Law and Gender Commons^™

Oral Interview: Contextualizing The Women's Rights Movement In Tunisia Through Family History, Walid Zarrad

Papers, Posters, and Presentations

In their path towards emancipation and equal rights, Tunisian women have gone through a number of phases that seem to be directly linked to legal changes and cultural factors. In fact, the Code of Personal Status (CPS) of 1956 seems to be a milestone in the women’s movement, and its following amendments continued on this path. However, it is a lot more complex than that. A piece of legislation officially passing is not a simple determinant of the state of Women’s Rights in a country.

Through Dorra Mahfoudh Draoui’s “Report on Gender and Marriage in Tunisian Society” and my interview …

“Champion Man-Hater Of All Time”: Feminism, Insanity, And Property Rights In 1940s America, Magdalene Zier

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Legions of law students in property or trusts and estates courses have studied the will dispute, In re Strittmater’s Estate. The cases, casebooks, and treatises that cite Strittmater present the 1947 decision from New Jersey’s highest court as a model of the “insane delusion” doctrine. Readers learn that snubbed relatives successfully invalidated Louisa Strittmater’s will, which left her estate to the Equal Rights Amendment campaign, by convincing the court that her radical views on gender equality amounted to insanity and, thus, testamentary incapacity. By failing to provide any commentary or context on this overt sexism, these sources affirm the …

A Feminist Economic Perspective On Contract Law: Promissory Estoppel As An Example, Orit Gan

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Economic analysis is a highly influential theoretical approach to contract law. At the same time, feminist analysis of contract law offers an important critical approach to the field. However, feminist economics, a prominent alternative approach to mainstream neo-classical economics drawing from both economic theory and feminist theory, has only been applied scarcely and sporadically to contract law. This Article seeks to bridge this gap and to apply the key features of feminist economics to an analysis of the doctrine of promissory estoppel. This Article uses promissory estoppel as an example to demonstrate a feminist economic analysis of contract law.

Sexual Harassment In A University Setting: Searching For Justice And Compassion In An Unjust And Indifferent World, Marie Failinger

Faculty Scholarship

The article deals with the question concerning legal responses to sexual harassment – whether those responses should be relentless in punishing and stigmatizing perpetrators and banishing them from positions where they can offend further, or whether there should be room for rehabilitating or even forgiving at least those offenders whose abusive behavior is not violent or serial. On the one hand, the importance of achieving justice and equality for women is critical. On the other hand, one may recognize the possibility of repentance and restoration of both victim and offender to society. The modern restorative justice movement, informed by Christian …

The Slippery Discourse Of Sexual Consent: Feminist Acumen And Feminist Excess, Dan Subotnik

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

The Slippery Discourse Of Sexual Consent: Feminist Acumen And Feminist Excess, Dan Subotnik

Touro Law Review

The Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, the Harvey Weinstein case, and the Jeffrey Epstein case have done us a valuable service. By focusing mass media attention and academic discourse on consent to sex and on assault, they have brought to a boil two issues that have been simmering for some time in feminist circles. The present essay invites readers to consider feminist writings over the last half-century that have influenced this discourse and continue to incite febrile talk today.

First to be examined is the American “heartbalm” regime, an early effort to protect women from the emotional harm resulting from seduction by …

The Evolution Of Gender Equity From A Marxist And Existentialist Perspective, Alexandria Lopez

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Women’S Votes, Women’S Voices, And The Limits Of Criminal Justice Reform, 1911–1950, Carolyn B. Ramsey

Publications

Deriving its vigor from the work of grassroots organizations at the state and local levels, the League of Women Voters (LWV) sought, in the first half of the twentieth century, to provide newly enfranchised women with a political education to strengthen their voice in public affairs. Local branches like the San Francisco Center learned from experience—through practical involvement in a variety of social welfare and criminal justice initiatives. This Article, written for a symposium commemorating the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment, assesses the role of LWV leaders in California and especially San Francisco in reforming three aspects of the criminal …

On Fosta And The Failures Of Punitive Speech Restrictions, Emily Morgan

Northwestern University Law Review

The Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) has provoked criticism from free-speech advocates, people involved in the commercial sex trade, everyday internet users, and scholars who deem the Act dangerous and ineffective. This Note helps to explain how such a controversial law came to be. Indeed, FOSTA is part of a legacy of failed attempts at reforming laws to comport with feminist goals—in this case, ending online sex trafficking and providing relief for sex-trafficking survivors, a group that consists largely of women and other marginalized people. But FOSTA, like its predecessors, fails to provide real …

Reflections On Feminism, Law & Culture: Law Students’ Perspectives, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This essay is a collective reflection by thirty-nine law students on feminism, law and culture. In the Spring 2020 semester, the students who enrolled in the Feminist Legal Theory course taught by Professor Bridget Crawford at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University were a mixed-gender group of second-year, third-year, and fourth-year students. The course focused on the themes and methods of feminist analysis and the application of feminist legal theories to topics such as intimate partner violence, prostitution, pornography, sexual harassment, reproductive rights, and economic rights. Students attended a traditional seminar meeting once each week. Conversations continued …

