Law and Gender Commons^™

Pregnant Man: A Conversation, Darren Rosenblum, Noa Ben-Asher, Mary Anne Case, Elizabeth Emens, Berta E. Hernandez-Truyol,, Vivian M. Gutierrez, Lisa C. Ikemoto, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Jacob Willig-Onwuachi, Kimberly Mutcherson, Peter Siegelman, Beth Jones

Faculty Scholarship

I'm a law professor who works on gender, sexuality, and culture in the international and comparative context. That's my head working. In "real" life, my partner, Howard, and I have been engaged in having a baby together for several years, a project that came to fruition with the birth of our daughter Melina. Of course, such a project evokes intensely complex feelings and thoughts. Beyond a simple transposition of the personal onto the political, I feel so fortunate to have engaged in myriad conversations with a variety of friends and colleagues who think much more carefully about the family and …

Realizing Ledbetter's Dream With Diy Sensitivity, Jessi Leigh Swensen

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

While passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is a triumph for American women, it highlights that pay disparity between men and women is a persistent problem. According to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, women currently earn eighty-one percent of the average weekly wages for men. The restoration of this cause of action could prove an important deterrent to employers, but the relief and remedy is ex post facto rather than prophylactic. This note recounts Lilly Ledbetter's personal journey through the workplace, courts, legislature, and White House. It goes on to expand on systemic factors that perpetuate wage …

Honor Killings And The Construction Of Gender In Arab Societies, Lama Abu-Odeh

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article discusses the regulation and adjudication of honor killings in the Arab world and traces the distributive and disciplinary impact of such regulation/adjudication on Arab men and Arab women's sexuality. In the afterword, the Article outlines the transformative effect of Islamicization of culture in the Arab world in the past twenty years on the practice of honor and killings committed in its name.

How Should Colleges And Universities Respond To Peer Sexual Violence On Campus? What The Current Legal Environment Tells Us, Nancy Chi Cantalupo

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Over the last decade or so, various legal schemes such as the statutes and court or agency enforcement of Title IX and the Clery Act have increasingly recognized that certain institutional responses perpetuate a cycle of nonreporting and violence. This paper draws upon comprehensive legal research conducted on how the law now regulates school responses to campus peer sexual violence to show that schools face much greater liability from failing to protect the rights of campus peer sexual violence survivors than of any other group of students, including alleged assailants. By encouraging their institutions to develop more victim-centered responses to …

The Perils Of Empowerment, Jane H. Aiken, Katherine Goldwasser

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article examines bystander norms of disinterest and blame that inform and undermine strategies for dealing with significant social problems such as domestic violence. Current strategies rely on individual “empowerment” to reduce such violence. These strategies reflect fundamental misconceptions and false assumptions about the nature of domestic violence, about why this sort of violence persists so stubbornly, and, ultimately, about what it takes to change behavior that has long been tolerated, if not actually fostered, as a result of deeply imbedded social and cultural norms. The net effect is that far from empowering abused women, let alone reaching the norms …

Paying Women For Their Eggs For Use In Stem Cell Research, Pamela Foohey

Articles by Maurer Faculty

On June 11, 2009, the Empire State Stem Cell Board (“Board”), which administers the $600 million in New York State funds allotted to stem cell research, voted to allocate a portion of those funds to compensate women up to $10,000 for “donating” their eggs for use in stem cell research. The Board's decision makes New York the first state to affirmatively allow state funds to be used to compensate women for providing their eggs for use in stem cell research beyond mere reimbursement of associated medical and other expenses, and, similarly, distinguishes it from most international countries, which either prohibit …

The Basic Law At 60 - Equality And Difference: A Proposal For The Guest List To The Birthday Party, Susanne Baer

Articles

The German constitution, named "Basic Law", has proven to work although many did not believe in it when it was framed. Others emphasize desiderata. Sabine Berghahn commented at the 50th birthday that it has developed "far too slowly and [some] has even gone completely wrong." ' Jutta Limbach, former President of the Federal Constitutional Court, observed that constitutional history was "anything but regal, but very difficult and full of obstacles. '' 2 Former Chancellor Willy Brandt famously called the constitution "a snail on thin ice." So what is missing when we analyze the Basic Law, and what should be finally …

