Law and Gender Commons^™

Risky Arguments In Social-Justice Litigation: The Case Of Sex Discrimination And Marriage Equality, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay takes up the puzzle of the risky argument or, more precisely, the puzzle of why certain arguments do not get much traction in advocacy and adjudication even when some judges find them to be utterly convincing. Through a close examination of the sex discrimination argument's evanescence in contemporary marriage litigation, this Essay draws lessons about how and why arguments become risky in social-justice cases and whether they should be made nonetheless. The marriage context is particularly fruitful because some judges, advocates, and scholars find it "obviously correct" that laws excluding same-sex couples from marriage discriminate facially based on …

Pursuing Justice For The Child: The Forgotten Women Of In Re Gault, David S. Tanenhaus

Scholarly Works

In this article, I first draw on my recent book The Constitutional Rights of Children to introduce the facts of the case and place the case in the larger context of the history of American juvenile justice. I then focus specifically on the role of four remarkable women in the history of this landmark decision: Marjorie Gault, Gerald's mother; Amelia Lewis, Gerald's lawyer; Lorna Lockwood, an Arizona lawyer who became the first woman to serve as the Chief Justice of a State Supreme Court; and Getrude "Traute" Mainzer, who assisted in the litigation of Gerald's case before the U.S. Supreme …

Dreams Of My Father, Prison For My Mother: The H-4 Nonimmigrant Visa Dilemma And The Need For An "Immigration-Status Spousal Support", Stewart Chang

Scholarly Works

In this article, Professor Stewart Chang uses the situation of H-4 visa derivatives in the Asian Indian immigrant community as a case study to expose and critique larger incongruities within current American immigration policy, which on the one hand has historically extolled individuality, equality, and workforce participation as avenues to the American Dream, while enforcing gender hierarchy and dependency through requirements that prioritize family unity on the other. These incongruities remain largely unnoticed because the culture of dependency is often attributed to traditional ethnic culture, which then becomes the site of scrutiny and blame. The H-4 visa dilemma in the …

The Rights Of Lesbian Gay Bisexual And Transgendered Peoples And International Human Rights Law, Claudia Martin, Diego Rodriguez-Pinzon

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Health Rights In The Balance: The Case Against Perinatal Shackling Of Women Behind Bars, Brett Dignam, Eli Y. Adashi

Faculty Scholarship

Rationalized for decades on security grounds, perinatal shackling entails the application of handcuffs, leg irons, and/or waist shackles to the incarcerated woman prior to, during, and after labor and delivery. During labor and delivery proper, perinatal shackling may entail chaining women to the hospital bed by the ankle, wrist, or both. Medically untenable, legally challenged, and ever controversial, perinatal shackling remains the standard of practice in most US states despite sustained two-decades-long efforts by health rights legal advocates, human rights organizations, and medical professionals. Herein we review the current statutory, regulatory, legal, and medical framework undergirding the use of restraints …

The Geography Of Marriage, William P. Lapiana

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Backlash And Marriage Equality, Arthur S. Leonard

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Empathy And Reasoning In Context: Thinking About Anti-Gay Bullying, Kris Franklin

Articles & Chapters

“Empathy” has negative connotations for many legal theorists, who may conceive of it as subjective, lacking in intellectual rigor, and emphasizing sensitivity over reason. Even those legal scholars who have embraced the importance of empathy in legal work have emphasized its affective dimensions: pointing out that empathy is central to human relations and motivations, and is therefore a crucial lawyering skill. This paper builds on social science literature that identifies both cognitive and affective dimensions to empathy, and recasts empathy as in part a central component to higher-order thinking in law. It draws examples from empathetic reasoning in foundational cases …

Aborted Emotions: Regret, Relationality, And Regulation, Jody L. Madeira

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Regret is a deeply contested emotion within abortion discourse. It is present in ways that we are both afraid of and afraid to talk about. Conventional pro-life and pro-choice narratives link regret to defective decision making. Both sides assert that the existence of regret reveals abortion’s harmfulness or harmlessness, generating a narrow focus on the maternal-fetal relationship and women’s “rights.”These incomplete, deeply flawed constructions mire discourse in a clash between regret and relief and exclude myriad relevant relationships. Moreover, they distort popular understandings of abortion that in turn influence women, creating cognitive dissonance and perhaps distress for those with different …

Roll Back "Prison Nation", Donna Coker

Articles

No abstract provided.