Speaking Volumes: The Failure Of American Courts To Address The Underlying Themes Of Silence And Patriarchy Within The Civil Order Of Protection Process In Davenport, Iowa, Catherine Priebe

Sociology: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

Domestic abuse is a pervasive issue within the United States. Approximately three women will be murdered by an intimate partner every day and around half of all women will experience psychological abuse by an intimate partner in their lifetime. As such, it is important to have legal avenues that survivors can pursue in order to ensure safety for themselves and their children. There are many obstacles to obtaining a civil order of protection despite it being the most common legal option survivors choose to pursue. Survivors must take on the burden of proof and hire their own attorney if they …

From The Ulama To The Legislature: Hermeneutics & Morocco’S Family Code, Rachel Olick-Gibson

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This study examines the role that Islamic law has played thus far in reforming the Moroccan Family Code, also known as the Moudawana. When King Mohammed VI reformed this law in 2004, Morocco received immediate international praise for its liberal strides towards gender equality. Through this study I investigated the hermeneutical tools and methods of ijtihad employed both by the drafters of the Moudawana and by activists leading up to the 2004 reforms. I then investigate impediments to the implementation of this Code in providing substantive legal rights to Moroccan women and the role that interpretation of Islamic law plays …

Women's Spaces, Women's Rights: Feminism And The Transgender Rights Movement, Christen Price

Marquette Law Review

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The Problem With Predators, June Carbone, William K. Black

Faculty Works

Both corporate theory and sex discrimination law start with presumptions that CEOs seek to advance legitimate ends and design the internal organization of business enterprises to achieve such ends. Yet, a growing literature questions why CEOs and boards of directors nonetheless select for Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, and toxic masculinity, despite the downsides associated with these traits. Three scholarly literatures—economics, criminology, and gender theory—draw on advances in psychology to shed new light on the construction of seemingly dysfunctional corporate cultures. They start by questioning the assumption that CEOs—even CEOs of seemingly mainstream businesses—necessarily seek to advance “legitimate” ends. Instead, they suggest …

The Troubling Alliance Between Feminism And Policing, Aya Gruber

Publications

No abstract provided.

#Metoo And Mass Incarceration, Aya Gruber

Publications

This Symposium Guest Editor’s Note is an adapted version of the Introduction to The Feminist War on Crime: The Unexpected Role of Women’s Liberation in Mass Incarceration (UC Press 2020). The book examines how American feminists, in the quest to secure women’s protection from domestic violence and rape, often acted as soldiers in the war on crime by emphasizing white female victimhood, expanding the power of police and prosecutors, touting incarceration, and diverting resources toward law enforcement and away from marginalized communities Today, despite deep concerns over racist policing and mass incarceration, many feminists continue to assert that gender crime …

Learning From Feminist Judgments: Lessons In Language And Advocacy, Bridget J. Crawford, Linda L. Berger, Kathryn M. Stanchi

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This essay offers a perspective-shifting approach to meeting some of our pedagogical goals in law school: the study of re-imagined judicial decisions. Our thesis is that exposing students to “alternative judgments”—opinions that have been rewritten by authors who look at the law and the facts differently—will help students develop a more realistic and nuanced view of judicial decision-making: one that is aspirational and based in the real world, and one that allows them to envision their futures as successful advocates. The “alternative judgments” of the feminist judgments projects can enrich the law-school experience in multiple ways. First, seeing a written …

The Critical Tax Project, Feminist Theory, And Rewriting Judicial Opinions, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Introduction to Symposium on Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Tax Opinions.

Sex Wars As Proxy Wars, Aya Gruber

Publications

The clash between feminists and queer theorists over the meaning of sex—danger versus pleasure—is well- trodden academic territory. Less discussed is what the theories have in common. There is an important presumption uniting many feminist and queer accounts of sexuality: sex, relative to all other human activities, is something of great, or grave, importance. The theories reflect Gayle Rubin’s postulation that "everything pertaining to sex has been a ‘special case’ in our culture.” In the #MeToo era, we can see all too clearly how sex has an outsized influence in public debate. Raging against sexual harm has become the preferred …

Women In The Legal Academy: A Brief History Of Feminist Legal Theory, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Women’s entry into the legal academy in significant numbers—first as students, then as faculty—was a 1970s and 1980s phenomenon. During those decades, women in law schools struggled: first, for admission and inclusion as individual students on a formally equal footing with male students; then for parity in their numbers in classes and on faculties; and, eventually, for some measure of substantive equality across various parameters, including their performance and evaluation both in and in front of the classroom, as well as in the quality of their experiences as students and faculty members and in the benefits to be reaped from …

A "Reasonable" Expectation Of Sexual Privacy Inthe Digital Age, Moira Aikenhead

Dalhousie Law Journal

Two Criminal Code offences, voyeurism, and the publication of intimate images without consent, were enacted toprotect Canadians' right to sexual privacy in light of invasive digital technologies. Women and girls are overwhelmingly targeted as victims for both of these offences, given the higher value placed on their non-consensual, sexualised images in an unequal society.Both offences require an analysis ofwhether the complainant was in circumstances giving rise to a reasonable expectation of privacy, and the use of this standard is potentially problematic both from a feminist standpoint and in light of the rapidly evolving technological realities of the digital age. This …

