Law and Gender Commons^™

Advocacy In Whispers: The Impact Of The Unsaid Global Gag Rule Upon Free Speech And Free Association In The Context Of Abortion Law Reform In Three East African Countries, Patty Skuster

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In 2001, President George W. Bush restricted the participation in democratic processes for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) abroad by reinstating a policy restricting family planning funding granted by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The restriction sharply curtailed the ability to speak and to associate freely for organizations working to preserve women's health and lives. For this reason, I refer to the restriction as the Global Gag Rule (GGR). Organizations in Uganda, Ethiopia, and Kenya had begun to identify the problems associated with their countries' restrictive abortion laws. In these three countries, as elsewhere in the world, illegal abortions …

Feminist Voices In The Debate Over Single-Sex Schooling: Finding Common Ground, Rosemary C. Salomone

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This article examines the deep divide within feminist ranks with an eye toward proposing a constructive and essential role for feminist understandings as single-sex schooling inches its way toward legal acceptability and into the mainstream of educational reform. In doing so, the forces that have shaped competing perspectives on women's equality are examined, especially disagreements over sameness and difference. In the end the article looks to the Court's decision in United States v. Virginia as a road map for feminists to follow in reaching common ground on the approach, despite seemingly profound ideological differences among them.

Aligning Or Maligning - Getting Inside A New Idea, Getting Behind No Child Left Behind And Getting Outside Of It All, Stephen A. Rosenbaum

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

The pending reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) alters the landscape of special education for parents and advocates of children with special needs. The proposed modifications are based on an effort to reduce the bureaucracy associated with the current procedural safeguards and to incorporate the concept of accountability embodied in the No Child Left Behind Act. Many advocates are waiting with apprehension for the final version of the bill due to the philosophical changes that it will bring to special education federal law. This article gives an overview of the pending legislation and urges advocates to adapt …

Introduction And Congratulations, Mary Kay Kane

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

No abstract provided.

The Criminalization Of Survival Attempts: Locking Up Female Runaways And Other Status Offenders, Alecia Humphrey

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

To control and help runaway children, courts have classified them as "status offenders" without getting to the real source of their runaway behavior, such as physical or sexual abuse at home. Instead, confining runaway children to the judicial system through the use of status offenses has further entrenched these runaways' behavior without helping them develop more effective copings skills; children often run away again, commit substantive crimes, once again become victims, or else are institutionalized or incarcerated on down the road. Indeed, girls are especially prone to this cycle, since their numbers are disproportionately higher than those of boys in …

A New Image In The Looking Glass: Faculty Mentoring, Invitational Rhetoric, And The Second-Class Status Of Women In The U.S. Academia, Carlo A. Pedrioli

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

Despite earning more than 40% of doctorates awarded in the United States, women hold one third of the tenure-track teaching positions in higher education. Moreover, the women who enter U.S. academia still earn less than their male counterparts. This article maintains that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 offers an inadequate solution for encouraging the presence and equal standing of women in U.S. academia. This article presents the slow progress of equality in academia achieved by Title VII and the limitations of traditional rhetoric. It then offers models of faculty mentoring and introduces the concept of invitational …

Human Trafficking Private Right Of Action: Civil Rights For Trafficked Persons In The United States, Kathleen Kim, Kusia Hreshchyshyn

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

Human Trafficking Private Right of Action: Civil Rights for Trafficked Persons in the United States addresses a 2003 addition to the Trafficking Victims Protection Act allowing for a private right of action for persons trafficked to the United States. The article discusses civil litigation as a strategy for trafficked persons to obtain a remedy that specifically addresses the injury that they sustained: enslavement. The discussion situates this remedy within the broader purposes of anti-trafficking legislation.

Introduction And Congratulations, Mary Kay Kane

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Other "Sex" In Lawrence V. Texas, Paisley Currah

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article argues that while the Lawrence v. Texas decision was a landmark victory for sexual autonomy, it failed to address the state's ongoing role in regulating gender categories, leaving transgender individuals marginalized and legally vulnerable. The author emphasizes that the decision reinforced the state's ability to define and enforce binary sex categories, which perpetuates discrimination against transgender people. The article calls for a broader vision of sexual and gender freedom that challenges these regulatory systems.

Remembrance Of Things Past? The Relationship Of Past To Future In Pursuing Justice In Mediation, Carrie J. Menkel-Meadow

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

What must be remembered and acknowledged before we can move forward to create a future together, whether individually or collectively? Or, as Avishai Margalit has recently put it, is there an ethics of memory - must some things be remembered; what can be forgiven or forgotten in a moral sense? I have long been worried about the emphasis in mediation to focus on the future, to seek ''solutions" to problems in which the parties are guided to "move forward," even while "reorienting the parties to each other," in crafting a more productive relationship. With the growing use and adaptation of …

Dazzling The World: A Study Of India's Constitutional Amendment Mandating Reservations For Women On Rural Panchayats, Eileen Kaufman, Louise Harmon

