Law and Gender Commons^™

Coercing Pregnancy, A. Rachel Camp

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Intimate partners coerce thousands of women in the United States into pregnancy each year through manipulation, threats of violence, or acts that deliberately interfere with the use of, or access to, contraception or abortion. Although many of these pregnancies occur within the context of otherwise abusive relationships, for others, pregnancy serves as a trigger for intimate partner violence. Beyond violence preceding or resulting from pregnancy, women who experience coerced pregnancies often suffer other physical, financial and emotional harms. Despite its correlation to domestic violence, reproductive coercion fits imperfectly, if at all, within our existing laws designed to combat domestic violence …

State Court Protection Of Reproductive Rights: The Past, The Perils, And The Promise, Dawn E. Johnsen

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Seductive Power Of Patriarchal Stories, Aviva A. Orenstein

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This essay develops a theme introduced in Rape and Culture of the Courtroom written by Andrew Taslitz. It examines the cases in which judges allow evidence of the victim’s sexual history and proclivities because, in their estimation, excluding such evidence would violate the constitution (an exception to rape shield in Fed. R. Evid 412). The review of these cases demonstrates the persistent power of patriarchal stories and documents how the constitutional exception sometimes indicates a resistance to the entire enterprise of rape shield. In particular, it focus on Gagne v. Booker, an en banc decision from the Sixth Circuit, …

In The Name Of The Child: Race, Gender, And Economics In Adoptive Couple V. Baby Girl, Bethany Berger

Faculty Articles and Papers

On June 25, 2013, the Supreme Court decided Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, holding that the Indian Child Welfare Act did not permit the Cherokee father in that case to object to termination of his parental rights. The case is ostensibly about a dispute between prospective adoptive parents and a biological father. This Article demonstrates that it is about a lot more than that. It is a microcosm of anxieties about Indianness, race, and the changing nature of parenthood. While made in the name of the child, moreover, the decision supports practices and policies that do not forward and may …

Crisis And Trigger Warnings: Reflections On Legal Education And The Social Value Of The Law, 90 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 615 (2015), Kim D. Chanbonpin

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

This Essay begins by understanding the law school crisis through the framework of disaster capitalism. This framing uncovers the ways in which reformers are taking advantage of the current crisis to restructure legal education. Under the circumstances, faculty may reasonably read the contemporaneous student-led movement to require trigger warnings in the classroom as an assault on academic freedom. This reading, however, clouds the water. Part II attempts to clear the confusion by decoupling the trigger-warning movement from the broader phenomenon of law school corporatization. Trigger-warning demands might alternatively be read as a student critique of traditional law school pedagogy. Especially …

Boys, Rape And Masculinity: Reclaiming Boys’ Narratives Of Sexual Violence In Custody, Brenda V. Smith

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This article examines a little studied area at the intersections of masculinity, feminist studies, and criminal justice — sexual abuse of boys in custody by female staff. Professor Smith outlines the scope of the problem and discusses competing narratives that attempt to explain the phenomena: (1) female staff as “mother, sister, friend”; (2) adolescent development theory; (3) complex early childhood trauma; and (4) female authority and power. There is a gap in both masculinity and feminist theory in analyzing sexual aggression and power by women over boys. The talk article concludes with policy and practice prescription and recommendations for further …

The Challenges And Perils Of Reframing Trafficking As 'Modern-Day Slavery", Janie Chuang

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Policing Sex: The Colonial, Apartheid, And New Democracy Policing Of Sex Work In South Africa, India Thusi

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In Part I of this Article, I discuss the perception that sex work was a “necessary evil” under the Dutch East India Company. In Part II, I discuss British colonial rule and the influence of the Victorian era on the policing of sex work. In Part III, I discuss the Union of South Africa and the mass hysteria following the rise of the “black peril.” Part IV discusses the apartheid era and the impact of the Immorality Act on the policing of sex workers. Part V focuses on the new democratic era and the introduction of the human rights framework. …

More Than A Woman: Insights Into Corporate Governance After The French Sex Quota, Darren Rosenblum

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In 2011, France enacted a Corporate Board Quota to establish a forty percent floor for either sex on corporate boards. Existing literature presumes that women will change the way firms function and that their presence in upper management will improve both governance and financial returns. To assess the potential impact of the quota, we interviewed twenty-four current and former corporate board members. Our analysis of these interviews generates two findings. First, our results indicate that, at least in the view of board members, the sex quota has had an impact on the process of board decision-making, but adding women has …

Reconsidering Legal Regulation Of Race, Sex, And Sexual Orientation, Ann C. Mcginley

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Reimagining Access To Justice In The Poor People’S Courts, Elizabeth L. Macdowell

Scholarly Works

Access to justice efforts have been focused more on access than justice, due in part to the framing of access to justice issues around the presence or absence of lawyers. This article argues that access to justice scholars and activists should also think about social justice and provides a roadmap for running a legal services program geared toward making court systems more just. The article also further develops the concept of “poor people’s courts,” a term that has been used to describe courts serving large numbers of low-income people without representation. The article argues that access to justice efforts can …

Hobby Lobby: The Crafty Case That Threatens Women's Rights And Religious Freedom, Leslie C. Griffin

Scholarly Works

Despite the pro-religion rhetoric surrounding it, Hobby Lobby marks a loss of religious freedom. Missing from the majority's opinion is the core concept that religious freedom is necessary to protect the rights of all Americans, and that a religious belief must not be imposed on citizens through the force of law. Any interpretation of the First Amendment or the Religious Freedom Restoration Act ("RFRA")' that imposes one citizen's religious faith upon another must be rejected. This Article defends this non-imposition model of religious freedom and describes why and how Hobby Lobby incorrectly departed from it.

