Law and Gender Commons^™

Exporting Subjects: Globalizing Family Law Progress Through International Human Rights, Cyra Akila Choudhury

Michigan Journal of International Law

In our popular culture and social consciousness, women are no longer the second-class citizens they used to be. Magazines, television advertisements, and billboards featuring women show us how we have achieved independence, wealth, desirability, and our intelligence. We are no longer the supporting role in movies and entertainment but stars in our own right. For this, we can thank both changing society and the unrelenting work of many women who refused to bring the coffee for the boss. The women's movement in the United States has made large gains for women through the use of social activism and legal action. …

"Eighteen Million Cracks": Gender's Role In The 2008 Presidential Campaign, Gregory S. Parks, Quinette M. Roberson

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

In light of the 2008 presidential campaign, Gregory S. Parks
and Jeffrey J. Rachlinski wrote an extensive analysis, titled A Better
Metric, likening the campaign to an interview process and hiring
decision for a high-ranking job. Though unpublished, their work
spawned a number of published articles, book chapters, and a book
on the role of unconscious race and gender bias in the evaluations of
President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, and Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton. In light of the analogy between voting and
hiring decisions, this article argues that questions about sexism and
gender bias along the campaign …

The United Nations And Women - A Critique, Elizabeth F. Defeis

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Deconstructing Cedaw's Article 14: Naming And Explaining Rural Difference, Lisa R. Pruitt

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Violence Against Women In The United States And The State’S Obligation To Protect: Civil Society Briefing Papers On Community, Military And Custody Submitted To The United Nations Special Rapporteur On Violence Against Women, Rashida Manjoo, In Advance Of Her Mission To The United States Of America, Brenda V. Smith, Ashley Prather, Jaime M. Yarussi

Research Reports & White Papers

The Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences visited the United States of America from 24 January to 7 February 2011. In the present report, she broadly examines the situation of violence against women in the country, including such issues as violence in custodial settings, domestic violence, violence against women in the military and violence against women who face multiple, intersecting forms of discrimination, particularly native American, immigrant and African-American women.

The Special Rapporteur highlights the positive legislative and policy initiatives undertaken by the Government to reduce the prevalence of violence against women, including the enactment and …

Theorizing The More Responsive State: Transcending The National Boundaries Of Law, Laura Spitz

Faculty Book Display Case

Literature theorizing the state typically focuses on the nation-state as the locus of state power and authority, bounded by territorial and/or geopolitical borders. Within legal scholarship, an even narrower focus is common: the state as adjudicatory apparatus. Yet it may be more productive to shift the conceptual lens to embrace a wider and less vertical conception of state power. Thus, this chapter takes Fineman’s invitation to begin the task of theorizing a “more responsive state” in the US, by looking beyond the US, and putting two groups of scholars in conversation with one another: feminist legal theorists on the one …

Women And Children Last: The Prosecution Of Sex Traffickers As Sex Offenders And The Need For A Sex Trafficker Registry, Geneva Brown

Law Faculty Publications

Sex trafficking is a moral and legal tragedy that affects thousands in the United States and abroad. The U.S. State Department estimates that human traffickers bring between 14,500 and 17,500 persons annually into the United States for various avenues of exploitation, including involuntary servitude and forced prostitution. Human traffickers are highly organized into criminal syndicates that reap exponential profits exploiting vulnerable women and children. Individual states struggle to prosecute traffickers and must rely on federal prosecution of trafficking enterprises. International cooperation with local law enforcement is essential in combating trafficking, especially in the sex trade. This Article proposes that an …

Response To Beth Richie’S Black Feminism, Gender Violence And The Build-Up Of A Prison Nation, Kimberly D. Bailey

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Lost In Translation: Domestic Violence, "The Personal Is Political," And The Criminal Justice System, Kimberly D. Bailey

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Gendered Lives Of Legal Aid: Lay Lawyers, Social Workers, And The Bar, 1863-1960, Felice J. Batlan

All Faculty Scholarship

The Gendered Life of Legal Aid, 1863-1960 (manuscript in process) will be the first monograph on the history of civil legal aid in the United States. By closely examining the history of legal aid in New York, Chicago, and Boston, it presents a number of arguments with wide-ranging implications and it is animated by a host of conflicts. These include the relationship between legal aid and citizenship, the changing status of domestic relations law, the interactions between lawyers and social workers and their different understandings of the role and nature of law, what services legal aid should provide, and even …

Tango Or More - From California's Lesson 9 To The Constitutionality Of A Gay-Friendly Curriculum In Public Elementary Schools, Amy Lai

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In August 2009, a group of parents in California filed a lawsuit, Balde v. Alameda Unified School District, in the Superior Court of California, County of Alameda. They alleged that the Alameda Unified School District refused them the right to excuse their children from a new curriculum, Lesson 9, that would teach public elementary school children about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) families. The proposed curriculum included short sessions about GLBT people, incorporated into more general lessons about family and health, once a year from kindergarten through fifth grade. Kindergarteners would learn the harms of teasing, while fifth graders …

