Law and Gender Commons^™

Sexual Orientation At The Crossroads, Johan D. Van Der Vyver

Marquette Benefits and Social Welfare Law Review

The decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Bostock v. Clayton County that sexual orientation is included in the concept of “sex” in the non-discrimination provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is historically indefensible. The Civil Rights Act was initiated by President John F. Kennedy to combat racial discrimination in the workplace and the word “sex” was included in the Act by a “claque of Southern Congressmen” as part of a filibuster attempt to prevent its enactment. It was accepted by proponents of the Act on the instructions of President Johnson merely to avoid the …

"Who Shapes The Law? Gender And Racial Bias In Judicial Citations.", Laura P. Moyer, John J. Szmer, Susan B. Haire, Robert K. Christenson

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

In this letter, we assess whether the contributions of judges from underrepresented groups are undervalued or overlooked, thereby reducing these judges’ influence on legal policy. Drawing on an original dataset of discretionary citations to over 2,000 published federal appellate decisions, we find that the majority of opinions written by female judges receive less attention from other courts than those by similarly situated men and that this is largely attributable to disparities in citing Black women and Latinas. We also find that additional efforts by Black and Latinx judges to ground their opinions in precedent yield a much lower rate of …

Politics Of Refusal: Justice And Liberation For Black Trans Lives, Quincy Smith

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis investigates the challenges faced by Black trans people. In this thesis, I will explore how protest is used to highlight and confront the obstacles faced by the Black trans community. I will also examine the cultural work of Black trans people and what they teach us. The Brooklyn Liberation march and the TV show Pose is an important part of Black trans legacy. They both look at the complications surrounding Black trans lives and contributes to Black trans representation in protesting and fighting marginalization. This thesis will argue the importance of allyship to create safe space for Black …

African Courts And International Human Rights Law, John Mukum Mbaku

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

The UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and since then, the international community, with the help of the United Nations, has adopted other international human rights instruments designed to recognize and protect human rights. Since international human rights instruments do not automatically confer rights that are justiciable in domestic courts, each African country must domesticate these instruments in order to create rights that are justiciable in its domestic courts. Given the fact that many African countries have not yet domesticated the core international human rights instruments, international human rights law’s ability to positively impact …

A Not-So Turkish Delight: The Implications Of Turkey’S Unprecedented Withdrawal From A Groundbreaking Women’S Rights Treaty And The Need For International Reform, Allyssa Myers

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Domestic violence against women is one of the most pervasive and pressing international issues of our time. There have been multiple international human rights treaties enacted to address this issue and move to end gender-based violence—the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combatting Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Istanbul Convention) being one. Created in 2011, the Istanbul Convention sought to provide an international legal framework for how states should work toward eradicating gender-based violence. Turkey, the first country to sign and to subsequently ratify the Istanbul Convention, unprecedently withdrew from the Convention in 2021. Turkish President Recep Tayyip …

Gender And Deception: Moral Perceptions And Legal Responses, Gregory Klass, Tess Wilkinson-Ryan

Northwestern University Law Review

Decades of social science research has shown that the identity of the parties in a legal action can affect case outcomes. Parties’ race, gender, class, and age all affect decisions of prosecutors, judges, juries, and other actors in a criminal prosecution or civil litigation. Less studied has been how identity might affect other forms of legal regulation. This Essay begins to explore perceptions of deceptive behavior—i.e., how wrongful it is, and the extent to which it should be regulated or punished—and the relationship of those perceptions to the gender of the actors. We hypothesize that ordinary people tend to perceive …

It's Time For Employers To Address Menopause, Experts Say, Anne Cullen, Marcy Karin

UDC Law Faculty in the News

No abstract provided.

Meet Our New Faculty: Valena Beety, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

You’ve read about some of the amazing students we have starting with us next week. Now we’ll introduce you to some of the new faculty who have joined us over the summer. First up is Valena Beety, the Robert H. McKinney Professor of Law. Prof. Beety was most recently Professor of Law and Deputy Director of the Academy for Justice at theArizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law.