A Legal Fempire?: Women In Complex Civil Litigation, Brooke D. Coleman

Indiana Law Journal

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made headlines when she said that she would be satisfied with the number of women on the Supreme Court “when there are nine.” But why should that answer have been so remarkable? After all, there were nine men on the Court for nearly all of its history. Yet, Justice Ginsburg’s statement was met with amusement—or from some quarters—disdain. What answer would have been considered more appropriate coming from a groundbreaking feminist litigator? Would four have been an acceptable answer? Would five have been presumptuous? This episode reflects our cramped view of how much representation women can …

What About #Ustoo?: The Invisibility Of Race In The #Metoo Movement, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

Women involved in the most recent wave of the #MeToo movement have rightly received praise for breaking long-held silences about harassment in the workplace. The movement, however, has also rightly received criticism for both initially ignoring the role that a woman of color played in founding the movement ten years earlier and in failing to recognize the unique forms of harassment and the heightened vulnerability to harassment that women of color frequently face in the workplace. This Essay highlights and analyzes critical points at which the contributions and experiences of women of color, particularly black women, were ignored in the …

Creating A Classroom Component For Field Placement Programs: Enhancing Clinical Goals With Feminist Pedagogy, Linda Morton

Maine Law Review

There exists a historic conflict between the more traditional Langdellian philosophy of legal education, and the experiential philosophy of apprenticeship programs, now known as field placement programs. The conflict is most recently apparent in the American Bar Association's (ABA) attempts to impose a more traditional classroom format on field placement programs through its regulations, guidelines, and instructions pertaining to law school accreditation. The ABA argues that law schools need to allocate greater instructional resources toward their field placement programs, particularly programs that provide more than one-half a semester's credit. Such programs should include a classroom component that meets ABA guidelines. …

The Normalization Of Prostitution In Switzerland: The Origin Of Policies, Corinne Isler, Marjut Jyrkinen

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

In this article, we examine how socio-political actors frame prostitution and problems attached to the phenomenon and what types of policies they suggest. The sex trade in Switzerland has been tolerated since 1942, and prostitution is protected under the economic freedom guaranteed by the Swiss constitution. Any critique of prostitution is viewed as counterproductive, claimed to be rooted in old-fashioned ideas about sexuality and thought to worsen the situation for women who sell sex. The role of sex buyers is largely obscured, and the presumed right to buy sex remains unquestioned.

Paying Attention To The Little Man Behind The Curtain: Destroying The Myth Of The Liberal's Dilemma, Deborah M. Boulette Taylor

Maine Law Review

Generally, feminists and other liberals, and in particular multi-culturalists, share the common goal of seeking to make American law reflective of a greater variety of voices and experiences beyond those of the dominant, white-male culture. There currently exists an issue, however, about which feminists find it necessary to depart from this goal: whether to permit a criminal defendant to introduce exculpatory cultural evidence. Much of the feminist literature on the use of the “cultural defense” argues that introduction of such evidence serves only to deny immigrant women and children the same protections afforded others in our criminal justice system because …

Keeping Students Awake: Feminist Theory And Legal Education, Martha Minow

Maine Law Review

I am not exactly sure why, but when I turned to think about legal education for today's conference, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein came to mind. It was not because of my own nightmares that my chosen profession as law professor involves turning ordinary people into monsters, although that's a thought we can explore perhaps over drinks. It was because of this comment Shelley makes in the book: “If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study …

Feminist Microenterprise: Vindicating The Rights Of Women In The New Global Order?, Lucie E. White

Maine Law Review

The subject of this symposium is “Law, Feminism & the 21st Century.” What are the greatest challenges for feminism in the coming century and how can the law help to meet them? I want to begin this essay by asking that question from two radically different vantage points. The first is very far removed from the usual starting point for feminist analysis, which is the “lived” experience of women's lives. Let us move far away from a place from which we can feel the lines on women's faces, and move to a place from which we can see only numbers, …

Global Intersections: Critical Race Feminist Human Rights And Inter/National Black Women, Hope Lewis

Maine Law Review

In this brief essay, I illustrate how Critical Race Feminist analysis could reconceptualize the human rights problems facing “Inter/national Black women” --in this case, Black women who migrate between the United States and Jamaica. This focus on Jamaican American migrants is very personal as well as political; I was raised by Jamaican American women. However, I have begun to focus on such women in my research not only in a search for “home” but also because there are important lessons to be learned from those who are the least visible in the legal literature. I draw the framework for a …

Shattered Jade, Broken Shoe: Foreign Economic Development And The Sexual Exploitation Of Women In China, Elizabeth Spahn

Maine Law Review

Predicting the ways in which feminisms might develop in the next century is unfortunately well beyond my own capabilities. In the next decade or two, however, one thing I believe we might want to think about are the relationships between feminisms and global free market capitalisms. The question I am asking, simply stated, is the extent to which economic development (free-market global capitalism) advances, is neutral toward, or harms women. One traditional American way of viewing the global free market is to tout economic development as a panacea for the problems facing the world's poorest and most violated group, women. …