Law and Gender Commons^™

Confrontation And Domestic Violence Post-Davis: Is There And Should There Be A Doctrinal Exception, Eleanor Simon

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Close to five million intimate partner rapes and physical assaults are perpetrated against women in the United States annually. Domestic violence accounts for twenty percent of all non-fatal crime experienced by women in this county. Despite these statistics, many have argued that in the past six years the Supreme Court has "put a target on [the] back" of the domestic violence victim, has "significantly eroded offender accountability in domestic violence prosecutions," and has directly instigated a substantial decline in domestic violence prosecutions. The asserted cause is the Court's complete and groundbreaking re-conceptualization of the Sixth Amendment right of a criminal …

Parenting And Pregnant Students: An Evaluation Of The Implementation Of The Other Title Ix, Michelle Gough

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits gender discrimination. Although pregnancy has been described as the "quintessential sex difference," Title IX's prohibition of gender discrimination in the context of parenting and pregnant students has often been left out of the discussion, and therefore the understanding, of the implementation of Title IX Regulations. The scholarship discussing the topic shows general agreement that the language and spirit of Title IX has not been given effect thus far by our schools or by some courts. This Article begins by looking to the Title IX regulations themselves and then to the research …

Women, Vulnerability, And Humanitarian Emergencies, Fionnuala Ni Aolain

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The catastrophic dimensions of humanitarian emergencies are increasingly understood and more visible to states and international institutions. There is greater appreciation for the social, economic and political effects that follow in the short to long term from the devastating consequences of humanitarian emergencies. There is also recognition of the gendered dimensions of humanitarian emergencies in policy and institutional contexts. It is generally acknowledged that women are overrepresented in the refugee and internally displaced communities that typically result from many humanitarian crises. Women bear acute care responsibilities in most societies and also disproportionately bear familial and communal care responsibilities in communities …

Feminists And Firearms: Why Are So Many Women Anti-Choice?, Lindsay K. Charles

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article argues that gun rights should be recognized as a feminist issue, emphasizing women's autonomy, safety, and equality. It challenges the conventional narrative that gun control aligns with feminist values, asserting that disarming women disempowers them and undermines their ability to defend themselves. The author advocates for women's right to bear arms as a means of self-defense, drawing parallels to other feminist issues like abortion, and proposes a rebuttable presumption for issuing concealed carry permits to women.

Protecting Women’S Human Rights: A Case Study In The Philippines, Tamar Ezer, Arwen Joyce, Priscila Mccalley, Neil Pacamalan

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Interview: Layli Miller-Muro, Elizabeth S. Francis

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Advice And Consent Vs. Silence And Dissent? The Contrasting Roles Of The Legislature In U.S. And U.K. Judicial Appointments, Mary Clark

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The Senate‘s role in judicial appointments has come under increasingly withering criticism for its uninformative and spectacle-like nature. At the same time, Britain has established two new judicial appointment processes - to accompany its new Supreme Court and existing lower courts - in which Parliament plays no role. This Article seeks to understand the reasons for the inclusion and exclusion of the legislature in the U.S. and U.K. judicial appointment processes adopted at the creation of their respective Supreme Courts.

The Article proceeds by highlighting the ideas and concerns motivating inclusion of the legislature in judicial appointments in the early …

Cohabitation And The Restatement (Third) Of Restitution & Unjust Enrichment, Candace Kovacic-Fleischer

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The Restatement (Third) of Restitution & Unjust Enrichment clarified and modernized a field that had become muddled since the publication of the Restatement (First) in 1937. One area of modernization relates to the changes in law towards women, particularly changes in law toward female cohabitants. Published in 2011, the Restatement (Third) added a new Section 28, which rejected the view that it would be immoral for one cohabitant to bring suit against the other, and relaxed the restriction on recovery in unjust enrichment for "gratuitous" contributions. This Article reviews societal and legal changes for women since 1937 and notes that, …

Inter-American System, Claudia Martin

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Unsex Cedaw, Or What's Wrong With Women's Rights, Darren Rosenblum

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Part I discusses why CEDAW continues to be relevant as the primary source of international law on sex discrimination. Until the advent of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), CEDAW was the most widely-subscribed international treaty. Some of the draft language of CEDAW reflects the tension between category and identity and how "women" won the debate. Part II contrasts CEDAW with the Convention for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). It points to the identitarian focus of CEDAW as a core reason for its failures. Had CEDAW reflected a category focus, as CERD did, it would more …

Let's Disable Her Further, Shall We? The Cast Of Gender On Disability Rights In The Iranian Context, Hengameh Saberi