Queer Crises: Movements From Queerness And Feelings Of White Religion In The United States, Austin Williams Miller

Communication ETDs

Anchored by contemporary crises surrounding queer and trans people in the United States, I employ movements from queerness within an affective queer phenomenological framework to understand how arrangements of “white religion” (Schaefer, 2015, p. 63), a process whereby U.S. American Christian forms escape ideology into religious affective economies in the United States, relegate queer people “to the background… to sustain a certain direction” (Ahmed, 2006, p. 31). I assemble a queer rhetorical context analyzing white religious space in documentary film, secular sexual regulation through contemporary U.S. legal contexts around marriage, and settler colonial Christian nationalist political imaginations to critique how …

Missed Connections In The U.N. Agenda: Applying The Women, Peace And Security Framework To The Feminization Of Poverty, Lauren A. Fleming

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Women, Peace and Security, a multifaceted agenda intended to address the particular ways in which conflict affects women, has been on the United Nations agenda since the landmark Security Council Resolution 1325 passed in 2000. The unequal burden of poverty on women, a phenomenon that has been coined “the feminization of poverty,” has been on the United Nations agenda for even longer, since the 1995 Beijing Conference on Women. Yet, despite the fact that poverty and inequality both cause and result in conflict in a violent cycle, the problem of the feminization of poverty has not been integrated into the …

The Preservation Of The Separate Spheres Doctrine In Congress And The Federal Courts, Arjun Parikh

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In Bradwell v. State, an 1872 decision upholding an Illinois law prohibiting women from practicing law, the United States Supreme Court reasoned that the law was justified because women belonged in the “domestic sphere.” While today’s sex-based workplace exclusions are not as explicit as they once were, women still face barriers to remaining in the workforce and advancing in the workplace despite the existence of major federal legislation in the areas of pregnancy discrimination and family leave policy. Congress passed the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) in 1978 to stop pregnancy discrimination, but the PDA has not come close to …

Constructing Race And Gender In Modern Rape Law: The Abandoned Category Of Black Female Victims, Jacqueline Pittman

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Despite the successes of the 1960s Anti-Rape Movement, modern state rape statutes continue to prioritize white male perspectives and perceptions of race, ultimately ignoring the intersectional identity of Black women and leaving these victims without legal protection. This Note examines rape law’s history of allocating agency along gendered and racialized lines through statutory construction and other discursive techniques. Such legal constructions both uphold and cultivate the white victim/Black assailant rape dyad primarily by making the Black male the “ultimate” and most feared assailant. Rape law’s adherence to a white baseline sustains stereotypes of Black men as criminals and predators, which …

Title Ix And "Menstruation Or Related Conditions", Marcy L. Karin, Naomi Cahn, Elizabeth B. Cooper, Bridget J. Crawford, Margaret E. Johnson, Emily Gold Waldman

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 (“Title IX”) prohibits sex discrimination in educational programs or activities receiving federal financial assistance. Neither the statute nor its implementing regulations explicitly define “sex” to include discrimination on the basis of menstruation or related conditions such as perimenopause and menopause. This textual absence has caused confusion over whether Title IX must be interpreted to protect students and other community members from all types of sex-based discrimination. It also calls into question the law’s ability to break down systemic sex-based barriers related to menstruation in educational spaces. Absent an interpretation that there …

Right To Informed Consent, Right To A Doula: An Evidence-Based Solution To The Black Maternal Mortality Crisis In The United States, Cecilia Landor

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Note seeks to build on existing research about how to improve childbirth in the United States for women, particularly for Black women, given the United States’ extremely high maternal mortality rate. Through examining the history and characteristics of American and Western childbirth, it seeks to explore how the current birth framework contributes to maternal mortality. To fight this ongoing harm, I suggest increasing access to doulas— nonmedical support workers who provide “continuous support” to the birthing person.