Money, Sex, And Sunshine: A Market-Based Approach To Pay Discrimination, Deborah Thompson Eisenberg

Faculty Scholarship

The Equal Pay Act had a distinct market purpose. Congress made a policy choice to modify the existing compensation market so that employees who perform jobs requiring substantially “equal skill, effort, and responsibility” earn equal wages, regardless of sex. The Act aimed not simply to promote individual fairness, but to foster a more efficient, equitable wage market on a systemic level. Congress recognized that paying lower wages to women constituted “an unfair method of competition,” burdened “commerce and the free flow of goods in commerce,” and prevented the “maximum utilization of available labor resources.” Over time, however, the “market” in …

Taking Away An Employer's Free Pass: Making The Case For A More Sophisticated Sex-Plus Analysis In Employment Discrimination Cases, Heather M. Kolinsky

Scholarly Articles

In this article the author advocates for a broader interpretation of sex-plus theory to encompass the concept of mother as a gender identified category.

Combating Acid Violence In Bangladesh, India, And Cambodia, Sital Kalantry, Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum

Avon Global Center for Women and Justice and Dorothea S. Clarke Program in Feminist Jurisprudence

This Report is the first comprehensive, comparative study of acid violence that examines the underlying causes, its consequences, and the multiple barriers to justice for its victims. Acid attacks, like other forms of violence against women, are not random or natural phenomena. Rather, they are social phenomena deeply embedded in a gender order that has historically privileged patriarchal control over women and justified the use of violence to “keep women in their places.”

Through an in-depth study of three countries, the authors of the Report argue that the due diligence standard can be a powerful tool for state and non-state …

Stalled: Gender Diversity On Corporate Boards, Barbara Black

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In this essay, prepared for the University of Dayton College of Law’s Symposium on Perspectives on Gender and Business Ethics: Women in Corporate Governance, held on February 25, 2011, I discuss the lack of progress in achieving gender diversity on corporate boards.

I first review the numbers that demonstrate that progress is stalled, despite the attention and resources devoted to the issue by a number of well-respected organizations, legal scholars and institutional investors. I argue that, because this is an issue of equal opportunity, it is not really necessary to make a business case to justify increased efforts toward board …

Strategies Of Muslim Family Law Reform, Kristen Stilt, Swathi Gandhavadi

Faculty Working Papers

Family law in Muslim-majority countries has undergone tremendous change over the past century, and this process continues today with intensity and controversy. In general, this change has been considered one of "reform," defined loosely as the adoption of national laws to modify the rules of Islamic law (fiqh) that had been applicable and predominant in the particular country in an effort to improve the rights of women and children. In most Muslim-majority contexts, however, the rules of fiqh remain particularly (and in some jurisdictions uniquely) relevant in the area of family law, and the reform process is usually presented as …

The Limits Of Constructivism: Can Rawls Condemn Female Genital Mutilation?, Andrew Koppelman

Faculty Working Papers

The strategy for coping with value pluralism that Rawls has proposed is to permit political decisions, at least with respect to basic rights, to depend only on those goods that can be inferred from the bare requirements of respectful relations between persons. His account offers such a parsimonious conception of the good that it cannot cognize some atrocities. I focus on one extreme human rights case: the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM), which, it is well established, violates basic human rights. Doubtless Rawls was appalled by the practice. Yet his theory cannot generate a basis for condemning it. A …

Sex Equality's Unnamed Nemesis, Veronica Percia

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Sex inequality still exists. However, its manifestations have evolved since the early sex inequality cases were heard in courts and legislatures first began structuring statutory regimes to combat it. In particular, so-called "facial" discrimination against men and women on the basis of sex has no doubt decreased since the advent of this legal assault on sex inequality. Yet the gendered assumptions that structure our institutions and interactions have proven resilient. With sex discrimination now operating more covertly, the problem of sex inequality looks considerably different than it once did. Courts, however, have failed to successfully respond to the changing contours …

Exporting Subjects: Globalizing Family Law Progress Through International Human Rights, Cyra Akila Choudhury

Faculty Publications

This article examines the global export of domestic U.S. legal projects and strategies in the realm of family law and gender justice to South Asia. While such projects have undoubtedly achieved substantial gains for women in the U.S., there have also been costs. At a remove of two decades, scholars have now begun to theorize those costs and argue that feminism needs to reconsider its commitments to particular projects that have been held central to women’s emancipation. Yet much of these critiques have not reached the transnational women’s movements that are led by U.S. feminist activists and scholars. Relying on …

Carry That Weight: Victim Privacy Within The Military Sexual Assault Reporting Methods, 28 J. Marshall Computer & Info. L. 551 (2011), Emily Hansen

UIC John Marshall Journal of Information Technology & Privacy Law

No abstract provided.