Converging Trajectories: Interest Convergence, Justice Kennedy, And Jeannie Suk's "The Trajectory Of Trauma", Jennifer S. Hendricks

Publications

This essay responds to Jeannie Suk's recent article in the Columbia Law Review, The Trajectory of Trauma: Bodies and Minds of Abortion Discourse. Suk argues that feminists are responsible for legitimizing a paternalistic attitude towards women that came home to roost in Gonzales v. Carhart. This essay argues that Suk's critique of feminist paternalism needs to be supplemented with a discussion of traditional paternalism and its influence on how feminist advocacy enters the law. In particular, it suggests that Derrick Bell's theory of interest convergence provides a useful framework for understanding the cultural, legal, and rhetorical evidence adduced …

Sex Representation On The Bench: Legitimacy And International Criminal Courts, Nienke Grossman

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay examines the relationship between legitimacy and the presence of both male and female judges on international criminal court benches. It argues that sex representation – an approximate reflection of the ratio of the sexes in the general population – on the bench is an important contributor to legitimacy of international criminal courts. First, it proposes that sex representation affects normative legitimacy because men and women bring different perspectives to judging. Consequently, without both sexes, adjudication is inherently biased. Second, even if one rejects the proposition that men and women "think differently", sex representation affects sociological legitimacy because sex …

Race, Sex And Genes At Work: Uncovering The Lessons Of Norman-Bloodsaw, Elizabeth Pendo

Articles

The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 20081 ("GINA") is the first federal, uniform protection against the use of genetic information in both the workplace and health insurance. Signed into law on May 21, 2008, GINA prohibits an employer or health insurer from acquiring or using an individual's genetic information, with some exceptions.

One of the goals of GINA is to eradicate actual, or perceived, discrimination based on genetic information in the workplace and in health insurance. Although the threat of genetic discrimination is often discussed in universal terms - as something that could happen to any of us -the use …

Pregnant Man?: A Conversation, Darren Rosenblum, Noa Ben-Asher, Mary Anne Case, Elizabeth Emens, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol, Vivian M. Gutierrez, Lisa C. Ikemoto, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Jacob Willig-Onwuachi, Kimberly Mutcherson, Peter Siegelman, Beth Jones

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

I'm a law professor who works on gender, sexuality, and culture in the international and comparative context. That's my head working. In "real" life, my partner, Howard, and I have been engaged in having a baby together for several years, a project that came to fruition with the birth of our daughter Melina. Of course, such a project evokes intensely complex feelings and thoughts. Beyond a simple transposition of the personal onto the political, I feel so fortunate to have engaged in myriad conversations with a variety of friends and colleagues who think much more carefully about the family …

Rethinking International Women's Human Rights Through Eve Sedgwick, Darren Rosenblum

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Thanks to Janet Halley and Jeannie Suk for organizing this amazing workshop. Since the death of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, I have wanted to honor her memory, and this panel is the perfect venue. Sedgwick's foundational understandings of sexuality, gender, and identity set the stage for much of my work and that of those I admire.

My own work looks at how the state regulates gender in the "public" sphere. I attempt to challenge the tensions and intersections among international and comparative notions of equality and identity. Group identity constructions vary across cultural lines and conflict with liberal notions of …

Using Law And Education To Make Human Rights Real In Women’S Real Lives, Nancy Chi Cantalupo

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Three courses involving gender, human rights and global laws that the author teaches to two different groups (women’s/gender studies and international affairs undergraduates; and law students) demonstrate methods of making international human rights law and principles real to women’s real lives, as both an educational and activist project. By focusing on the linkages between “thinking globally” and “acting locally” in the area of gender and human rights, these courses suggest some ways of to educate and encourage students to actualize human rights laws and principles in their own communities and lives. The topics, methods and materials used in these courses …

