Corbin on Hosanna-Tabor, Updated

Posted on August 3, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

Caroline Mala Corbin (Miami) has posted to SSRN an updated version of her article on the Hosanna-Tabor case.  This version addresses the Supreme Court decision in the case. Here is the abstract:

In Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC, a schoolteacher sued her employer for retaliating against her in violation of the American with Disabilities Act (ADA). The success of her ADA claim turned on whether the Supreme Court thought that she was a minister. If she was not a minister, she would have probably won. After all, the school stated in writing that a main reason for her termination was her threatened lawsuit. But because the Supreme Court decided that she was a minister, and that ministers may not sue their religious employers for discrimination under the ministerial exception, she lost. In fact, neither the Free Exercise Clause nor the Establishment Clause necessitated the ministerial exception. Under Employment Division v. Smith, neutral laws of general applicability do not violate the Free Exercise Clause, and no one disputes that the ADA is a neutral law of general applicability. In attempting to distinguish Smith, the Supreme Court not only created an incoherent free exercise jurisprudence but also ignored Jones v. Wolf, which explicitly rejected blanket deference to religious institutions in matters of internal governance. Jones further recognized that a deference approach may cause more establishment problems than a neutral principles of law approach. Indeed, the irony of the Hosanna-Tabor case is that trying to discern whether the schoolteacher was a minister entangled the Court in religious doctrine more than simply adjudicating her retaliation claim would have.

The full article is available here.

-Bridget Crawford

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Manian on South Dakota’s “Informed Consent” Laws and Thwarting Access to Legal Abortions

Posted on August 3, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

Over at RH Reality Check (here), Maya Manian (University of San Francisco School of Law) writes about the Eighth Circuit’s decision upholding South Dakota’s law mandating mis-information to women seeking abortion care.  Professor Manian emphasizes how South Dakota’s law and others like it pervert the principles of informed consent that they claim to promote.  Here is an excerpt:

In an en banc opinion, the Eighth Circuit recently upheld South Dakota’s mandate that physicians inform women seeking abortion care that “an increased risk of suicide ideation and suicide” is a known risk of the abortion procedure. Responding to the Eighth Circuit’s holding, South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley declared, “Today’s decision supports the Legislature’s goal of encouraging women seeking an abortion to make informed and voluntary decisions.” Although this statement invokes notions of patient autonomy, South Dakota’s abortion law actually turns on its head informed consent law’s respect for patient self-determination through the provision of accurate, relevant information. * * *

South Dakota is not alone in its misuse of traditional medical principles in regulating abortion care. * * * These abortion regulations belie a deep suspicion of women as medical (and moral) decision-makers. Their proponents claim to follow the general principle of protecting patients’ interests in informed decision-making, but they seek to apply that principle differently to women seeking abortion care. South Dakota’s legislation and other similar anti-choice “informed consent” laws aim not at preserving women’s autonomy, but at imposing the government’s normative views about what decisions women should make.  

Numerous anti-choice laws—like South Dakota’s—exploit informed consent doctrine to further goals antithetical to the notion of autonomy that these laws pretend to promote.  South Dakota’s disingenuous assertions about protecting women’s well-being by mandating mis-information mask its true purpose—to thwart access to abortion and discourage women from seeking abortion care.

Read the full post here.

-Bridget Crawford

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Hiring Announcement: Temple Law School

Posted on August 3, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

From the FLP mailbox:

Temple University James E. Beasley School of Law invites applications from both entry-level and lateral candidates for full-time, tenure-track faculty positions to commence in the Fall Semester 2013.  We welcome applications from candidates with a wide variety of interests.  Although areas of need are subject to change, priority areas are likely to include securities law, family law, health law, business and commercial law, civil procedure and complex litigation, law and technology, employment law, and torts. We are also seeking to fill a clinical position.

