Law, Gender, and Injustice


Book Description

The legal status of women has changed more rapidly in the last 20 years than in the previous 200, Hoff argues, but these changes have become less important over time. The American power structure has relinquished rights to women and minorities only after these rights have been diminished by a white-male-dominated legal system. She calls for a reinterpretation of legal texts to create a feminist jurisprudence. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




Gender Justice and Legal Pluralities


Book Description

Gender Justice and Legal Pluralities: Latin American and African Perspectives examines the relationship between legal pluralities and the prospects for greater gender justice in developing countries. Rather than asking whether legal pluralities are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for women, the starting point of this volume is that legal pluralities are a social fact. Adopting a more anthropological approach to the issues of gender justice and women’s rights, it analyzes how gendered rights claims are made and responded to within a range of different cultural, social, economic and political contexts. By examining the different ways in which legal norms, instruments and discourses are being used to challenge or reinforce gendered forms of exclusion, contributing authors generate new knowledge about the dynamics at play between the contemporary contexts of legal pluralities and the struggles for gender justice. Any consideration of this relationship must, it is concluded, be located within a broader, historically informed analysis of regimes of governance.




Gender and the Law


Book Description

Gender and the Law provides an ideal introduction to gender and feminist theory for students. Beginning with an overview of traditional notions of gender, the book establishes the key feminist and queer legal theories. It provides a basic structure and overview upon which students can build their understanding of some of the complex and controversial topics and debates around gender. Structured thematically, the book explores many fascinating and controversial legal issues, including issues of transgender rights; equal pay and equality in the workplace; societal changes and challenges within the regulation of personal relationships; the law surrounding consent and sexual offences; the role of gender norms in the criminal courts; legal regulation of prostitution and pornography; and the ways in which the law has responded to societal changes surrounding reproduction. With ‘thinking points’ and ‘further reading’ suggestions within each chapter, the authors encourage an engagement with critique and theory in order to understand this dynamic and challenging field.




Gender Nonconformity and the Law


Book Description

Cover -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- ONE. The Case Law: Expanding Protection -- TWO. Neutrality -- THREE. Antisubordination -- FOUR. Status -- FIVE. Perfectionism -- SIX. Expressive Freedom: A Short Discussion of a Value That Is Not There -- SEVEN. The Race Paradox -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W




Gender, Sexuality, and the Law


Book Description

This volume examines the role of law as a tool for advancing women’s rights and gender equity in local, national, and global contexts. Many feminist scholars note a marked failure of law to achieve goals connected to women’s rights and gender equality. Despite its limitations, law provides aspirational norms that can be mobilized to hold institutions accountable and to provide material benefit to those excluded from systems of power. In conversation with each other, the chapters in this volume help to advance understanding of both the limitations and the potential of law as a tool for advancing democratic participation, rights, and justice around issues related to gender and sexuality. Contributors acknowledge, to varying degrees, that law has important symbolism and may be used as a lever to mobilize change. At the same time, some offer cautionary notes about the potential downside risks and unintended consequences of relying upon law in pursuit of women’s rights and gender equity. Collectively, the chapters in this volume explore the disjuncture between the promise and expectation of legal reform and the lived experience of those laws by people intended as the beneficiaries of legal change. This book was originally published as a special issue of Global Discourse.




Women Before the Court


Book Description

This book offers an innovative, comparative approach to the study of women's legal rights during a formative period of Anglo-American history. It traces how colonists transplanted English legal institutions to America, examines the remarkable depth of women's legal knowledge and shows how the law increasingly undermined patriarchal relationships between parents and children, masters and servants, husbands and wives. The book will be of interest to scholars of Britain and colonial America, and to laypeople interested in how women in the past navigated and negotiated the structures of authority that governed them. It is packed with fascinating stories that women related to the courts in cases ranging from murder and abuse to debt and estate litigation. Ultimately, it makes a remarkable contribution to our understandings of law, power and gender in the early modern world.




Women Before the Bar


Book Description

Women before the Bar is the first study to investigate changing patterns of women's participation in early American courts across a broad range of legal actions--including proceedings related to debt, divorce, illicit sex, rape, and slander. Weaving the stories of individual women together with systematic analysis of gendered litigation patterns, Cornelia Dayton argues that women's relation to the courtroom scene in early New England shifted from one of integration in the mid-seventeenth century to one of marginality by the eve of the Revolution. Using the court records of New Haven, which originally had the most Puritan-dominated legal regime of all the colonies, Dayton argues that Puritanism's insistence on godly behavior and communal modes of disputing initially created unusual opportunities for women's voices to be heard within the legal system. But women's presence in the courts declined significantly over time as Puritan beliefs lost their status as the organizing principles of society, as legal practice began to adhere more closely to English patriarchal models, as the economy became commercialized, and as middle-class families developed an ethic of privacy. By demonstrating that the early eighteenth century was a crucial locus of change in law, economy, and gender ideology, Dayton's findings argue for a reconceptualization of women's status in colonial New England and for a new periodization of women's history.




The Gender Line


Book Description

With its focus particularly on men, The Gender Line offers an insightful overview of the construction of gender and the damaging effects of its stereotypes. Levit analyzes the ways in which law legitimizes the social segregation of the sexes through legal decisions regarding custody, employment, education, sexual harassment, and criminal law. In so doing, she illustrates the ways in which men's and women's oppressions are intertwined and how law molds the very definition of masculinity.




Gender and Law


Book Description

Instructors choose Gender and the Law: Theory, Doctrine, Commentary for: - a thorough analysis of gender and law through several distinct perspectives, which include formal equality, substantive equality, nonsubordination theory, difference theory, autonomy, and non-essentialism - going far beyond traditional gender issues to draw cases, theory, and commentary from many different areas of the law, such as employment law, criminal law, constitutional law, family law, civil procedure, legal ethics, property law, and contracts - explaining to students the complex ways in which laws are said to be gendered - unique Putting Theory into Practice problems at the end of each section, which allow students to apply the legal and theoretical tools to cutting-edge issues The Fourth Edition keeps pace with important developments: - updated material on women in the legal profession and legal education - the text contains updates of most important new cases and theoretical insights relating to employment law, Title IX, criminal sentencing, welfare and Social Security reform, affirmative action, teenage pregnancy, gay and lesbian rights - cases, statistics, commentary, and empirical studies of the law in action appear in the materials on sexual harassment, domestic violence, and rape - important cases include Goodridge v. Mass., Nevada v. Hibbs, Lawrence v. Texas, and Jespersen v. Harrah's - more material on international law in the area of rape and global trafficking




Cases and Materials on Sexual Orientation and the Law


Book Description

This casebook on the law of sexual orientation and gender identity weaves historical, sociological, and literary perspectives into the legal material. It provides comprehensive coverage of many significant recent developments, including the Supreme Court's 2013 same-sex marriage cases and the regulatory aftermath of the striking down of the Defense of Marriage Act. This edition also adds new material on the interstate recognition of same-sex couples' marriages, First Amendment claims raised by LGBT rights opponents, and family law disputes between LGBT parents. In addition, it significantly expands its coverage of gender identity issues.