Through this Note I seek to build on the research of others by identifying the ways medicalized birth practices fail women, particularly …

Charting A Course To Gender Equity: Sexual Harassment Reporting Rates In Charter Schools, Gabriella Kamran

MC Law Review

Charter schools and sexual harassment are two hot-button issues in the education landscape, but their intersection is seldom addressed in research or public discourse. This Article examines whether K-12 charter schools report allegations of sexual harassment, including harassment on the basis of sexual orientation, at a rate different from that of traditional public schools. I analyzed data from the Department of Education’s 2015-16 Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) report and found that the average national reporting rate of sexual harassment allegations is significantly higher among traditional public schools than it is among charter schools. I then used the National Alliance …

A Third Way: Title Ix’S Potential Beyond Criminal And Civil Law Paradigms, Gabriella Kamran

MC Law Review

A single occurrence of sexual violence on a college campus can lead to any of three major legal outcomes. The first is a traditional criminal prosecution of the alleged perpetrator. The second is a civil lawsuit against the school under Title IX, in which the victim alleges that the school’s disciplinary procedures failed to deliver an adequate response according to the body of law developed by courts interpreting Title IX. The third, which has become increasingly important and visible after a decade of student activism and initiatives by the Department of Education, is an administrative enforcement action by the Department’s …

A Comparative Law Guide To A Post-Dobbs America, James Hart, Flore Foulon

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article argues that the U.S. Supreme Court's Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which overturned *Roe v. Wade* and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, necessitates a federal legislative solution to restore abortion rights. Drawing on France's civil law system, the article proposes a clear, comprehensive federal law that guarantees absolute abortion rights pre-viability and includes safeguards post-viability. It emphasizes the need for consistency and clarity, similar to France's approach, to address the legal void left by *Dobbs* and ensure uniform protections across all U.S. states.

Introduction, Stephanie Durr

MC Law Review

The 2022 Mississippi College Law Review Symposium celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the Passage of Title IX. With the benefit of hindsight, the Symposium critically examined Title IX and its progeny, analyzing the benefits and the downfalls over the past fifty years. The 2022 Symposium celebrated Title IX for its accomplishments in eliminating sex-based discrimination in educational institutions but refused to let previous accomplishments overshadow the still-existing gender inequality. While history allows celebration, advocacy demands a commitment to work toward solutions for the persisting inequality. Armed with this intention, the Mississippi College Law Review set out to provide a forum …

Title Ix 50 Years Later. . . Reflections From A Title Ix Coordinator, Dr. Kristena Gaylor

MC Law Review

On June 23, 1972, Congress enacted the Title IX Education Amendment of 1972. Title IX prohibits discrimination based on sex in education programs and activities operated by recipients of federal financial assistance. Title IX’s core is the concept that students may not be denied educational opportunities based on their sex. Title IX’s protections extend to school activities, including admissions, financial aid, student services, counseling services, athletics, and physical education. The Title IX legislation eliminates sex-based discrimination to ensure all students—both male and female––have access to and equality in education.

The enactment of Title IX led to an upward trajectory for …

Gender, Credentials, And M&A, Tracey E. George, G. Mitu Gulati, Albert H. Yoon

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

For the past several decades, women have made up roughly half of law school classes and the ranks of entering law firm associates. Attrition between entry to law firms and partnership results in women comprising 20% to 25% of partners. But is there yet more attrition to the top of the partnership pyramid? Analyzing the past decade of data on publicly filed M&A deals and detailed biographical information of M&A lawyers, we find that women make up fewer than 10% of deal leaders. When we look at the factors that determine who becomes a deal leader, we find that credentials—both …

Introduction: Domestic Violence And Access To Justice Within The Family Law And Intersecting Legal Systems, Jennifer Koshan, Wanda Wiegers, Janet Mosher, Wendy Chan, Michaela J. Keet

Articles & Book Chapters

The articles in this collection explore the access to justice issues that arise for survivors of domestic violence in their encounters with Canada’s family law system. While family law and family dispute resolution processes are the central focus of the articles, three contributions also address family law's intersections with other legal domains (civil restraining orders, child welfare, and immigration). Common across the contributions is a desire to carefully interrogate the potential of law and legal processes to enhance—or conversely to undermine—the safety and well-being of survivors and their children.

Ochoa, Big Ten Law Deans Pledge Support For Diversity Ahead Of Scotus Affirmative Action Ruling, The Indiana Lawyer

Christiana Ochoa (7/22-10/22 Acting; 11/2022-)

s the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hand down a decision that could fundamentally alter affirmative action, a group of law school deans — including Dean Christiana Ochoa of the Indiana University Maurer School of Law — has issued a statement affirming the deans’ commitment to diversity.