Lateral candidates should contact Professor David Hoffman, Lateral Faculty Appointments Committee (david.hoffman@temple.edu) .  Entry level candidates should contact Professor Alice Abreu, Entry Level Faculty Appointments Committee (alice.abreu@temple.edu).  Temple University is committed to a policy of equal opportunity for all in every aspect of its operations.  The University has pledged not to discriminate on the basis of an individual’s age, color, disability, marital status, national or ethnic origin, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information or veteran status.

-Bridget Crawford

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Requiring Doctors to Lie to Women is Constitutional

Posted on July 26, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

Over at the Constitutional Law Prof blog, Ruthann Robson (CUNY) breaks down the 8th Circuit decision in Planned Parenthood v. Rounds, upholding the constitutionality of a South Dakota statutory provision requiring the disclosure to patients seeking abortions of an “[i]ncreased risk of suicide ideation and suicide,” S.D.C.L. § 34-23A- 10.1(1)(e)(ii).  Here is an excerpt from her post:

Judge Gruender’s opinion for the majority seemingly acknowledged that there was no evidence that abortion caused suicidal ideation.  Instead, the issue was the “accepted usage of the term ‘increased risk’ in the relevant medical field.”  The opinion found that based on the medical usage, the statutory requirement “does not imply a disclosure of a causal relationship,” instead it is merely a disclosure that “the risk of suicide and suicide ideation is higher among women who abort compared to women in other relevant groups, such as women who give birth or do not become pregnant.”

The majority rejected the relevancy of  Planned Parenthood’s argument that certain underlying factors, such as pre-existing mental health problems, predispose some women both to have unwanted pregnancies and to have suicidal tendencies, resulting in a misleading correlation between abortion and suicide that has no direct causal component.

Read the rest of Professor Robson’s post here.

The court completely flubbed this one, in my opinion.

-Bridget Crawford

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CFP: “Institutional Responsibility for Sex and Gender Exploitation”

Posted on July 25, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

From the FLP mailbox:

Call for Papers Announcement

AALS Section on Women in Legal Education

“Institutional Responsibility for Sex and Gender Exploitation”

2013 AALS Annual Meeting

January 4-7, 2013

New Orleans, Louisiana                             

The AALS Section on Women in Legal Education will hold a program during the AALS 2013 Annual Meeting in New Orleans, with paper presentations on the topic of Institutional Responsibility for Sex and Gender Exploitation.  We have the below committed moderator and speakers, and are seeking paper submissions to fill the fifth speaker slot.  The papers will be published as a Symposium in the Iowa Journal of Gender, Race & Justice.

 Moderator: Professor Cheryl Wade

 Protection for Children in Club Sports (Professor Ellen Bublick)

Theories to Holding Insurance Companies Liable for Third Party Exploitation (Dean Jay Mootz)

Employer Liability for Family Responsibilities Discrimination    (Professor Joan Williams)

Finding Institutional Tort Responsibility for Sex and Gender Exploitation        (Professor Deleso A. Alford)

Submissions should be of scholarship relating to the topic of Institutional Responsibility for Sex and Gender Exploitation, but they can be on any dimension or strand of the general topic.  There is a maximum 25,000 word limit (inclusive of footnotes) for the submission. People submitting papers for consideration must be willing to have the paper published as part of the symposium, if the author is selected as the fifth speaker for the panel. Each professor may submit only one paper for consideration.

Papers will be reviewed anonymously. The manuscript should be accompanied by a cover letter with the author’s name and contact information. The manuscript itself, including title page and footnotes, must not contain any references that identify the author or the author’s school. The submitting author is responsible for taking any steps necessary to redact self-identifying text or footnotes.

To be considered, papers must be submitted electronically to Professor Kirsten Davis, Stetson University College  of Law, kkdavis@law.stetson.edu.  The deadline for submission is Wednesday, August 1, 2012. The author of the selected paper will be notified by October 1, 2012.  The Call for Paper participant will be responsible for paying his or her own annual meeting registration fee and travel expenses.