Debunking Unequal Burdens, Trivial Violations, Harmless Stereotypes, And Similar Judicial Myths: The Convergence Of Title Vii Literalism, Congressional Intent, And Kantian Dignity Theory, Peter Brandon Bayer

Scholarly Works

Title VII prohibits employers from imposing their racial, sex-based, ethnic, or religiously inspired grooming and appearance standards, even if, in light of widely accepted social conventions, the vast majority would feel exceptionally uncomfortable in the presence of employees who refuse to comport with their employers' discriminatory rules. Indeed, nearly four decades ago, with correct simplicity and directness the Supreme Court recognized Title VII's first principle: "Congress intended to prohibit all practices in whatever form which create inequality in employment opportunity due to discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sex, or national origin." Therefore, contrary to the harsh dismay expressed …

Policing And The Clash Of Masculinities, Ann Mcginley

Scholarly Works

In 2014 and 2015, the news media inundated U.S. society with reports of brutal killings by police of black men in major American cities. Unfortunately, police departments do not typically keep data on police killings of civilians. The data that exist do show, however, that at least for a five-month period in 2015, there was a disproportionate rate of police killings of unarmed black men.

There is no question that race and class play a key role in the nature of policing that occurs in poor black urban neighborhoods, but the relationship between police officers and their victims is not …

Women Talking About Water: Feminist Subjectivities And Intersectional Understandings, Leila M. Harris, Jyoti Phartiyal, Dayna Nadine Scott, Megan Peloso

Articles & Book Chapters

In this study based on discussions held by women's groups across Canada on water challenges and interests, we recognized that in the current context in Canada, women are truly connected with peoples, humans or any other form of life. They recognize that water is socially embedded, integrating issues of social, ecological and intergenerational justice in relation to complex changes in riparian landscapes. Clearly their talk is from a gender perspective, but we also found movement beyond gender that nuanced cross-sectoral understanding, critical links between gender, class and ethnicity are frequently mentioned.

From The Editors, Anna M. Klobucka, Jeannette E. Riley, Catherine Villanueva Gardner

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

No abstract provided.

“You Have To Confess”: Rape And The Politics Of Storytelling, Tara Roeder

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This article examines the discourse of rape in contemporary culture, paying special attention to the courtroom setting, where rape victims are often required to tell cohesive, linear narratives that underscore their blamelessness if they hope to be believed. Because of deeply entrenched cultural myths about rape, the type of story often required for the successful prosecution of perpetrators may require rape victims to construct narratives that do not accurately reflect their lived experience. Writers such as Susan Brison, Patricia Weaver Francisco, and Alice Sebold engage with the complex politics of rape and its telling in their memoirs. While constructing stories …

The Power And Joy Of Derby: Women’S Participation, Empowerment, And Transformation In A Flat-Track Roller Derby Team, John Paul, Sharla Blank

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

In what ways do sports make a difference in the lives of the people who play them? In this paper, we employ a sporting feminist perspective to answer this question and detail how women benefit from the sport of roller derby. Our analyses are structured around the themes of the body (exploring examples of bodily empowerment and reconceptualization); the team (highlighting feminist themes of loyalty and team as family); and the crowd (identifying the ways in which derby is “sold” to the crowd, as well as the ways in which athletes use derby to challenge conceptions of beauty, desirability, and …

Moving Forward/Looking Back: Reclaiming And Revising Our Feminist Past And Searching For Solidarity, Cassandra Denise Fetters

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

Interweaving personal anecdotes, feminist theory, and literary and popular culture references, this article attempts to provide answers to the question of how we build a social movement and establish solidarity among women while still recognizing and respecting difference. The article traces historical accounts of feminists contending with the “difference impasse” and argues that we should return to and revise the feminist thought that preceded us, weaving together theories from our feminist past with contemporary models, including those of feminist psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin and her ideas of “mutual recognition” and intersubjectivity. Drawing on fictional accounts from literature by women writers, the …

She Legislates, He Scandalizes: Reenvisioning The Impact Of Political Sex Scandals On Assemblywomen In New York, Hinda Mandell

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

A rash of three political sex scandals within the span of less than two years, from 2012 to 2014, shook the New York State Assembly. All of the sex scandals involved male politicians accused of sexual harassment of female staffers and subordinates. This study investigates how New York State assemblywomen were impacted by the scandals of their male colleagues, exploring the “contagion” of scandals (Adut 2008). Interviews were conducted with eight assemblywomen in 2014, although all 33 assemblywomen serving in the legislature at the time of this research endeavor were invited to participate in a research interview. Findings indicate that …