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

"[N]Ot A Story To Pass On": Constructing Mothers Who Kill, Susan Ayres

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

Society is horrified and shocked when mothers kill their children. While this reaction may be justified, the reasons behind infanticide are never fully explored. Motherhood has very specific definitions in our society which makes it difficult to understand the motivations behind infanticide. Social institutions, such as the legal system and the media, are responsible for constructing motherhood in such a way that we view mothers who kill their children as simply insane and deficient. This article asserts another possible viewpoint regarding infanticide. Instead of specularizing women, the author urges people to view mothers who kill their children within the context …

The Voice Of The Unheard: An Evaluation Of And Proposed Solution To The Special Educational Needs Of Hearing Children Of Deaf Parents, Julie Ruschin

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

Spoken language acquisition depends on aural exposure to the language. A child must hear a language spoken. But more than this, the child must have the language directed at her in conversational context. Because spoken language acquisition requires something that may be beyond the capabilities of the State, and because language acquisition is an educational issue, the responsibility for providing a program to ensure that hearing children of deaf parents master spoken English rests on the State. The State should create programs to ensure that these children are properly exposed to spoken English during the brief period in life in …

Founder's Remarks Commemorating The 15th Anniversary, Deborah Kochan

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

No abstract provided.

Stoning Single Nigerian Mothers For Adultery: Applying Feminist Theory To An Analysis Of Gender Discrimination In International Law, Sarah Crutcher

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

In 2003, an Islamic Sharia court in northern Nigeria sentenced Amina Lawal to death by stoning for having sex outside of marriage. After the man Lawal named as the father of her baby was acquitted for lack of evidence, the international community pressured Nigeria to oppose the ruling by adhering to its own constitutional provisions, and international law prohibiting torture and gender discrimination. This article explores the fundamental conflicts between international human rights law and Islamic law as implemented by Sharia courts. The author cites the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, jus cogens and customary international law, …

The Admissibility Of Tape Recordings In Criminal Trials Involving Domestic Disputes: California's Proposition 8 And Title Iii Of The Federal Omnibus Crime Control And Safe Streets Act, Lee Ashely Smith

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

Domestic cases of eavesdropping and wiretapping pose a special problem for laws that were initially meant to govern police misconduct and espionage. California voters passed Proposition 8 but its passage led to many additional questions including whether the law truly champions victims' rights and whether it protects innocent defendants. Federal law, by comparison, sets a minimum standard of one-party consent for the admissibility of wiretap or eavesdropping evidence in criminal trials. This standard has been shown to permit parental wiretaps without allowing purely clandestine recording of another's activities, including spouses and domestic partners. In short, privacy rights are protected to …

Consent Engendered: A Feminist Critique Of Consensual Fourth Amendment Searches, Dana Raigrodski

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

This essay examines the inherent power imbalances that characterize police-individual encounters and questions the notion of consensual searches. Albeit feminist challenges to the notion of consent in other areas of the law, there has not been a feminist scrutiny of consent and agency as employed within search and seizure law. Therefore, this essay builds on feminist critique of rape laws and domestic violence to challenge the Court's dichotomized view of coercion and consent in its search and seizure cases and to offer a feminist concept of agency under conditions of subordination.

Lighting The Lantern: Visions Of A Virtual All-Women's Law School, Nancy E. Shurtz

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

"Lighting the Lantern: Visions of a Virtual All-Women's Law School" is a fictional narrative of a hypothetical all women's law school. It is written in non-traditional form in the hope that it will prompt the reader to view the law, academic institutions and societal constructs in ways more consistent with an evolving society that should embrace all differences, whether those differences are gender or racially based.

The mission of the All Women's Law School is threefold: "First, to teach specific lawyering skills and disseminate knowledge in a context designed to help students function effectively in the existing culture while working …

The Child Status Protection Act: Does Immigration Math Solve The Family Unity Equation, Shane Dizon

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

This note focuses on the Child Status Protection Act, passed by Congress in 2002 to allow individuals who turn 21 while their permanent residence paperwork is pending to preserve their eligibility as children. The note addresses the various reactions of the enforcing government authorities, practitioners, and courts since the Act's passage. In addition, the author explores the Act's place among other recent legislation and government agency policies purporting to advance the theme of family unity in immigration. Ultimately, the author suggests that the statutory stop-the-clock approach embodied by the Act seems not only inconsistent with its predecessors, which have expanded …

A Hometown Dilemma: Addressing Th E Sexual Harassment Of Undocumented Women In Meatpacking Plants In Iowa And Nebraska, Amanda Clark

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

Sexual harassment of undocumented women workers continues to be a systemic problem within the meatpacking industry. In Iowa and Nebraska, the state legislature, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, labor unions, and local advocacy organizations are working to address the problem of sexual harassment within the meatpacking industry. This note addresses the ongoing issues facing women in the meatpacking industry in Iowa and Nebraska, in particular the unique concerns facing undocumented and immigrant women workers. It also looks to the Supreme Court holding in Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Inc. v. NLRB to determine the applicability of that case to Title VII sexual …

Are Women More Ethical Lawyers – An Empirical Study, Patricia W. Moore, Kevin M. Simmons

Faculty Articles

We first noticed a possible "gender gap" in attorney discipline when we ran across the Oklahoma Disciplinary Commission's annual report for the year 2000. Women currently constitute 27% of Oklahoma attorneys, but 0% of the disciplined attorneys—none of the seventeen named—were women. Wondering whether the Oklahoma figures were aberrational, we attempted to locate research concerning gender and attorney discipline. But there have been few such studies, although “[p]robably no issue in the social sciences receives more attention than the difference between men and women.”