Full-time faculty members of AALS member law schools are eligible to submit papers. Foreign, visiting (and not full-time on a different faculty), and adjunct faculty members, graduate students, and fellows are not eligible to submit.

Papers will be selected after review by an ad hoc committee composed of Section Executive Committee members.

Any inquiries about the Call for Papers should be submitted to:  Professor Kirsten Davis, Stetson University College of Law, kkdavis@law.stetson.edu , or 727-562-7877.

-Bridget Crawford

 

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Hiring Announcement: Nebraska Seeks Telecomm and Cyber Law Prof

Posted on July 24, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

From the FLP mailbox:

The University of Nebraska College of Law invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position with a focus on teaching telecommunications and cyber law. Courses in telecommunications and cyber law are offered to J.D. students as well as LL.M. students in the College of Law’s Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law program. Review of applications will begin on August 10, 2012, and continue until the position is filled. General information about the Law College is available here . Information on the Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law program can be found here. The University of Nebraska has an active National Science Foundation ADVANCE gender equity program, and is committed to a pluralistic campus community through affirmative action, equal opportunity, work-life balance, and dual careers. To apply, fill out the University application, which can be found at here. If you have questions, please contact Professor Richard Moberly, Chair, Faculty Appointments Committee, University of Nebraska College of Law, Lincoln, NE 68583-0902, or send an email to lawappointments@unl.edu.

The other members of the Appointments Committee are Dean Susan Poser and Professors Eric Berger, Bill Lyons, Matt Schaefer, Chrystal Sheppard, and Catherine Wilson.

-Bridget Crawford

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Under the Shield: Should the Rape Shield Rule Apply at Sentencing Hearings?

Posted on July 23, 2012 by Colin Miller

Federal Rule of Evidence 412(a), the Rape Shield Rule, provides that

The following evidence is not admissible in a civil or criminal proceeding involving alleged sexual misconduct:

(1) evidence offered to prove that a victim engaged in other sexual behavior; or

(2) evidence offered to prove a victim’s sexual predisposition.

At the same time, it is well established that the Federal Rules of Evidence do not apply at a sentencing hearing. See Federal Rule of Evidence 1101(d). So, let’s say that a defendant is convicted of (1) persuading a minor to engage in sexually explicit activity for the purpose of producing a visual depiction, (2) use of a means of interstate commerce to persuade a minor to perform sexual acts, (3) receipt of child pornography, and (4) possession of child pornography. And, let’s say that the defendant thereafter seeks to present evidence of the victim’s other sexual behavior or predisposition at his sentencing hearing. Because the Federal Rules of Evidence do not apply at a sentencing hearing, does that mean that the Rape Shield Rule does not apply? Let’s take a look at the recent opinion of the Sixth Circuit in United States v. Ogden, 2012 WL 2895261 (6th Cir. 2012).

Continue reading →

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Preliminary Conference Agenda: Social Justice Feminism 2012

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

Organizers of the Social Justice Feminism Conference 2012 have posted a Preliminary Agenda here.  The event takes place October 25-27, 2012 at the University of Cincinnati College of Law.  Here’s the line-up for the first day:

8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m., Registration, UC College of Law

9: 00 a.m.  – 10:30 a.m., Opening Plenary

  • Linda Burnham, National Domestic Workers Alliance
  • Priscilla Ocen, Loyola Law School – Los Angeles
  • Kristin Kalsem, University of Cincinnati College of Law

10:45 a.m. – 12:00 p.m., Paper Session #1

Panel:  Feminist History Revisited             

Social Justice Feminism and Its Initial Stages, John McGuire, State University of New York

Misappropriating Women’s History in the Law and Politics of Abortion, Tracy A. Thomas, University of Akron School of Law

Perfecting Our Union: Social Justice Feminism and Americanism, Dorothy Q. Thomas, University of London Centre for the Study of Human Rights

