Law and Gender Commons^™

Structuralist And Cultural Domination Theories Meet Title Vii: Some Contemporary Influences, Martha Chamallas

Michigan Law Review

This essay first looks at three important theoretical approaches - motivational, structural, and cultural - that mark the scholarly discourses on workplace equality since 1965. The motivational or individual choice theory is well established and has dominated legal discourse throughout this period. I concentrate in this essay on the other two visions, dating structuralist accounts from the mid1970s and cultural domination theories from the mid-1980s.

Only Girls Wear Barrettes: Dress And Appearance Standards, Community Norms, And Workplace Equality, Katharine T. Bartlett

Michigan Law Review

In this essay I study both the judicial rationales and the scholarly criticisms thereof, agreeing with critics that community norms are too discriminatory to provide a satisfactory benchmark for defining workplace equality, but also questioning the usual implications of this critique. Critics assume that it is possible, and desirable, to evaluate dress and appearance rules without regard to the norms and expectations of the community - that is, according to stable or universal versions of equality that are uninfected by community norms. I question this assumption, arguing that equality, no less than other legal concepts, cannot transcend the norms of …

Title Vii And The Complex Female Subject, Kathryn Abrams

Michigan Law Review

One strength of Title VII has been its capacity to accommodate the changing conceptions of discrimination and the self-conceptions of subject groups. In the first decades of its enforcement, advocates have raised - and courts have endorsed - a range of contrasting conceptions in order to broaden the employment opportunities of protected groups. This flexibility is particularly evident with respect to women.

After exploring recent doctrinal efforts to respond to complex claimants, I address these questions and assess the prospects of change. Although the unitary or categorical notions of group identity under which Title VII has historically been enforced might …

The Michael Jackson Pill: Equality, Race, And Culture, Jerome Mccristal Culp Jr.

Michigan Law Review

This chronicle is in tribute to the work of Derrick Bell, past, present, and future. I have borrowed his character Geneva Crenshaw as part of that tribute, and I hope she helps me raise some of the issues that he has taught us are important.

All characters in this chronicle are fictional, including Professor Culp and Professor Bell. Any relationship they may have to the real Professor Bell and Professor Culp is dictated by the requirements of creativity and the extent to which reality and fiction necessarily merge. I know that the real Derrick Bell is wiser than the one …

The Anticaste Principle, Cass R. Sunstein

Michigan Law Review

In this essay, I seek to defend a particular understanding of equality, one that is an understanding of liberty as well. I call this conception "the anticaste principle." Put too briefly, the anticaste principle forbids social and legal practices from translating highly visible and morally irrelevant differences into systemic social disadvantage, unless there is a very good reason for society to do so. On this view, a special problem of inequality arises when members of a group suffer from a range of disadvantages because of a group-based characteristic that is both visible for all to see and irrelevant from a …

Changing Opportunities For Partnership For Men And Women Lawyers During The Transformation Of The Modern Law Firm, Fiona M. Kay, John Hagan

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Considerable controversy surrounds partnership in law firms, particularly regarding the possibility of systematic gender bias and discrimination. This article contributes to the existing literature by considering explanations of women's under-representation in partnerships within the historical context of changes in the structure of law practice. Such changes include transitions in the organization and scale of contemporary law firms, the emergence of branch offices and international markets, the diversification of recruitment practices and mobility routes through modified firm hierarchies, and rising expectations of billable hours. Using a survey of over 1,000 lawyers in Ontario law firms, the authors examine opportunities for partnership …

Only Words, David C. Dinielli

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Only Words by Catharine A. MacKinnon

Divorce, Custody, Gender, And The Limits Of Law: On Dividing The Child, Lee E. Teitelbaum

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Dividing the Child: Social and Legal Dilemmas of Custody by Elanor E. Maccoby and Robert H. Mnookin

Religion And The Search For A Principled Middle Ground On Abortion, Michael W. Mcconnell

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Politics of Virtue: Is Abortion Debatable? by Elizabeth Mensch and Alan Freeman

The Lenses Of Gender: Transforming The Debate On Sexual Inequality, Jill M. Dahlmann

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Lenses of Gender: Transforming the Debate on Sexual Inequality by Sandra Lipsitz Bem

Siberian Tigers And Exotic Birds: Ronald Dworkin's Map Of The Sacred, Hester Lessard