We thus embarked upon a national study of disciplinary actions decided in 2000. After collecting, coding, …

Roe's Legacy: The Nonconsensual Medical Treatment Of Pregnant Women And Implications For Female Citizenship, April L. Cherry

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

In this Essay, I demonstrate how I have come to the conclusion that the "compelling state interest" language used by the Court in Roe has been used to constrain and derogate women's citizenship. In Part I, I detail Roe's holding and describe some of the arguments, which use Roe as precedent, that seek to justify limits on health care decision making by pregnant women. I argue that because Roe does not address situations outside of the abortion context, it leaves intact women's common law and constitutional liberty rights to direct their medical care. Therefore, the state cannot constitutionally compel medical …

Sexual Harassment: An International Human Rights Perspective., Christine M. Chinkin

Book Chapters

This chapter considers sexual harassment in the workplace from the perspective of international human rights law. Adopting a human rights approach locates sexual harassment in the context of women’s economic and social rights and more broadly in the wider frame of international imperatives such as the maintenance of international peace and security and global economic development. Sexual harassment has come onto the international agenda comparatively recently, and the story comprises both the inclusion of prohibitions within legal instruments and significant silences, especially where breaking the silence requires intrusion into state policies relating to militarism, trade and investment liberalization, and the …

Race, Gender, And Work/Family Policy, Nancy E. Dowd

UF Law Faculty Publications

Family leave is not an end in itself, but rather is part of a much bigger picture: work/family policy. The goal of work/family policy is to achieve a good society by supporting families. Ideally, families enable children to develop to their fullest capacity and to contribute to their communities and society. Public rhetoric in the United States has always strongly supported families. Our policies, however, have not. In the area of work/family policy, the United States continues to lag behind every other advanced industrialized country, as well as many developing countries, in the degree to which we provide affirmative support …

Piercing The Prison Uniform Of Invisibility For Black Female Inmates, Michelle S. Jacobs

UF Law Faculty Publications

In Inner Lives: Voices of African American Women In Prison, Professor Paula Johnson has written about the most invisible of incarcerated women — incarcerated African American women. The number of women incarcerated in the United States increased by seventy-five percent between 1986 and 1991. Of these women, a disproportionate number are black women. The percentages vary by region and by the nature of institution (county jail, state prison or federal facility), but the bottom line remains the same. In every instance, black women are incarcerated at rates disproportionate to their percentage in the general population. In Inner Lives, …

Beyond Imminence: Evolving International Law And Battered Women's Right To Self-Defense, Shana Wallace

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

So Much Activity, So Little Change: A Reply To The Critics Of Battered Women's Self-Defense, Kit Kinports

Faculty Scholarship

Prior to 1970, the term "domestic violence" referred to ghetto riots and urban terrorism, not the abuse of women by their intimate partners. Today, of course, domestic violence is a household word. After all, it has now been ten years since the revelation of football star O.J. Simpson's history of battering purportedly sounded "a wake-up call for all of America"; ten years since Congress enacted legislation haled as "a milestone . . .truly a turning point in the national effort to break the cycle" of violence; and twenty years since Farrah Fawcett's portrayal of Francine Hughes in the movie The …

Critical Race Histories: In And Out, Darren L. Hutchinson

Faculty Articles

Insider critiques of CRT also require critical assessment. Recent internal critics complain that racial identity discourse, including multidimensionality theory, marginalizes more important attention to material, class, or economic issues. If their claim holds true, the material harm critics serve a vital purpose: because racial injustice causes and interacts with economic deprivation, any progressive racial justice movement should interrogate class and economic inequality concems. Nevertheless, the analysis of the material harm critics suffers because it dichotomizes class and multidimensionality. Although these critics bifurcate multiplicity and class analysis, multiplicity theories relate to class analysis in two important respects. First, poverty has multidimensional …

Progress And Progression In Family Law, Martha Albertson Fineman

Faculty Articles

The process and nature of change in our family formation seems unlikely to be derailed. The policy question for those concerned with the institution of the family in today's world should not be how we can resuscitate marriage and thus save society, but rather how we can support all individuals who create intimate, caring relationships, regardless of the form of those relationships. Continued inattention to the social and economic dislocations and the emerging family needs produced in the wake of changes in family formation can be disastrous, not only to individual families, but also to society.

Of particular importance for …

A Woman's World, Michael Fischl

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.