-those deemed most responsible-have been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), an ad hoc institution established by the U.N. Security Council in November 1994. Approximately ten thousand individuals have been prosecuted in specialized chambers of national courts in Rwanda. According to the Rwandan government, nearly two million people have faced neo-traditional gacaca proceedings conducted by elected lay judges throughout the country. Gacaca proceedings concluded in …

The Exit Myth: Family Law, Gender Roles, And Changing Attitudes Toward Female Victims Of Domestic Violence, Carolyn B. Ramsey

Publications

This Article presents a hypothesis suggesting how and why the criminal justice response to domestic violence changed, over the course of the twentieth century, from sympathy for abused women and a surprising degree of state intervention in intimate relationships to the apathy and discrimination that the battered women' movement exposed. The riddle of declining public sympathy for female victims of intimate-partner violence can only be solved by looking beyond the criminal law to the social and legal changes that created the Exit Myth.

While the situation that gave rise to the battered women's movement in the 1970s is often presumed …

Leniency As A Miscarriage Of Race And Gender Justice, Aya Gruber

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Case For Decriminalization Of Sex Work In South Africa, Chi Adanna Mgbako, Katherine G. Bass, Erica Bundra, Mehak Jamil, Jere Keys, Lauren Melkus

Faculty Scholarship

Activists for sex worker rights in South Africa are leading a sophisticated national campaign to decriminalize sex work. This Article serves as an act of solidarity with these activists’ continued efforts to fight for and realize sex workers’ human rights by examining the negative impact that criminalizing prostitution has on sex workers’ rights and presenting evidence-based arguments to show that South Africa should enact legislation to fully decriminalize sex work. South African sex workers’ real-life experiences with violence, police abuse, and lack of access to health care and the justice system, highlighted through interviews conducted by the authors during fieldwork …

Revisiting Mary Ann Glendon: Abortion, Divorce, Dependency, And Rights Talk In Western Law, Margaret F. Brinig, Linda C. Mcclain

Journal Articles

This essay revisits Mary Ann Glendon’s comparative law study, Abortion and Divorce in Western Law and her subsequent book, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse. Glendon’s comparative study actually included a third topic: “forms of dependency which are connected with pregnancy, marriage, and child raising.” The topic of dependency has obvious relevance to consideration of intergenerational obligations and the interplay between family responsibility and societal responsibility for addressing dependency needs. A central claim Glendon made in both books is that the U.S. legal tradition is “libertarian,” views individuals as “lone rights bearers,” and exalts the “right to be …

Women And Judging: A Feminist Approach To Judging And The Issue Of Customary Law (Eleventh Annual Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lecture), Susan H. Williams

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

After Dothard: Female Correctional Workers And The Challenge To Employment Law, Brenda V. Smith, Melissa C. Loomis

Project on Addressing Prison Rape - Articles

This article examines a profession where women have made great strides - corrections. Using an equality framework, corrections and other non-traditional professions were the first target of the feminist movement in the 1970s. By and large, feminists were successful in creating greater porosity for women in law enforcement, emergency services, corrections, and the military. While women have entered these traditionally masculine spaces, they still suffer from an achievement gap. They are still underrepresented in leadership positions and marginalized in these settings; are still the targets of discrimination based on race, gender, and perceived sexual orientation; and are less likely than …

E Proper Remedy For Possession Of Child Pornography: Shifting From Restitution To A Victims Compensation Program, Michelle Minarcik

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Taking A Break From Acrimony: The Feminist Method Of Ann Scales, Katherine M. Franke

Faculty Scholarship

In this Essay, written as part of a symposium honoring the work of Professor Ann Scales, Professor Katherine Franke explores how Professor Scales may have approached the cutting edge problem of same-sex couples divorcing. Professor Scales's work evidenced a deep commitment to the twin projects of recognizing structural gender disadvantage suffered by women and the tyranny of gender stereotypes. This Essay speculates that Professor Scales's feminist commitments would be unsettled by the application to divorcing same-sex couples of rules and norms of divorce forged in the heterosexual context where gender inequality set the parameters of justice. Indeed, Franke speculates that …

Mocking Equality: Reproduction Of Gender Hierarchy In Collegiate Mock Trial, Lily M. Foss

Scripps Senior Theses

During the information sessions that the Scripps Mock Trial Team hosts at the beginning of the school year for those interested in mock trial, it's customary for all the returning team members to talk about why we decided to join mock trial in college. We had no team at my high school, but at the end of my senior year, my AP American Government teacher decided that having a mock trial in class would give us valuable insight into the American legal system. I was chosen to give the closing statement for the defense, and I found my calling. My …