Panel:  Social Justice Feminism Responds to Coerced and Commoditized Sex

  • Tamar Birckhead, University of North Carolina School of Law
  • Samantha Berg, Genderberg
  • Ann Bartow, Pace Law School

Panel: (Re)Visioning Citizenship: Resisting Legal and Social Regulatory Boundaries for Minority Groups in North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia

  • Criminalizing Manual Mexican Labor in the Age of Border Securitization: Impacts on Families and on their Social Reproduction Processes, Olga Sanmiguel-Valderrama, Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University of Cincinnati
  • Enclosing the Roma: Methods of Marginalization of the Roma in France, Lucy Breidenthal, MA Student, Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University of Cincinnati
  • (D-)evolving Depictions: German Filmic Portrayals of the Turkish Muslim Female Subject and Places of Resistance, Emily Rath, MA Student, Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies,  University of Cincinnati
  • Human Trafficking in Cambodia: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Dark Side of Raids,  Anna Laymon, MA Student, University of Cincinnati Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Panel: Class, Race, and Reproductive Freedom

  • Applying Social Justice Feminism to an Evaluation of the Experiences of Women Seeking State-Subsidized Insurance for Abortion Care in Massachusetts, Danielle Bessett, Department of Sociology, University of Cincinnati
  • Social Justice Feminism and the Public Discourse on Women’s Bodies: A Methodological Model for an Activist-Based Feminist Theology, Melissa Browning, Loyola University Chicago’s Institute of Pastoral Studies
  • Marginalization and Reproductive Justice, Leigh Tami Goedicke, JD Student, University of Cincinnati College of Law

12:15 p.m. – 2:15 p.m., Lunch

Keynote Address: Anika Rahman, President and CEO, Ms. Foundation

Discussant: Verna L. Williams, University of Cincinnati College of Law

2:30 p.m. – 3:45 p.m., Paper Session #2

Panel: Feminist Approaches to Criminal Justice Reform

  • Towards Restorative Justice: Girls of Color and Alternatives to Incarceration, Shauntrice L. Martin, MA Student, International Institute of Restorative Practices
  • Deadbeat Dads and Other Metaphors: Deconstructing the Gendered Implications of Child Support Enforement, Ann Cammett, William S. Boyd School of Law UNLV
  • Returning Citizens: An Exploration of Identity, Gender, and Criminality, Lee Serbin, MA/JD Student, Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and College of Law, University of Cincinnati

Panel: New Responses to Gender Violence

  • “She Was the Myth Slipped Down Through Dreamtime”: Indigenous Women Writers’ Responses to Sexual Violence, Jessica Weatherford, PhD Candidate, University of Kansas
  • Rethinking Civil Rights and Gender Violence, Julie Goldscheid, CUNY Law School
  • The International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA): A Way Forward?, Mary Pat Treuthart, Gonzaga University School of Law

Panel: “The Dinner Table of Power”: Food Security and Social Justice Feminism

  • Infiltrating the New Genetic: The Emergence of Corporate Reproductive Labor and its Rights Regime, Un Kyong Ho, MA/JD Graduate, Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and College of Law, University of Cincinnati
  • Approaching “the Dinner Table of Power”: Social Justice Feminism and the Poetics of Food, Rhonda Pettit, University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College
  • The Right to Food: a Global Agenda for the Women’s Movement, Peggy Rivage-Seul, Berea College

Panel: Single-Sex Education and Social Justice Feminism

  • Intersectionality and the Pay-For-Play Debate in College Athletics, Erin Buzuvis, Western New England University School of Law
  • The Possibilities and Perils of Social Justice Feminism: What We Can Learn from the Single-Sex Public Education Debates, Juliet Williams, Department of Women’s Studies, University of California – Los Angeles
  • The Need for Intersectional Considerations in Education Law and Policy: How Single-Sex Educational Programs Reproduce Gendered Outcomes, Caroline Hyatt, MA/JD Student, Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and College of Law, University of Cincinnati

The conference’s second day looks just as interesting as the first.  Check out the second day’s line-up here.

