Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Law And Economics Of Microfinance, Katherine Helen Mary Hunt

Katherine Helen Mary Hunt

Financial inclusion may be jargon which appeals to international donors and academics, but the strategic implementation in developing countries is often based on international du jour priorities, such as microfinance. The topic of microfinance is highly debated in the academic literature, although little empirical work has been published. Further, no literature to date has considered microfinance from a law and economics perspective. This paper seeks to contribute to the gap in the literature by considering how microfinance has evolved to address the credit market failure, and how microfinance regulation should be designed to promote long term financial inclusion via financially …

Snopa And The Ppa: Do You Know What It Means For You? If Snopa (Social Networking Online Protection Act) Or Ppa (Password Protection Act) Do Not Pass, The Snooping Could Cause You Trouble, Angela Goodrum

Angela Goodrum

No abstract provided.

Critical Tax Policy: A Pathway To Reform?, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

The Global Recession of 2008 and ensuing austerity measures have renewed the urgency surrounding the call for fundamental tax reform. Before embarking on fundamental tax reform, this Article proposes adding a critical lens to existing US tax policy to ensure that any proposals for change are informed, transparent, and responsive to the needs (and abilities) of individual taxpayers. This Article makes the case for a specific method of inquiry – Critical Tax Policy – that is built on the articulation of difference rather than false assumptions of sameness. Critical Tax Policy incorporates the insights of a growing international tax equity …

A Noble Cause: A Case Study Of Discrimination, Symbols, And Reciprocity, In: Diversity And European Human Rights, Yofi Tirosh

Yofi Tirosh

This chapter is part of a volume dedicated to rewriting human rights cases issued by the European Court of Human Rights. It uses the case of De La Cierva Osorio De Moscoso v. Spain (1999) as a platform to discuss the inherent tension typifying signs such as nobility titles – as merely symbolic or as carrying substantive content. The problem of one’s ownership of signs is especially acute in the case of women. I will argue that the distinction between form and substance collapses in this case, as in many other cases that involve allocation of allegedly merely symbolic signifiers …

It Ain’T Necessarily So: The Misuse Of “Human Nature” In Law And Social Policy And Bankruptcy Of The “Nature-Nurture” Debate, 21 Tex. J. Women & L. 187 (2012))., Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Debate about legal and policy reform has been haunted by a pernicious confusion about human nature: and the idea that it is a set of rigid dispositions, today generally conceived as genetic, that is manifested the same way in all circumstances. Opponents of egalitarian alternatives argue that we cannot depart far from the status quo because human nature stands in the way. Advocates of such reforms too often deny the existence of human nature because, sharing this conception, they think it would prevent changes they deem desirable. Both views rest on deep errors about what kind of thing a “nature” …

Putting Forfeiture To Work, Sarah M. Buel

SARAH M BUEL

Intimate partner violence (“IPV”) victims are increasingly turning to the courts for help, too often with poor results. Successful witness tampering by offenders sabotages the court system by silencing victims through an array of unlawful conduct, including coercion and violence. The doctrine of forfeiture by wrongdoing should afford a viable solution, but several obstacles constrain its efficacy. Much confusion exists regarding witness tampering and forfeiture law as a result of the recent trilogy of the Crawford, Davis, and Giles Supreme Court decisions. Their cumulative effect is decreased doctrinal uniformity within a perplexing scheme that is difficult to implement. The resulting …

A Name Of One's Own: Gender And Symbolic Legal Personhood In The European Court Of Human Rights, Yofi Tirosh

Yofi Tirosh

Legal regulation of surnames provides a fascinating venue for examining how women negotiate their interests of autonomy and of stable personhood vis a vis a patriarchal naming structure. This is a study of 25 years of adjudication of surnames and personal status at the European Court of Human Rights. It explores the intricate ways in which legal norms governing surnames (and their judicial interpretation) sustain, shape, and reify social institutions such as gender, family, and citizenship.

As a pan European court, the adjudication of the ECHR operates within the framework of human rights. The universal characteristics of human rights principles …

Gender Matters: Making The Case For Trans Inclusion, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

The transgender communities are producing an important and nuanced critique of our gender system. For community members, the project is self-constitutive and, therefore, has an immediacy that also marks the efforts of other marginalized groups who have attempted to make sense of the world through description, interrogation, and, ultimately, a program for transformation. The transgender project also has universalizing elements because, existing within the gender system, each one of us embodies a particular gender articulation. It is through this articulation that we define ourselves in relation to the gender we were assigned at birth, the gender we choose, the gender …

Weighty Speech: Addressing Body Size In The Classroom, Yofi Tirosh

Yofi Tirosh

The politics of body size has been the topic of intriguing feminist work. Although in my view this issue is still undertheorized, I have long sought for a way to bring what does exist in the literature into my academic activities. The opportunity arose when, as a graduate student at the University of Michigan in 2001, I taught an undergraduate mini-course in the women's studies program, which I named Weight as a Cultural Question.

This essay discusses two pedagogical challenges I faced while teaching a class. Both questions deal with the extent to which it is productive to talk about …

Science, Identity, And The Construction Of The Gay Political Narrative, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

This Article contends that the current debate over gay civil rights is, at base, a dispute over the nature of same-sex desire. Pro-gay forces advocate an ethnic or identity model of homosexuality based on the conviction that sexual orientation is an immutable, unchosen, and benign characteristic. The assertion that, in essence, gays are "born that way," has produced a gay political narrative that rests on claims of shared identity (i.e., homosexuals are a blameless minority) and arguments of equivalence (i.e., as a blameless minority, homosexuals deserve equal treatment and protection against discrimination). The pro-family counter-narrative is based on a behavioral …

Rights Of Inequality: Rawlsian Justice, Equal Opportunity, And The Status Of The Family, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Is the family subject to principles of justice? In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls includes the (monogamous) family along with the market and the government as among the "basic institutions of society" to which principles of justice apply. Justice, he famously insists, is primary in politics as truth is in science: the only excuse for tolerating injustice is that no lesser injustice is possible. The point of the present paper is that Rawls doesn't actually mean this. When it comes to the family, and in particular its impact on fair equal opportunity (the first part of the the Difference …

Homosexuality As Contagion: From The Well Of Loneliness To The Boy Scouts, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

In the political arena, there are currently two central and competing views of homosexuality. Pro-family organizations, working from a contagion model of homosexuality, contend that homosexuality is an immoral, unhealthy, and freely chosen vice. Many pro-gay organizations espouse an identity model of homosexuality under which sexual orientation is an immutable, unchosen, and benign characteristic. Both pro-family and pro-gay organizations believe that to define homosexuality is to control its legal and political status. This sometimes bitter debate regarding the nature of same-sex desire might seem like an exceedingly contemporary development. However, the ex-gay media blitz of 2000 represents only the latest …