Sexuality and the Law Commons^™

Love Knows No Borders—The Same-Sex Marriage Debate And Immigration Laws, Amy K. R. Zaske

William Mitchell Law Review

No abstract provided.

If You Love Me Dear, Please Sign Here: Will The "Love Contract" Play A Role In Protecting Employers From Sexual Harassment Liability?, 40 J. Marshall L. Rev. 311 (2006), Jessica Lynn Mok O'Neill

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Finding Family: Considering The Recognition Of Same-Sex Families In International Human Rights Law And The European Court Of Human Rights, Elizabeth Kukura

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Revisiting Anna Moscowitz's Kross's Critique Of New York City's Women's Court: The Continued Problem Of Solving The "Problem" Of Prostitution With Specialized Criminal Courts, Mae C. Quinn

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Prison Sex: Self Expression And Safety, Brenda V. Smith

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This article analyzes legislation and policies that limit prisoners' sexual expression and autonomy. The article juxtaposes prisoners interest in sexual expression against the interests of the state in regulating sex by and between prisoners. The article concludes that the state has an interest in regulating sex between inmates and staff and in regulating coerced or forced sex between inmates. In other instances prisons could accommodate prisoners' interest in sexual expression and achieve important goals such as better decisionmaking; improved relations with family and partners to aid community reentry; reduction of prison rape; and as inmate management.

Sexual Abuse Of Women In United States Prisons: A Modern Corollary Of Slavery, Brenda V. Smith

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This paper addresses the sexual abuse of women in custody as a more contemporary manifestation of slavery and discusses the congruencies and the differences that exist between the sexual abuse of women in custody and slavery. The paper charts the history of the parallel abolition and prison reform movements and examines their divergent paths arguing that the women's movement abandonment of prison advocacy has harmed the women in prison movement. The article concludes that the embrace of human rights norms has assisted in providing new avenues for redressing the sexual abuse of women in custody.

Beyond A Snapshot: Preventing Human Trafficking In The Global Economy, Janie Chuang

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Current legal responses to the problem of human trafficking often reflect a deep reluctance to address the socio-economic root causes of the problem. Because they approach trafficking as an act (or series of acts) of violence, most responses focus predominantly on prosecuting traffickers, and to a lesser extent, protecting trafficked persons. While such approaches might account for the consequences of trafficking, they tend to overlook the broader socioeconomic reality that drives trafficking in human beings. Against this backdrop, this article seeks to reframe trafficking as a migratory response to current globalizing socioeconomic trends. It argues that, to be effective, counter-trafficking …

The United States As Global Sheriff: Using Unilateral Sanctions To Combat Human Trafficking, Janie Chuang

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

In recent years, the issue of human trafficking - the recruitment or movement of persons by means of coercion or deception into exploitative labor or slavery-like practices - has moved from the margins to the mainstream political agenda. The rapid proliferation of international, regional and domestic anti-trafficking laws bespeaks universal condemnation of the practice, but belies deep divisions among States over how to define and approach the problem. It is thus significant that the international community was able to reach consensus and conclude a new international law on trafficking - the Palermo Protocol. But just weeks before the signing of …

More Than Mere Semantics: The Case For An Expansive Definition Of Persecution In Sexual Minority Asylum Claims, Monica Saxena

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article asserts that the requirement in U.S. asylum law that requires an asylee to make a showing of persecutory intent is overly and especially restrictive in claims made by sexual minorities. This Article proposes that the U.S. adopt the asylum standards of New Zealand and Canada, where the focus is on the failure of government protection as opposed to a focus on persecutory intent. Such standards are consistent with both the realities of persecution that sexual minorities encounter and the original impetus behind the Refugee Convention. Part I examines the different forms of persecution against sexual minorities. Part II …

Immaculate Deception: The Evolving Right Of Paternal Renunciation, 27 Women's Rts. L. Rep. 139 (2006), Diane S. Kaplan

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Necessity Of Sex Change: A Struggle For Intersex And Transsex Liberties, Noa Ben-Asher