The group of 15 deans represent Big Ten law schools, including IU Maurer. In their statement — which IU Maurer posted to its official Facebook page — the deans say they are “joining together to affirm our commitment to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion through legally permissible means, regardless of the outcome of …

Proving Intra-Racial Discrimination In The U.S. And Canada: The Room For Making The Artificial Distinction Between Genealogical Relatedness And Race, Martin Kwan

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

This article takes the role of the Devil’s advocate in order to question the judicial willingness to distinguish “race” from comparable notions. It suggests that, depending on the exact circumstances, a defendant can make an arguable case that the alleged intra–racial discrimination is motivated by perceived genealogical relatedness, but not because of belonging to the same “race.” Factually, the defendant claims to believe in being remotely genealogically related to the plaintiff. This is not unworthy of credence, because it is academically recognized that modern genealogy and root tracing can be an imaginative, forged exercise. Legally, this argument is supportable because …

The Law Of The Territories Of The United States In Puerto Rico, The Oldest Colony In The World, Carlos Iván Gorrín Peralta

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

The territorial law and policy of the United States changed towards the turn of the 20th century, as territorial expansion was no longer motivated by the extension of national borders, but by geopolitical, strategic and economic objectives. The new territories acquired in the Spanish American war were different from those previously annexed. The resulting constitutional doctrine of the Insular Cases differentiated the previous incorporated territories from the new unincorporated territories, which were not destined to be part of the U.S. nor to be admitted as new states. Despite purported changes in the relation with the United States in 1950-1952, Puerto …

The United States Should Take A Page Out Of Canadian Law When It Comes To Privacy, Genetic And Otherwise, Ashley Rahaim

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

Genetic information is intimate and telling data warranting privacy in public and private realms. The privacy protections offered in the United States and Canada vastly differ when it comes to genetic privacy. Search and seizure law mirrors the privacy gap in the countries, as well as their treatment of DNA database information.

This note explores the foreshadowing of the creation of genetic privacy laws and their varying levels of protection based on the way private information was treated by state actors through search and seizure caselaw, the creation of legal precedent, and the treatment of intimate personal data in the …

Are We Atoning For Our Past Or Creating More Problems: How Covid-19 Legislative Relief Laws Are Shaping The Identities Of Indigenous Populations In North America, Samuel Kramer

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

This student’s note will attempt to answer three questions: 1) How Canadian and American legal precedent affects the modern identity of Indigenous Populations? 2) How COVID-19 legislative relief continues to shape indigenous identities? and 3) Can a comparative study teach legislators about enacting legislation that withstands shifts in political climates?

Book Review: A Women’S Place: U.S. Counterterrorism Since 9/11, Tahmina Sobat

Feminist Pedagogy

Cook, J. in her book named "A women’s place: U.S. Counterterrorism since 9/11" identifies shortcomings in the accessibility of gendered security studies and tries to bridge the gap between the academic world and government actions regarding security and its relation to women's position. Accordingly, Cook provides a framework to organize and assess how women can be brought into all security aspects, particularly countering terrorism (p. 2). This review will highlight different aspects of the above-mentioned agencies' work concerning women, and I will mostly reference examples of Afghanistan from the book.

Stories That Kill: Masculinity And Capital Prosecutors' Closing Arguments, Pamela A. Wilkins

Cleveland State Law Review

The American death penalty is a punishment by, for, and about men: Both historically and today, most capital prosecutors are men, most capital defendants are men, and killing itself is strongly coded male. Yet despite—or perhaps because of—the overwhelming maleness of the institution of capital punishment, the subject of masculinity is largely absent from legal discourse about the death penalty. This Article addresses that gap in the legal discourse by applying the insights of masculinities theory, an offshoot of feminist theory, to capital prosecutors’ closing arguments. This Article hypothesizes that capital prosecutors’ masculinity is strongly influenced both by white Southern …

Remarks On Manifesting Justice: Wrongly Convicted Women Reclaim Their Rights, Amber Baylor, Valena Beety, Susan Sturm

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The following are remarks from a panel discussion co-hosted by the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law and the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law on the book Manifesting Justice: Wrongly Convicted Women Reclaim Their Rights.

Kate Kelly’S Ordinary Equality: The Fearless Women And Queer People Who Shaped The U.S. Constitution And The Equal Rights Amendment, B. Austin Waters

Law Librarian Book Reviews

No abstract provided.