A Woman’S Worth, Kimberly D. Krawiec

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines three traditionally “taboo trades”: (1) the sale of sex, (2) compensated egg donation, and (3) commercial surrogacy. The Article purposely invokes examples in which the compensated provision of goods or services (primarily or exclusively by women) is legal, but in which commodification is only partially achieved or is constrained in some way. I argue that incomplete commodification disadvantages female providers in these instances, by constraining their agency, earning power, or status. Moreover, anticommodification and coercion rhetoric is sometimes invoked in these settings by interest groups who, at best, have little interest in female empowerment and, at worst, …

Enhancing The Effectiveness Of Mediation In Korean-American Family Disputes: Cultural Sensitivity Training For Mediators And Co-Mediation Teams, Giyang An

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

This Note focuses primarily on first generation KoreanAmerican women who remain loyal to community values that follow traditional Korean norms, especially when it comes to gender and family roles. To demonstrate the effects of these social values, this Note will analyze conflicts stemming from the various roles and identities (e.g., as a wife or mother) of Korean-American women. In addition, this Note will discuss the different ways Koreans and Americans view the legal systems in their respective countries, and how Koreans generally have a more favorable view of mediation than the confrontational model of litigation. This Note will focus on …

Making Up Is Hard To Do: Race/Gender/Sexual Orientation In The Law School Classroom, Adrienne D. Davis, Robert S. Chang

Scholarship@WashULaw

This exchange of letters picks up where Professors Adrienne Davis and Robert Chang left off in an earlier exchange that examined who speaks, who is allowed to speak, and what is remembered. Here, Professors Davis and Chang explore the dynamics of race, gender, and sexual orientation in the law school classroom. They compare the experiences of African American women and Asian American men in trying to perform as law professors, considering how makeup and other gender tools simultaneously assist and hinder such performances. Their exchange examines the possibility of bias that complicates the use of student evaluations in assessing teaching …

Shift Happens: The U.S. Supreme Court's Shifting Antidiscrimination Rhetoric, Theresa M. Beiner

Law Faculty Scholarship

The United States Supreme Court’s discourse on discrimination affects how fundamental civil rights - such as the right to be free from gender and race discrimination - are adjudicated and conceptualized in this country. Shortly after Congress passed Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Court established precedent that assumed discrimination, absent some other compelling explanation for employer conduct. While the Court was more reluctant to presume such discrimination by governmental actors, it was deferent to Congress’s ability to set standards that would presume discrimination. Over time, however, that presumption and the Court’s deference to Congress has …

Feminism As Liberalism: A Tribute To The Work Of Martha Nussbaum Symposium: Honoring The Contributions Of Professor Martha Nussbaum To The Scholarship And Practice Of Gender And Sexuality Law: Feminism And Liberalism, Tracy E. Higgins

Faculty Scholarship

In this essay, I revisit and expand an argument I have made with respect to the limited usefulness of liberalism in defining an agenda for guaranteeing women's rights and improving women's conditions. After laying out this case, I discuss Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach to fundamental rights and human development and acknowledge that her approach addresses to a significant degree many of the objections I and other feminist scholars have raised. I then turn to fieldwork that I have done in South Africa on the issue of custom and women's choices with regard to marriage and divorce. Applying Professor Nussbaum's capabilities …

Forced Marriage And The Exoticization Of Gendered Harms In United States Asylum Law, Jenni Millbank, Catherine Dauvergne

All Faculty Publications

While claims of forced marriage or pressure to marry represent only a tiny portion of refugee claims overall, they provide an illuminating sliver reflecting the major recurring themes in gender and sexuality claims from recent decades. Refusal to marry is a flashpoint for expressing non-conformity with expected gender roles for heterosexual women, lesbians and gay men. This paper presents results from our study of 168 refugee decisions from Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States where part of the claim for refugee protection concerned actual or threatened forced marriage. In the present discussion, we highlight our findings from …

Inter-American System, Claudia Martin

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.