Articles & Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Procuring Meaningful Land Rights For The Women Of Rwanda, Aparna Polavarapu

Faculty Publications

Land reform and gender equality are important development issues in post-Genocide Rwanda. Beginning in 1999, the government of Rwanda passed and implemented reforms which granted women rights to own and use land on an equal status with men. However, as is expected with widespread social reform, obstacles continue to inhibit widespread gender equality in practice. In Rwanda, major social obstacles manifest in the form of (1) resistance to allowing daughters to inherit land from their parents, (2) adherence to assumptions of female inferiority, and (3) the persistence of informal marriages, in which wives remain unprotected by the new laws. Interested …

When Sixteen Ain't So Sweet: Rethinking The Regulation Of Adolescent Sexuality, Nicole Phillis

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Legally speaking, sexual maturity poses a significant enough liberty interest for a minor to make medical decisions regarding contraceptive medicine or to choose motherhood without parental involvement, but not quite enough for her to obtain an abortion independently. The law incentivizes teenage motherhood by only granting decisional autonomy to those minors who choose to have a child; the minor female's right to procreate vests regardless of her individual maturity. The law discourages teenage abortions by using the choice to terminate a pregnancy to trigger a presumption of immaturity; the minor female's abortion right is pitted against personal autonomy via parental …

The Failure Of Consent: Re-Conceptualizing Rape As Sexual Abuse Of Power, Michal Buchhandler-Raphael

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article argues that while rape law reform has accomplished significant changes in the past decades, the reform has since stalled. The contemporary focus on the element of consent might account for this stagnation. This move has both failed to effect instrumental change in the courts as well as in social norms, and is conceptually flawed and normatively misguided. The practical result of these deficiencies is that rape, as defined by our criminal justice system, bears little resemblance to the various forms of sexual abuses that are inflicted on victims. While rape law typically criminalizes only the physically violent sexual …

Removing Categorical Constraints On Equal Employment Opportunities And Anti-Discrimination Protections, Anastasia Niedrich

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

It has been the "historical tendency of anti-discrimination law to use categories to define protected classes of people." This Article challenges the categorical approach and seeks to change that limited framework. This Article focuses on the flaws with Title VII's categorical approach and discusses why there is a desperate need for change to combat the different types and targets of workplace discrimination today, focusing on the transgender community as one example. After discussing the current framework and operation of Title VII, this Article analyzes the insurmountable flaws inherent in the categorical approach to anti-discrimination law, and specifically considers Title VII's …

Successes And Failures In International Human Trafficking Law, Luis Cdebaca

Michigan Journal of International Law

Professor Carr yesterday remarked that human trafficking is too often discussed only in theoretical or academic ways. I've spent most of my career in the field, where interactions with victims, traffickers, and defense attorneys are anything but theoretical. But as keynote speaker for an academic symposium this morning, I'm going to try to lay out a bit of the conceptual state of play from my current vantage point. The title of this symposium, "Successes and Failures in International Human Trafficking Law," is a bit binary. Perhaps, in the best diplomatic tradition, we can temper that to "Limitations and Opportunities in …

Rebecca J. Cook & Simone Cusack, Gender Stereotyping: Transnational Legal Perspectives Book Review, Zanita E. Fenton

Articles

No abstract provided.

Judging Women, Mitu Gulati, Stephen J. Choi, Mirya Holman, Eric A. Posner

Faculty Scholarship

Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s assertion that female judges might be “better” than male judges has generated accusations of sexism and potential bias. An equally controversial claim is that male judges are better than female judges because the latter have benefited from affirmative action. These claims are susceptible to empirical analysis. Primarily using a dataset of all the state high court judges in 1998-2000, we estimate three measures of judicial output: opinion production, outside state citations, and co-partisan disagreements. We find that the male and female judges perform at about the same level. Roughly similar findings show up in data from the …

The North Carolina Association Of Women Attorneys: Creating Camaraderie, Nurturing Leaders, And Protecting The Rights Of Women, Carolyn Mcallaster, Jennifer Brobst

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Does Critical Mass Matter? Views From The Board Room, Lissa Lamkin Broome, John M. Conley, Kimberly D. Krawiec

Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, we report and analyze the results of forty-six wide-ranging interviews with corporate directors and other relevant insiders on the general topic of whether and how the racial, ethnic, and gender composition of corporate boards matters. In particular, we explore their views on the concept of “critical mass” — that is, the theory that women and racial or ethnic minorities are unlikely to have an impact in the boardroom until they grow from a few tokens into a considerable minority of the board.

