Law and Gender Commons^™

Historical Essay: In The Name Of God; An American Story Of Feminism, Racism, And Religious Intolerance: The Story Of Alma Bridwell White, Kristin E. Kandt

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Linking The Visions, Christina B. Whitman

Other Publications

Professor Christina Whitman talks about her teaching and her work.

Muslim Women's Rights In The Global Village: Challenges And Opportunities, Azizah Y. Al-Hibri

Law Faculty Publications

In this age of information technology that shrank our world into a global village, it is fair to ask how this recent development has impacted Muslim women's rights across the world. Having just traveled through nine Muslim countries, ranging from Pakistan and Bangladesh to the Gulf States, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon, I would answer that it is leading, slowly but surely, to reassessment and change.' Attempts to accelerate the pace of this change, however, without full understanding of its complex topology, and the deep-rooted commitment by most Muslim women to spiritual and cultural authenticity, could halt or even reverse this …

Afterword, Exploring The Economic Meanings Of Gender, Joan C. Williams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Foreword, Joan C. Williams, Adrienne D. Davis

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Panel Two: Who's Minding The Baby?, Adrienne D. Davis, Catherine J. Ross, Marion Crain, Bonnie Thornton Dill

Scholarship@WashULaw

This publication is a transcript of remarks made by multiple law professors discussing the relationship between race, gender, and class and focusing on feminism and the challenges faced by working mothers.

Foreword-Symposium: Gender, Work & Family Project Inaugural Feminist Legal Theorylecture, Adrienne D. Davis, Joan C. Williams

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Symposium inaugurates the Annual Feminist Legal Theory Lecture Series of the Washington College of Law's Gender, Work & Family Project. Martha Fineman, in honor of her two towering achievements in feminist jurisprudence, is the first lecturer. The first achievement is her ground-breaking work on dependency, about which we will say more later. The second is her equally influential Feminist Theory Workshop, which she began at the University of Wisconsin, and has since moved to Columbia University and now to Cornell. The annual Workshop has provided the opportunity for scores of scholars to present papers related to feminist jurisprudence, helping …

Foreword-Symposium: Straightening It Out: Joan William On Unbending Gender, Adrienne D. Davis

Scholarship@WashULaw

As most men and women acknowledge, gender is a battleground. Most of us are fairly clear on biological sex: who bears children, who ejaculates sperm, even whose (big) hands might open a stuck jar and whose (smaller ones) could pull that cufflink out of the garbage disposal. What remains less clear is how social gender roles flow from this: Does lactation result in eighteen years of primary caregiving? Should the chemical realities of testosterone shape the law governing sexual assault? 3 Should the dynamics of heterosexual relationships mirror the physics of heterosexual intercourse (penetration equals power)? Does the reality of …

When Fathers' Rights Are Mothers' Duties: The Failure Of Equal Protection In Miller V. Albright, Kristin Collins

Faculty Scholarship

The history of coverture and the transmission of American citizenship brings an elementary point into focus: The allocation of parental rights is always correlated with the allocation of parental responsibility. This basic legal truism, and its numerous implications for citizenship law, suggests that the principal gender injustice caused by § 1409 is not its truncation of fathers' rights, but its creation and perpetuation of a legal regime in which mothers assume full responsibility for foreign-born nonmarital children. Once we recognize this gendered operation of § 1409, broader failures of equal protection analysis come into relief. First, while the jurisprudential understanding …

Social Norms And The Legal Regulation Of Marriage, Elizabeth S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

Americans have interesting and somewhat puzzling attitudes about the state's role in defining and enforcing family obligations. Most people view lasting marriage as an important part of their life plans and take the commitment of marriage very seriously. Yet any legal initiative designed to reinforce that commitment generates controversy and is viewed with suspicion in many quarters. For example, covenant marriage statutes, which offer couples entering marriage the option of undertaking a modest marital commitment, are seen by many observers as coercive and regressive measures rather than ameliorating reforms.

The law tends to reflect – and perhaps contributes to – …

Personal Harms And Political Inequities, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

When we think back to where the legal battle for gender equality and the rights of gay people stood a century ago, we see that, in fact, there was not much of a battle. Indeed, advocates for change were seldom triumphant. A survey in 1900 would have shown that American women were twenty years away from obtaining the right to vote, were unfit to be lawyers according to the U.S. Supreme Court, and were nowhere near being eligible-let alone required-to serve on juries. The survey would also have revealed a wide-ranging web of federal and state laws and policies that …

The Enlightenment Case For Vouchers, John O. Mcginnis

Articles

No abstract provided.

