Law and Gender Commons^™

The War On Women's Fundamental Rights: Connecting U.S. Supreme Court Originalism To Rightwing, Conservative Extremism In American Politics, Donna J. King

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article argues that the Fourteenth Amendment's Privileges or Immunities Clause, intended to protect fundamental rights for all citizens, including women, has been systematically undermined by the U.S. Supreme Court's originalist interpretations. This erosion, exemplified by cases like SlaughterHouse, has emboldened right-wing extremism and threatens women's rights, particularly in the context of unenumerated fundamental rights. The article contends that the Court's narrow constructions and disregard for legislative history have perpetuated inequality and stripped the Clause of its intended protective power.

Ain't I A Victim? The Intersectionality Of Race, Class, And Gender In Domestic Violence And The Courtroom, Geneva Brown

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The legal system systematically fails to protect marginalized groups, particularly African American women, from intimate-partner violence due to entrenched race, gender, and class biases. These biases manifest in the courts' disregard for the unique experiences of African American women, as highlighted by Kimberlé Crenshaw's intersectionality theory. The article examines how systemic discrimination and the courts' failure to enforce protective orders perpetuate violence against this vulnerable population, emphasizing the lethal consequences of these failures. The analysis also critiques the Supreme Court's narrowing of constitutional protections in cases like DeShaney v. Winnebago County and Castle Rock v. Gonzales, which further erode …

Bridging The Great Divide--A Response To Linda Greenhouse And Reva B. Siegel's Before (And After) Roe V. Wade: New Questions About Backlash, Lolita Buckner Inniss

Publications

This essay discusses the history of Roe v. Wade as recently addressed by Linda Greenhouse and Reva B. Siegel. Going beyond their assertions, I suggest that an additional, more encompassing inquiry focuses on what factors are implicated in the politics of abortion and how these factors relate to larger social, political, and cultural conflicts both before and after Roe. By naming party politics and the Catholic Church, Greenhouse and Siegel posit two crucial elements that shaped the abortion debate. I assert, however, that what is not discussed in their Article is the way numerous other factors have figured into …

Book Review, Barbara Babcock's Woman Lawyer: The Trials Of Clara Foltz, Tracy A. Thomas

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Woman Lawyer tells the story of Clara Foltz, who in 1878 became the first female lawyer in California. Today her legacy is memorialized in the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in Los Angeles. The courthouse recognizes Foltz’s efforts to establish the office of the public defender. Barbara Babcock is eager to tell Foltz’s story, and the details come tumbling out.

Gender And Securities Law In The Supreme Court, Lyman Johnson, Michelle M. Harner, Jason A. Cantone

Faculty Scholarship

The 2010 appointment of Elena Kagan to the United States Supreme Court meant that, for the first time, three female justices would serve together on that court. Less clear is whether Justice Kagan’s gender will really matter in how she votes as a justice. This question is an especially visible aspect of a larger issue: do female judges display gendered voting patterns in the cases that come before them?

This article makes a novel contribution to the growing literature on female voting patterns. We investigated whether female justices on the United States Supreme Court voted differently than, or otherwise influenced, …

Gender And The Crisis In Legal Education: Remaking The Academy In Our Image, Paula A. Monopoli

Faculty Scholarship

American legal education is in the grip of what some have called an “existential crisis.” The New York Times proclaims the death of the current system of legal education. This is attributed, in part, to the incentivizing of faculty to produce increasingly abstract scholarship and the costs this imposes on pedagogy and the mentoring of students. At the same time, despite women graduating from law schools in significant numbers since the 1980s, they continue to lag behind in the most prestigious positions in academia—tenured, full professorships: From academic year 1998-99 to academic year 2007-08, the percentage of women full professors …

"The Birth Of Death": Stillborn Birth Certificates And The Problem For Law, Carol Sanger

Faculty Scholarship

Stillbirth is a confounding event, a reproductive moment that at once combines birth and death. This Essay discusses the complications of this simultaneity as a social experience and as a matter of law. While traditionally, stillbirth didn't count for much on either score, this is no longer the case. Familiarity with fetal life through obstetric ultrasound has transformed stillborn children into participating members of their families long before birth, and this in turn has led to a novel demand on law.

