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Full-Text Articles in Legal Theory

Reflections On The Value Of Socio-Legal Approaches To International Economic Law In Africa, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe Jul 2021

Reflections On The Value Of Socio-Legal Approaches To International Economic Law In Africa, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In their introductory essay to the 2021 Chicago Journal of International Law Symposium, Daniel Abebe, Adam Chilton, and Tom Ginsburg offer an account of “the rise of the social science approach to international law, explain the basics of the method, and advocate for its continued adoption.”

This Essay critically assesses how and why one might use socio-legally inspired methods (analytical, empirical, and normative) for the study of international economic law (IEL) in Africa. It illustrates the empirical method’s importance in understanding one of the most challenging aspects of the study of IEL in Africa: capturing the data and dynamism of …


The Daily Work Of Fitting In As A Marginalized Lawyer, Kim Brooks Dec 2019

The Daily Work Of Fitting In As A Marginalized Lawyer, Kim Brooks

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Despite increased public dialogue about the need for inclusion, marginalized lawyers adjust their behaviour to “fit” in their legal workplaces. In this article, the author presents the results of interviews with lawyers in Canada who self-identify as belonging to a marginalized group based on race, ethnicity, Indigeneity, gender or sexual identity, working-class background, and/or disability. Based on these interviews, the author advances a taxonomy of the five strategies employed by these lawyers to fit in to their workplaces: covering strategies, compensating strategies, mythologizing strategies, passing strategies, and exiting strategies. Marginalized lawyers employ covering strategies, which may be appearance-, affiliation-, advocacy-, …


Feminist Statutory Interpretation, Kim Brooks Jul 2019

Feminist Statutory Interpretation, Kim Brooks

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Leading Canadian scholar Ruth Sullivan describes the act of statutory interpretation as a mix of art and archaeology. The collection, Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Tax Opinions, affirms her assessment. If the act of statutory interpretation requires us to deploy our interdisciplinary talents, at least somewhat unmoored from the constraints of formal expressions of legal doctrine, why haven’t feminists been more inclined to write about statutory interpretation? Put another way, some scholars acknowledge that judges “are subtly influenced by preconceptions, endemic privilegings and power hierarchies, and prevailing social norms and ‘conventional’ wisdom.” Those influences become the background for how judges read legislation. …


Why Feminism Matters To The Study Of Law, Kim Brooks Jan 2015

Why Feminism Matters To The Study Of Law, Kim Brooks

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Queen’s Law Faculty is home to Feminist Legal Studies Queen’s, a research group that expands awareness and development of scholarship in feminist legal studies, enables the development of feminist legal scholars at Queen's, and fosters connections among feminists with an interest in law. In Fall 2014, I had the privilege of returning to Queen’s Law to give the first seminar in FLSQ’s 2014-2015 lecture series. I was tasked with providing some reflections on why feminist legal theory matters. What follows is the text from the talk.