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article is composed of four Parts. The first Part explores two legal struggles for intersex and transsex goals. The main litigation propositions and structures of the two movements are contrasted, especially the meanings that the two movements offer for the terms “medical necessity,” “cosmetic surgery,” and “medical experimentation.” While Part I takes a critical approach to some of the strategies discussed, the main purpose is to describe the mirroring aspects of the two advocacy movements. The second Part locates these contemporary legal narratives regarding sex change in the broader history of sex change in the twentieth-century United States, emphasizing …

Not Part Of The Game Plan: School District Liability For The Creation Of A Hostile Athletic Environment, Toni Wehman

University of Colorado Law Review

Title IX has played a crucial role in changing our nation's treatment of women in education, leading to awareness about the harms of sexual harassment on both female and male students. However, in one area, Title IX jurisprudence draws a line between protected students and students who are not protected from sexual harassment. That line is determined by whether the harassment facing the student is because of perceived sexual orientation or perceived failure to adhere to gender stereotypes. School athletics is an environment wrought with such harassment that can include gender insults, i.e. "you throw like a girl" or sexual …

Analyzing Prison Sex: Reconciling Self Expression With Safety, Brenda V. Smith

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This article examines the complexity of prison sex and the challenges that it raises in the context of recently enacted United States legislation, specifically the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). It begins by identifying a range of prisoner interests in enhanced sexual expression. These interests are described below in an attempt to disentangle prisoners' rights in sexual expression from states' legitimate interests in regulating that expression. This article also directs policymakers and decision makers to mine international documents and human rights norms that recognize the necessity of punishment and at the same time outline a standard for the safety of …

How Can Allies Effectively Advocate For Gay Rights? The Answer Is Straightforward, Scott Benson

William Mitchell Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Historical Guide To The Future Of Marriage For Same-Sex Couples, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

History and tradition have emerged, together, as contemporary flagship arguments for limiting marriage to different-sex couples. According to advocates of "traditional marriage," same-sex couples can be excluded from marriage today because marriage always has been reserved to male-female couples. Further, some contend, the restriction of marriage to different-sex couples has long been understood as necessary to provide channels to control naturally procreative (i.e., male-female) relationships.

However popular these claims might be in op-ed pieces and on talk radio, when they are made in the litigation context, the question is not whether they have rhetorical appeal but rather whether they can …

Against Bipolar Black Masculinity: Intersectionality, Assimilation, Identity Performance, And Hierarchy, Frank Rudy Cooper

Scholarly Works

In this article, Professor Frank Rudy Cooper contends that popular representations of heterosexual black men are bipolar. Those images alternate between a Bad Black Man who is crime-prone and hypersexual and a Good Black Man who distances himself from blackness and associates with white norms. The threat of the Bad Black Man label provides heterosexual black men with an assimilationist incentive to perform our identities consistent with the Good Black Man image.

The reason for bipolar black masculinity is that it helps resolve the white mainstream's post-civil rights anxiety. That anxiety results from the conflict between the nation's relatively recent …

Twenty-First Century Equal Protection: Making Law In An Interregnum, Nan D. Hunter

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

During her remarkable career on the Supreme Court, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor articulated principles, in both concurrence and dissent, which moved to the doctrinal core of multiple areas of jurisprudence. Perhaps, just perhaps, Justice O'Connor has done it again. In Lawrence v. Texas, although the Court's majority decided the case on substantive due process grounds, O'Connor concurred relying solely on the Equal Protection Clause. Because future litigation on sexuality and gender issues is more likely to turn on issues of equality (or expression) than on issues of privacy, her concurrence may ultimately achieve the influence of many of her past …

A New Disease Born Every Minute: The Marketing Of Pathology And The Exploitation Of Gender-Based Insecurities And Sexuality To Sell Drugs, Elizabeth Lambdin

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Irs Advises No Medical Expense Deduction For Sexual Reassignment Surgery, Katie D. Fletcher

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Sheldon Kennedy And A Canadian Tragedy Revisited, M. B. Preston

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

National Hockey League player Sheldon Kennedy's 1997 revelation that his award-winning junior hockey coach had molested him for years created a national outcry in Canada. It resulted in the appointment of a special commission and declarations from the United States and Canada that this must never happen again. However, Kennedy was not alone; child sexual exploitation occurs at the hands of youth coaches across geographic and class boundaries and across individual and team sports.