How To Feel Like A Woman, Or Why Punishment Is A Drag, Mary Anne Franks

Articles

If a man in prison says that he was made -to feel like a woman," this is commonly understood to mean that he was degraded, dehumanized, and sexualized. This association of femininity with punishment has significant implications for the way our society understands not only the sexual abuse of men in prison but also sexual abuse generally These important implications are usually overlooked, however, because law and society typically regard prison feminization as a problem of gender transposition: that is, as a problem of men being treated like women. In contrast, this Article argues that feminization is punitive for both …

Criminalizing Revenge Porn, Danielle Citron, Mary Anne Franks

Articles

No abstract provided.

I Am/I Am Not: On Angela Harris's Race And Essentialism In Feminist Legal Theory, Mary Anne Franks

Articles

In 1990, Angela Harris wrote an article that interrogated the limitations of feminist legal theory. Nearly a quarter of a century later, the insights and challenges Harris offered in Race and Essentialism in Feminist Legal Theory continue to reverberate. The influence of her ideas can be seen in the fractured and passionate conversations about gender, race, and solidarity occurring both inside and outside of academia. In recent years, we have witnessed an explosion of debate of these topics in social media forums such as Twitter and Facebook. Far from being trivial, the intensity and persistence of these conversations suggest a …

Our Fair City: A Comprehensive Blueprint For Gender And Sexual Justice In New York City, Cindy Gao, Katherine M. Franke

Faculty Scholarship

Columbia Law School’s Center for Gender & Sexuality Law offers this report to aid the de Blasio administration in evaluating the steps it can and should take to eliminate all forms of gender and sexual discrimination, and to assure gender and sexual justice in City policy and programs. After consultation with numerous groups advocating for gender and sexual justice across New York City, the Center for Gender & Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School has synthesized in this report a set of key recommendations to the de Blasio administration, all designed to eliminate a wide range of disadvantages, invisibility, violence, …

Comment On The Definition Of "Eligible Organization" For Purposes Of Coverage Of Certain Preventive Services Under The Affordable Care Act, Robert P. Bartlett, Richard M. Buxbaum, Stavros Gadinis, Justin Mccrary, Stephen Davidoff Solomon, Eric L. Talley

Faculty Scholarship

This comment letter was submitted by U.C. Berkeley corporate law professors in response to a request for comment by the Health and Human Services Department on the definition of "eligible organization" under the Affordable Care Act in light of the Supreme Court's decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. "Eligible organizations" will be permitted under the Hobby Lobby decision to assert the religious principles of their shareholders to exempt themselves from the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive mandate for employees.

In Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court held that the nexus of identity between several closely-held, for-profit corporations and their shareholders holding “a …

Is There A Federal Definitions Power?, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

Although the Supreme Court decided United States v. Windsor on equal protection grounds, that case also raised important and recurring questions about federal power. In particular, defenders of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) argued that Congress may always define the terms used in federal statutes, even if its definition concerns a matter reserved to the States. As the DOMA illustrates, federal definitions concerning reserved matters that depart from state law may impose significant burdens on state governments and private citizens alike. This Article argues that there is no general, freestanding federal definitions power and that sometimes—as with marriage—federal law …

Title Vii At 50: Contemporary Challenges For U.S. Employment Discrimination Law, Trina Jones

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Emerging Issues: Overthrowing The Government: What Boko Haram Means For Women, Kimberly R. Frazier

University of Baltimore Journal of International Law

Boko Haram has been active since 2002, however, most of the world became familiar with the Islamic terrorist group in April of 2014 after they kidnapped approximately 276 girls from a boarding school in northeastern Nigeria.1 The group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, announced in a video that the kidnapping was an act of retaliation after Nigerian security forces kidnapped the wives and children of Boko Haram leaders.2 He also stated that the girls would be forced to convert to Islam and sold into the slave market to begin their new lives as “servants.”3 The kidnapping was not the first act of …

Student Comment: “Love Is Patient, Love Is Kind”: A Comparative Study Helping The United States Reach Marriage Equality, Nicole Rush

University of Baltimore Journal of International Law

This paper evaluates same-sex marriage policies in three industrialized countries: the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Canada. In assessing the legislative and judicial history of same-sex marriage policies in each country, as well as other influential factors leading to these policies, this research helps to create a roadmap to reach a nationwide policy for the United States. By comparing the current history of the United States’ same-sex marriage policies to that of the aforementioned countries, it is possible to develop a plan to achieve marriage equality in the U.S.

Male Asylum Applicants Who Fear Becoming The Victims Of Honor Killings: The Case For Gender Equality, Caitlin Steinke

City University of New York Law Review

No abstract provided.