-Bridget Crawford

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What’s Left of Class Actions for Gender Discrimination after Dukes v. Walmart

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

In the pages of Brooklyn-based n+1 magazine of culture, politics and literature, writer Dayna Tortorici gives her take on the future of class action claims of gender discrimination after the infamous Dukes v. Walmart case:

What the women in Dukes sought to put on trial was an entire culture of sexism: an unspoken, or at least unofficial ethos that influenced millions of decisions by independent actors across the company. What was interesting about their evidence was that it showed how despite the absence of a central policy of discrimination, sexist practices were operative everywhere at Wal-Mart, from Anchorage to Orlando. Too widespread to be dismissed as the errors of a few “bad apples” in a few “problem regions,” the behavior Dukes reported was the product of something much more expansive and amorphous — something that ultimately painted a picture of sex discrimination as it actually exists today. There are no central policies, no pronouncements in company literature that say, “No Women May Advance, nor Receive Equal Pay for Equal Work.” But that does not mean sexism does not exist, nor that women are given due compensation for their labor.

As it was, men at Wal-Mart didn’t need to conspire to keep women down; they did it perfectly well as individuals. Until Wal-Mart computerized its job application process in the mid-2000s, an employee who wanted a promotion first had to ask her manager how to go about getting one. If for whatever reason he (and usually he was a he) didn’t think she (and usually she was a she) deserved it, he would either avoid her, flat out deny her information about required training programs, or tell her some other step was required first — like relocating, holding her present job for at least a year, or being able to demonstrate some arbitrary “necessary” skill, like lifting fifty pounds of dog food. If a new position opened up and a store manager never posted a flyer advertising the job, a woman seeking a promotion might find that a male coworker — or an out-of-towner chummy with a guy higher up — had taken the job before she even knew it existed. If she did manage to land a higher-level job, she could expect to make anywhere from $2,400 to $139,000 less than her male counterparts per year. After a while, even Wal-Mart’s most faithful female employees — those who had hung around for more than a decade, thought unions were “not for this company,” and truly believed in Wal-Mart’s emphasis on being “a family” — would get wise.

Read the very smart full post here.

-Bridget Crawford

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What Happens When Members of Historically Disadvantaged Groups Talk About Equality

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

Derailment Bingo is the the creative brainchild of piranha @ Dreamwidth, here.

-Bridget Crawford

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Cahn & Carbone on What Happens When You Can’t Afford Your Children?

Posted on July 15, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

Over at AlterNet.org, Naomi Cahn and June Carbone ask, “What Happens When You Can’t Afford Your Children?”

Helping highly educated women have it all is a hot topic, from Anne-Marie Slaughter’s Atlantic article, to Amy Chua’s book about Chinese child-rearing Tiger Mothers to Pamela Druckerman’s ode to French parents. The blogosphere is on fire.

Missing from this discussion is the plight of working-class women to have it at all.  Since the Great Recession, a larger portion of adults worry that they cannot afford children. Doing so often requires a stark choice between jobs essential to the family’s solvency or adequate supervision of the young. The class contrasts are wide and growing starker.

Read the rest of the post here.

-Bridget Crawford

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Daniel Tosh and Rape Jokes

Posted on July 15, 2012 by Christine Corcos

Daniel Tosh’s assertion during a recent appearance at the Laugh Factory that rape jokes are “always funny” has caused a certain amount of comment and controversy, particularly since a woman in the audience challenged him on his opinion. She responded that they are never funny. According to her, he responded that it would be funny if she were raped right then.  According to the club owner, the audience member’s account is inaccurate.

The situation started when Mr. Tosh began his set by asking the audience what they wanted to talk about. Someone apparently said “rape,” and he accepted the suggestion; he says it was to demonstrate that “anything” can be funny. In the hands of an accomplished and sensitive artist, that’s true. Both George Carlin and Wanda Sykes have demonstrated that one can take some of the horror out of rape long enough to examine it, as Melissa Harris-Perry and her guests show on her July 15 MSNBC show. But Elissa Bassist suggests that Mr. Tosh wasn’t that skilled, and that’s a lot of the problem.