Dalhousie Law Journal

At its most abstract, Life's Dominion: An Argument about Abortion, Euthanasia, and Individual Freedom is a meditation on the nature of individual freedom. However, as author Ronald Dworkin explains at the end of Chapter One, he believes in doing philosophy in much the same way common law jurists believe in doing law-from the inside out-that is, by starting with a concrete problem and then proceeding to the more general questions raised by that problem. According to Dworkin, this generates a theory that is appropriately tailored to the issue, "Savile Row" so to speak, rather than "Seventh Avenue," and thus a …

Law, Culture, And Harassment, Anita Bernstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Ain't?, Susan Grover

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Transforming Victimization, Martha T. Mccluskey

Other Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Leave No Child Behind, Marian Wright Edelman

Cardozo Law Review

The forty-sixth Cardozo Memorial Lecture, delivered in memory of Benjamin N. Cardozo at the House of the Association on December 17, 1992.

Guidelines For Handling Domestic Violence Cases In Community Mental Health Centers, Carol E. Jordan, Robert Walker

Office for Policy Studies on Violence Against Women Publications

Community mental health centers are becoming increasingly involved in the delivery of services to victims and perpetrators of domestic violence. To help centers plan a domestic violence program and address the risk of liability in treating clients who may be dangerous, the authors suggest principles to guide clinical decisions, standards for service delivery, and standards for staff development.

"The Woman In The Street:" Reclaiming The Public Space From Sexual Harassment, Deborah Thompson Eisenberg

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Against Marriage, Steven K. Homer

Faculty Scholarship

What is marriage? In the debate surrounding same-sex marriage, the central term has gone undefined. Using the Hawaii Supreme Court's decision in Baehr v. Lewin as a starting point, this Note argues that marriage lacks legal as well as experiential coherence. A series of legal and social moves intended, on the one hand, to preserve the dominance of heterosexuality over gays and lesbians and, on the other, to allow, heterosexuals to escape the dominance of heterosexuality over themselves, has left little conceptual space for marriage. That is, to speak of "extending marriage" to same-sex couples creates the illusion that marriage …

The Unconstitutional Conditions Doctrine And Mandating Norplant For Women On Welfare Discourse, Laurence C. Nolan

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Slavery Rhetoric And The Abortion Debate, Debora Threedy

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

There are many things that could be, and have been, said about the question of abortion. This article focuses on the rhetoric of the abortion debate. Specifically, I discuss how both sides of the abortion debate have appropriated the image of the slave and used that image as a rhetorical tool, a metaphor, in making legal arguments. Further, I examine the effectiveness of this metaphor as a rhetorical tool. Finally, I question the purposes behind this appropriation, and whether it reflects a lack of sensitivity to the racial content of the appropriated image.

Images Of Women In U.S. Immigration Policy: The Paradox Of Domestic Violence, Stacy Brustin

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Civil, Constitutional And Criminal Justice Responses To Female Partner Abuse: Proposals For Reform, Mark Anthony Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

Female partner abuse -- the battering inflicted by heterosexual men upon their wives, common-law spouses and intimate partners -- is a pervasive phenomenon in North American society. Through a comparative analysis of the responses to female partner abuse in Buffalo (New York), Toronto and London (Ontario) this paper demonstrates that pro-arrest policing policies have a vital role in curbing conjugal violence. Nevertheless, any truly effective response to female partner abuse must link the criminal justice system with other areas of the law as well as community services. With this interdisciplinary approach as a governing paradigm, several reforms are proposed. These …

Universal Versus Islamic Human Rights: A Clash Of Cultures Or A Clash With A Construct?, Ann Elizabeth Mayer

Michigan Journal of International Law

This article examines the recent trend proposing that Islam and Islamic culture mandate a distinctive approach to human rights. It offers critical assessments of selected civil and political rights in two recent products of this trend: (1) the 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, issued by the Organization of the Islamic Conference and endorsed by Iran and Saudi Arabia; and (2) the rights provisions in the Saudi Arabian Basic Law promulgated in 1992. These legislative initiatives will be examined in conjunction with constructs of an Islamic culture necessarily at odds with international human rights norms. These constructs have …

Women's Human Rights: A Prospective Look, Donna Sullivan

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

New Wcl Program Explores Women's Issues In International Law, Ayesha Qayyum

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

New Trend In Addressing Violence Against Women, Layli Miller Bashir

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Women's Reproductive Rights Advanced At Conference, Gabriel Eckstein

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Cairo Conference Invokes Empowerment Of Women, Renate Nikolay

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Wcl Human Rights Clinic Champions Women's Rights, Angela Collier

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Commission Special Rapporteur Grossman Investigates Women's Rights, Gabriel Eckstein

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.