Youth sports organizations, including schools, have approached the human and legal issues presented by child sexual exploitation in numerous ways. This Note analyzes the differences between--and …

The Marriage Protection Act: A Lesson In Congressional Over-Reaching, Sarah Kroll-Rosenbaum

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Moral Conflict And Liberty: Gay Rights And Religion, Chai R. Feldblum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

My goal in this piece is to surface some of the commonalities between religious belief liberty and sexual orientation identity liberty and to offer some public policy suggestions for what to do when these liberties conflict. I first want to make transparent the conflict that I believe exists between laws intended to protect the liberty of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender ("LGBT") people so that they may live lives of dignity and integrity and the religious beliefs of some individuals whose conduct is regulated by such laws. I believe those who advocate for LGBT equality have downplayed the impact of …

The Authoritative Moment: Exploring The Boundaries Of Interpretation In The Recognition Of Queer Families, Kris Franklin

Articles & Chapters

This article examines the boundaries of judicial interpretation as courts struggle to define the families formed by lesbians, gay men and transexuals. It compares the jurisprudence of numerous state courts examining queer families in different contexts. The article identifies three interwoven components of judicial reasoning: "lex" reasoning, grounded in the jurisdiction's binding and persuasive law; factual reasoning in which the courts must categorize queer families as analogous to those the law already recognizes or instead as something quite new and distinct; and finally methodological reasoning, in which courts self-consciously examine the boundaries of their own interpretive authority. Showing that in …

Unanimously Wrong, Dale Carpenter

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The Supreme Court was unanimously wrong in Rumsfeld v. FAIR. Though rare, it's not the first time the Court has been unanimously wrong. Its most notorious such decisions have come, like FAIR, in cases where the Court conspicuously failed even to appreciate the importance of the constitutional freedoms under attack from legislative majorities. In these cases, the Court's very rhetoric exposed its myopic vision in ways that now seem embarrassing. Does FAIR, so obviously correct to so many people right now, await the same ignominy decades away? FAIR was wrong in tone, a dismissive vox populi, adopted by a Court …

Sexual Punishments, Alice Ristroph

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Reconceptualizing Child Sexual Exploitation As A Bias Crime Under The Protect Act, Tracy Agyemang

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The note argues that the PROTECT Act, while expanding legal measures to combat child sexual exploitation, fails to address the crime's root causes and its nature as a form of discrimination. It advocates for reconceptualizing child sexual exploitation as a bias crime, which would enhance legal deterrence, increase penalties, and better acknowledge the psychological trauma experienced by victims. The note emphasizes that recognizing exploitation as a bias crime would address the systemic factors, such as poverty and discrimination, that perpetuate the crime.

The Constitutional Validity Of Circuit Court Opinions Limiting The American Right To Sexual Privacy, Shelly Elimelekh

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Desperately Seeking A Moralist, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In a recent issue of “Unbound”, Janet Halley reviews my book “Caring for Justice”, criticizing it for exhibiting a broad range of the problems she sees in all forms of "identitarian" legal writing, and therefore worthy of detailed critique. Halley begins her review by listing the representative missteps she finds in both my book and in identitarian politics generally, including, although certainly not limited to, an identification of the site of the subordinated group's injuries-for women, reproduction and sexuality with the site of its ethical lives and insights; a tendency to differentiate and present the interests of subordinate and dominant …

Porn In Their Words: Female Leaders In The Adult Entertainment Industry Address Free Speech, Censorship, Feminism, Culture And The Mainstreaming Of Adult Content, Clay Calvert, Robert D. Richards

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Part I provides brief biographical information about each of the five women interviewed for this article. Part II then describes the interview and editing processes used by the authors, including details about when and where the interviews took place and the transcription process of the tapes used to record them. Next, Part III--the heart of the article--sets forth the views, opinions and comments of each of the five women, divided into three theme-based sections: 1) free speech and censorship of sexual content; 2) feminism and victimization; and 3) mainstreaming of adult entertainment and shifts of cultural mores. Finally, Part IV …

Learning From Practice: Reframing The Scholarly Dialogue On Children’S Rights And Sexuality, Jean Scandlyn

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Of Innocence and Autonomy: Children, Sex and Human Rights. Edited by Eric Heinze. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000. 208 pp.