Dissatisfied with the issuance of a stillborn death certificate, bereaved parents of stillborn babies have successfully lobbied state legislatures …

Two Parts Of The Landscape Of Family In America: Maintaining Both Spousal And Domestic Partner Employee Benefits For Both Same-Sex And Different-Sex Couples, Nancy Polikoff

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

The Feminist Academic's Challenge To Legal Education: Creating Sites For Change, Ann Shalleck

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

The New Illegitimacy: Winning Backward In The Protection Of The Children Of Lesbian Couples, Nancy Polikoff

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Sisters In Law: Black Women Lawyers' Struggle For Advancement, Carla Pratt

Faculty Articles

While the presence of women in law school and the legal profession has improved greatly, the uncomfortable reality is that women tend to occupy positions in the legal profession that subordinate them to men. This reality is even more glaring when the position of black women is examined. Black women carry the burden of multiple consciousness which influences every aspect of their professional lives. Multiple consciousness means that black women must be mindful of their professional identity, their gender and their race in navigating the pipeline to power. This paper will explore the multiple consciousness that intersecting identities invoke and …

"The Good Mother": Mothering, Feminism, And Incarceration, Deseriee A. Kennedy

Scholarly Works

As the rates of incarceration continue to rise, women are increasingly subject to draconian criminal justice and child welfare policies that frequently result in the loss of their parental rights. The intersection of an increasingly carceral state and federally imposed timelines for achieving permanency for children in state care has had a negative effect on women, their children, and their communities. Women, and their ability to parent, are more adversely affected by the intersection of these gender-neutral provisions because they are more likely than men to be the primary caretaker of their children. In addition, incarcerated women have higher rates …

Work-Family Conflict And The Pipeline To Power: Lessons From European Gender Quotas, Julie C. Suk

Articles

The article examines the persistent gender disparities at the top of the legal profession, attributing them to work-family conflict and the disproportionate impact of caregiving responsibilities on women. It explores European gender quotas as a potential solution, arguing that such measures address the legitimacy and effectiveness of institutions by ensuring gender parity in leadership positions. While acknowledging the challenges in implementing quotas in the U.S., the analysis suggests that European approaches offer valuable insights for addressing the "leaky pipeline" and advancing gender equality in the legal profession.

Sexual Harassment 2.0, Mary Anne Franks

Articles

Sexual harassment is a complex and evolving practice. The rise of sexual discrimination in cyberspace is only one of the most recent and most striking examples of the phenomenon's increasing complexity. Sexual harassment law, however, has not kept pace with this evolution. Discrimination law has not been adequately "updated" to address new and amplified practices of sex discrimination. Its two principal limitations are (1) it treats only sexual harassment that occurs in certain protected settings (e.g. the workplace or school) as actionable and (2) it assumes that both the activity and the resulting harm of sexual harassment occur in the …

From Multiculturalism To Technique: Feminism, Culture And The Conflict Of Laws Style, Karen Knop, Ralf Michaels, Annelise Riles

Faculty Scholarship

The German chancellor, the French president and the British prime minister have each grabbed world headlines with pronouncements that their state’s policy of multiculturalism has failed. As so often, domestic debates about multiculturalism, as well as foreign policy debates about human rights in non-Western countries, revolve around the treatment of women. Yet there is also a widely noted brain drain from feminism. Feminists are no longer even certain how to frame, let alone resolve, the issues raised by veiling, polygamy and other cultural practices oppressive to women by Western standards. Feminism has become perplexed by the very concept of “culture.” …

Peacemaking & Provocation: A Response To Professor Tracey Jean Boisseau, Dan Subotnik

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Fatherhood By Conscription: Nonconsensual Insemination And The Duty Of Child Support, Michael J. Higdon

Georgia Law Review

Much of the law relating to child support is based on the
fact that it is typically in a child's best interest to receive
financial support from mothers as well as fathers. In fact,
child support is essentially a form of strict liability with
the justification being that the child is an innocent party,
and thus, even those men who never consented to the
sexual act that caused the pregnancy are nonetheless

liable for the support of the resulting child. These men
include males who become fathers as a result of statutory
rape and also adult males who became fathers …

Unsex Mothering: Towards A New Culture Of Parenting, Darren Rosenblum

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

I was, until recently, a pregnant man. I explored some of the issues that arose along my path to parenthood in a recent essay titled Pregnant Man?: A Conversation. My husband and I began the process of having a child several years ago when we hired a surrogacy agency that works primarily with gay male couples. After a complex process, we are now raising our daughter.

As a parent, I confront a far more sexed area of life than I have ever encountered before. Everyone congratulates my partner and me on being “fathers,” even though within our home we …

Renegotiating The Social Contract, Jennifer S. Hendricks

Publications

This review of The Supportive State: Families, Government and America’s Political Ideals highlights Maxine Eichner’s important theoretical contributions to both liberal political theory and feminist theory, applauding her success in reforming liberalism to account for dependency, vulnerability, and families. The review then considers some implications of Eichner’s proposals and their likely reception among feminists. It concludes that The Supportive State is a sound and inspiring response to recent calls that feminist theory move from being strictly a school of criticism to developing a theory of governance.

A "Neo-Feminist" Assessment Of Rape And Domestic Violence Law Reform, Aya Gruber

Publications

No abstract provided.