Slate’s Jeremy Stahl  also analyzes the incident, comparing what happened to the Michael Richards debacle (also at the Laugh Factory) here.

Mr. Tosh has since apologized.

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Journal of Feminist Scholarship: New Issue and CFP

Posted on July 13, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

The second issue of the interdisciplinary Journal of Feminist Scholarship is available here.  The editors’ note provides a preview:

The articles we have chosen for the main section of our second issue build upon the breadth of contemporary feminist inquiry demonstrated by the first issue of JFS . The second issue has at its core three insightful and in-depth analyses ranging from an examination of the 1972 feminist text Novas Cartas Portuguesas and its intersections with French and Anglo-American theorizing to a challenge to US Women’s Studies curricular models for study abroad and global perspectives on women and gender to an article that asks readers to not only better understand intersexed identities but also reconceptualize how we approach difference. Each article is firmly grounded in feminist theory and invites readers to rethink ongoing issues in our culture.

Also, the journal is seeking contributions for the next issue:

At this time, we are actively accepting submissions for issue three, which is due out in November 2012. The Journal of Feminist Scholarship is committed to encouraging a discussion of feminist thought and feminist scholarship for the twenty-first century, their directions today and their relationship to the foundations laid down by twentieth-century feminist inquiry and action. We aim to publish work that explores the multiple theoretical paradigms and political agendas of contemporary feminism and the potential intersections and tensions between these paradigms and agendas. We are especially interested in examining productive controversies and divergences between local and global contexts of feminism. We also welcome submissions that focus on feminist pedagogies and activism.

For more information, see here.

-Bridget Crawford

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SDNY Declares DOMA Unconstitutional in Estate Tax Case

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

Last month the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York  ruled in Windsor v. United States that DOMA is unconstitutional as applied. Read the full decision here.

Edie Windsor and Thea Spyer were married in Canada in 2007.  Ms. Spyer died in 2009, prior to the enactment of New York State law permitting same-sex marriage.  Ms. Spyer left her  entire estate to Ms. Windsor.  The IRS denied Ms. Speyer’s estate the marital deduction under IRC Section 2056.  The estate paid over $360,000 in estate tax. Ms. Windsor sued for a refund on the grounds that DOMA violates the Equal Protection Clause.

There were two issues in the case: a procedural standing issue, and the substantive issue of Equal Protection. Judge Barbara Jones ruled in the plaintiff’s favor on both.

The standing issue was somewhat complex.  Ms. Windsor individually — not Ms. Windsor as executor of Ms. Spyer’s estate —  sued for a refund.  The Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group of the U.S. House of Representatives (“BLAG”) defended the action, because the Attorney General has announced that it will not defend DOMA’s constitutionality.  BLAG argued that Ms. Windsor had no standing to challenge the law, because she could not prove a “causal connection” between the alleged injury and the government’s action.  In other words, BLAG argued that Ms. Windsor and the decedent were not married for state law purposes.  Judge Jones rejected that argument, pointing out that at the time of the decedent’s death New York State executive agencies and appellate courts all recognized the legal validity of a same-sex Canadian marriage.

On the constitutionality of DOMA, the plaintiff argued for the application of strict scrutiny.  Judge Jones declined to take up that question, ruling instead that DOMA did not pass rational basis scrutiny.  In dicta, Judge Jones remarked on a distinction in the standards of rational basis scrutiny applied by the United States Supreme Court depending on whether the law was economic or tax-related on the one hand, or exhibiting a “desire to harm a politically unpopular group,” on the other hand.  Judge Jones then noted that regardless of which variant on rational basis was employed, the government had no legitimate asserted interest in DOMA.