Tort Suits For Injuries Sustained During Illegal Abortions: The Effects Of Judicial Bias , Gail D. Hollister

Faculty Scholarship

Most courts hold that, by agreeing to have an illegal abortion, a woman forfeits her right to recover for injuries tortuously inflicted during that abortion. Nevertheless, most courts do permit suits by those injured in the course of committing other crimes, and they usually do so without considering whether plaintiff's criminal conduct should prevent recovery. Part II of this Article explores and discredits the reasons offered for prohibiting recovery in abortion suits. 21 Part III analyzes, on a chronological basis, each state's decisions prohibiting such recovery. Part IV discusses possible explanations for the abortion decisions, noting that these women's claims …

Sexual Harassment And Racial Disparity: The Mutual Construction Of Gender And Race, Tanya K. Hernandez

Faculty Scholarship

For a number of years, commentators have proffered anecdotal evidence to suggest that women of color figure prominently as sexual harassment plaintiffs. Until recently, a systematic statistical analysis of women's experiences of sexual harassment by race was largely unavailable. For the first time, this Article comprehensively analyzes Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) sexual harassment charge statistics, by looking at data from the last seven years along with Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw electronic reports of sexual harassment complaints for the last twenty years. What immediately becomes apparent in this statistical analysis of sexual harassment charges in the United States is the overrepresentation …

It's Not Just Hair: Historical And Cultural Considerations For An Emerging Technology, Deborah Pergament

Chicago-Kent Law Review

History reflects the social, religious and political importance of human hair. Individuals have used hairstyles to flaunt social conventions about gender, race, sexual identity, and social status. Totalitarian governments have regulated hairstyles as a means of social control and dehumanization. Today, advances in technology now make it possible to discover information about an individual's current or potential health status. Judicial decisions and administrative regulations offer individuals limited protection from state or institutional intrusion into the information revealed by genetic hair analysis. This Article argues that the explosion of technologies that use hair to reveal intimate details of an individual's biological …

What Money Cannot Buy: A Legislative Response To C.Rac.K., Adam B. Wolf

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity (C.R.A.C.K.) is an organization that pays current or former drug addicts $200 to be sterilized. While generating great public controversy, C.R.A.C.K. is expanding rapidly throughout the country. Its clients are disproportionately poor women of color, who are coerced by the offer of money into permanently relinquishing their reproductive rights. This Note argues that C.R.A.C.K. is a program of eugenical sterilization that cannot be tolerated. Moreover, C.R.A.C.K. further violates settled national public policy by offensively commodifying the ill-commodifiable, by demeaning women, and by starting down a slippery slope with devastating consequences. This Note proposes legislation that …

United States V. Morrison, Et Al.: Brief Of Law Professors As Amici Curiae In Support Of Petitioners, Evan H. Caminker, Catharine A. Mackinnon, Christina B. Whitman

Appellate Briefs

Interests of the Amici Curiae: This case brings into play two of our basic constitutional commitments: first, to a federal system that both guarantees the States a major role and gives Congress broad responsibility over interstate commerce, and second, to a nationwide guarantee that all persons enjoy the equal protection of the laws. Amici, law professors (identified in an addendum below) who teach and write about constitutional law, the federal courts or jurisprudence, will discuss how the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) civil rights remedy is an apt response to the combined demands of these constitutional commitments.

In 1994, …

Flyer: Take Back The Night, Confronting Violence Against Women, October 21, 1999.

Saffy Collection - All Textual Materials

Take Back the Night at Jacksonville Landing on October 21, 1999 at 6:30 PM to 7:30 pm.