The Impact Of Gender On Negotiation Performance, Charles B. Craver

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

In 2009, Professors Russell Korobkin and Joseph Doherty published an article suggesting that male law students are more proficient negotiators than female law students. Their study was based upon student negotiation performance on a single employment discrimination hypothetical in which the only issue was money-a classic zero sum exercise, where there was no way the participants could engage in integrative bargaining based upon the different degrees to which the parties valued diverse issues. The exercise was given to 136 first-year law students at University of California-Los Angeles (U.C.L.A.) and University of Southern California (U.S.C.). The participants were not taking a …

Is Adr The Solution? How Adr Gets Around The Get Controversy In Jewish Divorce, Aviva Vogelstein

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

The New York State government in particular has attempted to find creative solutions to the modern problems associated with Jewish divorce issues. This Note first gives a brief historical background of the beth din and the reasons for its authority, elucidating why alternative dispute resolution (ADR) benefits the American legal system and explaining how and why the beth din serves as a preferred method of ADR in contemporary America. Using New York as a case study, this Note then proposes that, although New York civil legislative solutions and tort claims for intentional infliction of emotional distress may sometimes achieve satisfactory …

‘Don't Read The Comments!’: Reflections On Writing And Publishing Feminist Socio-Legal Research As A Young Scholar, Emma Cunliffe

All Faculty Publications

This article responds to reviews written by Eve Darian-Smith and Mehera San Roque and published in Feminists@Law. Darian-Smith and San Roque's reviews focus on the contributions made by my 2011 book, Murder, Medicine and Motherhood. In this response, I have taken the opportunity to reflect a little on the experience of writing Murder, Medicine and Motherhood, and on its reception. In the first section, I trace the choices and unanticipated challenges that structured my research for Murder, Medicine and Motherhood. Both Darian-Smith and San Roque have commented on this methodology, and I have noticed that after publication, the scope and …

La Culture De La Protection Des Droits Fondamentaux En Droit Canadien Des Réfugiés: Un Examen Des Affaires De Violence Familiale, Efrat Arbel

All Faculty Publications

Cet article examine les cas canadiens de droit des réfugiés impliquant de la violence familiale, analysés par le biais d’une comparaison avec les cas de stérilisation forcée et de mutilations génitales. Parcourant 645 décisions publiées, il suggère que les arbitres canadiens ont en général adopté différentes méthodes d’analyse dans le cas des réfugiés de violence familiale, par rapport aux autres affaires. L’article soutient que les arbitres canadiens reconnaissent rarement la violence domestique comme une violation des droits en soi, mais au contraire, ont montré une prédisposition générale à reconnaître des situations violence domestique dans la différence culturelle. Autrement dit, les …

Sex-Parate But Equal? The Legality Of Single-Sex Public Schools And Their Discriminatory Effect On Transgender Students, Bryana Turner

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The note argues that single-sex public schools are both legally problematic and harmful, particularly to transgender students. It contends that such schools violate Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and are unconstitutional under the precedent set by Brown v. Board of Education. The analysis highlights the discriminatory effects of single-sex education, which perpetuates gender stereotypes and fails to accommodate transgender students, who are disproportionately affected by such policies.

From The People's Court To American Idol: The Relationship Between Reality Television And Arbitration, On-Air And Off, Jared Bloch

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

The first section discusses the background of the role of alternative dispute resolution ("ADR") in television, starting with the courtroom dramas that helped bring ADR to mainstream culture. Next, the Note will explore the regulations that helped to shape the television industry, in conjunction with a discussion of why the impact of these regulations is still being felt today. Then, the Note will discuss the effect that guilds, such as the Screen Actors Guild ("SAG") and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists ("AFTRA"), have on arbitration provisions and contracts as a whole, as well as a bigger picture analysis …

Homonationalism, State Rationalities, And Sex Contradictions, Paisley Currah

Publications and Research

Celebrating the re-election of Barack Obama as a win for GLB equality or denouncing the focus on marriage rights as heteronormative misses the point. Both approaches obscure what actually happens in local sites where authority is exercised. Looking into the cracks and crevices of regulatory apparatuses generates a more complex picture. In examining contradictory rules on sex classification, for example, it becomes clear those contradictions often reflect different state projects, such as security, distribution, reproduction. Construing the election as a victory for gay rights or for homonormativity elevates grand concepts—marriage, the state—over the quotidian actions that regulate life.

$4.5 Million Defamation Award Against Anti-Gay Official Upheld, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

What Marriage Equality Arguments Portend For Domestic Partner Employee Benefits, Nancy Polikoff

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

International Law Weekend, American Branch Of The International Law Association Perspectives On Crimes Of Sexual Violence In International Law, Susana Sacouto

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.