The judge rejected the BLAG’s assertion that DOMA advanced a governmental interest in maintaining a traditional definition of marriage, promoting child-rearing or conserving federal resources.  The opinion did acknowledge some link between DOMA and the consistent distribution of federal benefits, but that DOMA “intrude[s] upon the states’ business of regulating domestic relations.”

The decision will no doubt be appealed.  There are at least 5 other federal tax cases challenging DOMA.  We can expect action in both the Second Circuit (this case) and the First Circuit (in Gill v. Office of Personnel Management).

For prior coverage of the Windsor case, read Pat Cain’s posts here and here.

-Bridget Crawford

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CFP: Diversity and the Law Within the Military

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

-Bridget Crawford

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CFP: Lavender Law 2012

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

From the FLP mailbox, this CFP:

Lavender Law 2012, Washington, D.C., August 23-25

Invitation and Call for Papers

Junior Scholars Forum

This year the Lavender Law® Conference & Career Fair (Lavender Law®) will be held August 23-25, 2012 at the Washington Hilton in Washington, D.C. Lavender Law brings together the best and brightest legal minds in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community.

To celebrate the community of scholars, Lavender Law® is hosting a Junior Scholar’s Forum again this year. If you are a junior law professor, or a recent law school graduate or fellow who is writing scholarship focusing on the nexus between the law, gender, and sexuality, we encourage you to submit a proposal for consideration.

If your proposal is accepted, you will be invited to present your work at the 2012 Lavender Law conference.

To submit a proposal for consideration, please email your submission to: scholars@lgbtbar.org, and cc: Courtney Joslin (cgjoslin@ucdavis.edu).

The deadline for submissions is August 1, 2012.

-Bridget Crawford

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CFP: Law, Culture and Biopolitics

Posted on July 10, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

From the FLP mailbox, this CFP:

16th Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities
University of London, Birkbeck
March 22 and March 23, 2013

Sculpting the Human: Law, Culture and Biopolitics

In recent times, diverse thinkers and artists including Foucault, Derrida, Esposito, Malabou, Coetzee, Agamben, Latour, Kentridge, Nancy, Butler and Brown have raised, or attempted to re-articulate, the question of ‘the human.’ The ASLCH meeting at Birkbeck, London, invites you to (re-)consider transformations in contemporary legal arrangements in light of emerging theoretical, cultural, economic, aesthetic, philosophical, and socio-political understandings or interrogations of the ‘human’. Tapping diverse conceptualizations of the indeterminacy frequently associated with the human, conference participants are invited to engage contemporary analyses of humans, others and legal forms.

The question of the human is, in many ways, an age-old one.  In other ways, however, it is peculiarly ours as we face current debates on what it is to qualify as human, in-human or animal life. These might include, but need not be limited to, discussions on: changing political cultures of disqualified lives; re-negotiating the subjects of postcolonial governance; understanding new forms of life politics and the associated determinations of life sciences; literary and artistic chronicles of intersecting orders and disorders; science fiction’s utopian or dystopian futures; the use of warbot and drone technologies; geographies of beastly spaces; histories and ethnographies that highlight the ordering required to exact popular hierarchies; the reframed spirit of bodies; visions of who may be tortured, or locked away as inhuman; critical images of human and animal rights; deployed governmental homologies between beasts and sovereigns; biopolitical frames that prefigure subjects through statistics, demography, neuroscience but also via ‘immunization’, ‘plasticity’, and so on.

Law is a place where these orders, distinctions and divisions are frequently navigated, constituted, articulated, shared and enforced. The narratives, rights, justifications, punishments and neglect represented or contested through law intimate the legal codes by which humans and others are drawn into orders of the governed. Participants are encouraged to reflect on this broad, but not exclusive, conference theme.

Paper and panel proposals will be accepted until Oct 15.  For more information and registration instructions, see here.

For those interested in applying for the graduate student workshop or Austin Sarat graduate student presentation award, see here.