Universals And Particulars: A Comment On Women's Human Rights And Religious Marriage Contracts, Carol Weisbrod

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

The Latindia And Mestizajes*: Of Cultures, Conquests, And Latcritical Feminism, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

In writing this essay I will begin what I am certain will be a long, complex process of answering the question of who is my mother. I will develop the work in three parts, corresponding to critical parts of the rediscovery process. In Part II, this essay probes cultural links that are formative and transformative of our personhood, which define and determine how we interact with the various and varied communities through which we take daily voyages. I use narrative to locate myself in the context of knowing and discovering the myriad cultures in which I define my mothers. This …

Teaching The Retrenchment Generation: When Sapphire Meets Socrates At The Intersection Of Race, Gender, And Authority, Pamela J. Smith

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

This Article is about perceptions and the negative sociological factors that feed these perceptions as Black women attempt to teach the Retrenchment Generation. For purposes of this Article, the Retrenchment Generation is not limited to any particular age group or period of time. Rather, the Retrenchment Generation refers to a state of mind that makes race-based, sex-based, and race/sex-based microaggressions acceptable and in fact normal. The Retrenchment Generation is defined by the synergism that is created by racial isolation, particularly in the educational arena, retrenchment fervor, and the presumption of incompetence that inflexibly presumes that all professional Black women are …

Comment On Property And Divorce, A, Carol Weisbrod

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

100 Years Of Women At The University Of Buffalo, Buffalo Law Review

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Women's Freedom To Contract At Divorce: A Mask For Contextual Coercion, Penelope Eileen Bryan

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Violence Against Women In The International Community - Introduction, Maria Lugones

Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law

The article argues that violence against women is not a monolithic phenomenon but rather a diverse set of practices deeply embedded in social, political, and cultural contexts. It critiques the tendency to homogenize these practices and emphasizes the need to understand their specific aims, norms, and techniques to develop effective solutions. The analysis highlights how violence against women is constitutive of broader social organizations and structures, requiring a nuanced approach that goes beyond framing it solely as a human rights violation.

Difficult Maneuvers In Discourse Against Latina Immigrants In The United States, Josh Price

Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law

The article critiques the tendency to homogenize violence against women, emphasizing the importance of recognizing its diverse forms and contexts. It focuses on the experiences of immigrant Latinas, particularly those in abusive relationships, and explores how legal, cultural, and ideological factors uniquely constrain their options. By examining the work of a Latina activist, the analysis highlights the need to address the intersection of gender, immigration, and domestic violence through a more nuanced lens. The article advocates for structural changes to empower immigrant women and challenge the existing legal and cultural frameworks that perpetuate their subjugation.

The Witch Camps In Northern Ghana, Ernest Teye-Topey

Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law

The article examines the systemic human rights violations against elderly women in Northern Ghana, who are accused of witchcraft and subjected to dehumanizing treatment in witch camps. These women face physical abuse, servitude, and social exclusion, perpetuated by cultural beliefs and traditional practices. The article highlights the efforts of human rights organizations and legal bodies to address this issue but emphasizes the need for comprehensive solutions to protect these women and challenge deeply entrenched cultural norms.

Combating Domestic Violence Through Positive International Action In The International Community And In The United Kingdom, India, And Africa, Subrata Paul

Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law

The article examines the global efforts to combat domestic violence, highlighting the role of international actions and specific initiatives in the United Kingdom, India, and Africa. It emphasizes the importance of legal reforms, awareness campaigns, and the involvement of women's organizations in addressing this issue. The analysis underscores the slow but significant progress made, stressing that societal change is essential for eradicating domestic violence.

Women, Violence, And Gang Rape In Indonesia, Rudiah Primariantari

Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law

The article argues that the gang rapes of Chinese women during the May 1998 Jakarta riots were not spontaneous acts of violence but rather a deliberate strategy of political control and terror. It critiques the Indonesian government's denial and cover-up of these crimes, as well as its efforts to discredit human rights investigations. The analysis highlights how rape was used as a tool to instill fear and maintain power, while the government prioritized protecting its elite interests over justice and accountability.

Feminist Foundations For The Law Of Business: One Law And Economics Scholar's Survey And (Re)View, Barbara Ann White

All Faculty Scholarship

The purpose of this Essay is to suggest frameworks and modes of inquiry for applying feminist legal analysis to business law and the related theory of law and economics. It does so in two ways. One is to assess works already written by feminist scholars in the business law arena, highlighting how those contributions have begun to pave the way towards enriching the scope of business law analysis. The other is to offer two new roles for feminist jurisprudence. One role is to define just (that is, fair) distributions of rights and the other role is to define social judgments …