In contrast to other recent qualitative research on corporate boards, we find more limited support …

Children, Parents & The State: The Construction Of A New Family Ideology, Deseriee A. Kennedy

Scholarly Works

More than twenty-five states allow courts to consider parental incarceration or conviction of a crime in determining whether to terminate parental rights. This problem is of increasing significance as a result of dramatic growth in incarceration rates, particularly among women who were often the primary and sole caretaker of their children before their imprisonment. Social scientists have recognized that the reality for parents in many communities is one of widespread and repeated incarceration, which has a devastating effect on families and communities. The problem is magnified by a failed drug policy and the Adoption and Safe Families Act, which, in …

Employment Discrimination Against Lgbt Utahns, Clifford Rosky, Christy Mallory, Jenni Smith, M.V Lee Badgett

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Utah does not have a statewide law that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in employment. This report gathers together all existing data on the prevalence of discrimination in Utah to examine how frequently lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Utahns experience employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity and assess the likely impact of passing a statewide nondiscrimination law.

The report begins by analyzing the data collected through a 2010 survey conducted by Equality Utah, which is the state’s first survey on discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in employment. The data show …

Women In Afghanistan: A Human Rights Tragedy Ten Years After 9/11, Hayat Alvi

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Ten years after the September 11th attacks in the United States and the military campaign in Afghanistan, there is some good news, but unfortunately still much bad news pertaining to women in Afghanistan. The patterns of politics, security/military operations, religious fanaticism, heavily patriarchal structures and practices, and ongoing insurgent violence continue to threaten girls and women in the most insidious ways. Although women’s rights and freedoms in Afghanistan have finally entered the radar screen of the international community’s consciousness, they still linger in the margins in many respects.

Socio-cultural and extremist religious elements continue to pose serious obstacles to reconstruction …

Women's Eggs: Exceptional Endings, Justine Durrell

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

Fertility businesses and stem cell researchers promise infertile women the miracle of having a child. There are, however, potential physical and psychological risks to the egg donors that have not yet been properly studied. The limited studies undertaken to date have not been able to determine whether the use of fertility drugs increases egg donors' risks of cancer. In fact, federal regulations and guidelines do not require a national registry to track an egg donor's health after donation. Despite that assisted reproduction has been changing how we conceive children for several decades, there are no longitudinal studies on donors' well-being. …

Women, Decision Making And Sustainability: Exploring The Experience Of The Badi Foundation In Rural China, Lori Noguchi, Shahla Ali

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

This Report follows the experience of the Badi Foundation, a nonprofit organization operating in rural China, in its efforts to release women's potential to effect change in their communities. Numerous international conferences and treaties have recognized that female decision making is essential to achieve global environmental change and sustainable development. Recent scholarship recognizes that women are oftoverlooked sources for knowledge, skills, and leadership. Project-based efforts to empower and encourage women to participate in problem solving and other decision making in their communities have produced positive results. Through the Badi Foundation's Environmental Action Program (EAP), rural women gain the skills they …

Choosing Your Child's Race, Dov Fox

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

Assisted reproduction has answered many couples' hopes of conceiving a child. In assisted reproduction, the appearance of racial salience matters, and adjusting the prominence of race in decision making frameworks can shape social meaning. There is a spectrum of salience-varying approaches that sperm banks could adopt to manage information about donor race, each of which sends a different message about the social meaning of donor catalog and website design. This Article considers four such approaches: race-indifferent, race-sensitive, race-attentive, and raceexclusive. Although civil rights scholarship reveals that race-based classification is not a necessary condition of wrongful discrimination, we should remain diligent …

Opening Remarks, Peter T. Coleman

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

No abstract provided.

Annotated Legal Bibliography On Gender

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Law, Literature, And The Legacy Of Virginia Woolf: Stories And Lessons In Feminist Legal Theory, 21 Tex. J. Women & L. 1 (2011), Susan L. Brody

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Selling Sex: Analyzing The Improper Use Defense To Contract Enforcement Through The Lens Of Carroll V. Beardon, 59 Clev. St. L. Rev. 693 (2011), Julie M. Spanbauer

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

The 1963 decision of the Supreme Court of Montana in Carroll v. Beardon occupies less than three full pages in the Pacific Reporter and involves a simple real estate transaction in which a "madam" sold a house used for prostitution to another "madam." The opinion is the last in a long line of cases which speak specifically to the issue of enforcement of facially legitimate contracts that in some manner involve or are related to prostitution. It is commonly cited in treatises and hornbooks as representative of the movement by courts toward enforcement of such contracts under the law of …