For those interested in applying for the Julien Mezey dissertation award, see here.

-Bridget Crawford

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Should NOW Retire?

Posted on July 7, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

Over at The Next Stage: Women and Retirement, Karen Bojar (Community College of Philadelphia, ret.) writes:

NOW is a national organization with a domestic agenda. When NOW was founded in 1966 there was no visible global feminist movement. Much has changed in 46 years, including the capacity to connect with feminist organizations around the globe. NOW’s programming at national conferences reflects this. Among the workshops were several which placed feminist issues in global context: “Sex Trafficking – A Growing Criminal Industry that Harms Women, Children”; “Women Workers of the World: Unite to Fight for Our Dignity and Our Rights!” and the plenary session with Eve Ensler, founder of V-Day, the global movement to end violence against women and girls.

However, NOW has no organizational connections with the global feminist movement. It’s not at all clear how such connections could be forged. It’s not like there is one over-arching global feminist organization with which NOW could affiliate. But if we were to figure out how to do this I think NOW would be a lot more attractive to a diverse group of women. Many recent immigrants—-from Africa and the Caribbean, Latin America and Asia—have a global perspective and a reconfigured NOW with an international dimension might be more attractive to such women. Also younger women whose education is increasingly international in orientation—-e.g., all those study abroad programs—-might be more receptive to a feminist organization directly involved in the global feminist movement. This is an issue the committee charged with recommendations to “modernize” NOW’s structure should seriously consider.

Read her full post here.

-Bridget Crawford

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Call for Nominees for AALS Section on Women in Legal Education Lifetime Achievement Award

Posted on July 6, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

This year the AALS Section on Women in Legal Education will award, for the first time, a Lifetime Achievement award. The purpose of the Lifetime Achievement Award is to honor an individual who has had a distinguished career of teaching, service, and scholarship for at least 20 years.  The recipient should be someone who has impacted women, the legal community, the academy, and the issues that affect women through mentoring, writing, speaking, activism, and by providing opportunities to others.

The Section is seeking nominations for this most prestigious award.  Please submit your nomination, with a short paragraph explanation of how the nominee fits the criteria, to Nancy Levit, Chair of the Section on Women in Legal Education, at levitn@umkc.edu by September 7, 2012.   According to Section bylaws, the Section Officers and Executive Committee will comprise the selection committee.

-Bridget Crawford

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Title IX, Single Episode Sexual Harassment and Telling Stories Out of School

Posted on July 5, 2012 by Lolita Buckner Inniss

This June marks the 40th anniversary of Title IX. Its principal provision reads as follows:

“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance”

Educational institutions from primary schools to universities who receive federal funding are subject to the law. Title IX is best known for having transformed the arena of women’s sports. Title IX, however, has a much broader reach: it applies in a number of other key areas, including sexual violence and sexual harassment, and gender-based harassment, which may include acts of verbal, nonverbal, or physical aggression, intimidation, or hostility based on sex or sex-stereotyping, even if those acts do not involve conduct of a sexual nature. One of the controversial aspects of Title IX jurisprudence is that sexual and gender-based harassment is not only defined by persistent behavior but may also be found in a single episode. This latter fact is the subject of numerous critiques. But what is sometimes missed in such criticism is the full nature of even a “single episode” of harassment, especially within educational institutions.

According to social theorist Anthony Giddens, all social life is episodic. By this Giddens refers to specific beginnings and endings, and to particular sequences within those beginnings and endings. Even seemingly small single episodes usually effect main institutions within a social totality. This is nowhere more true than in the case of sexual or gender-based harassment in educational settings. Social dominance and hierarchical organization are key features of many educational settings; the relationships between students, teachers, support staffers and administrators are characterized by power and authority, distinction and subordination. Combined with these are hierarchies that exist well beyond educational settings: stratifications of gender, race, class and sexual orientation are just a few. These conditions may easily give rise to episodes of sexual or gender-based harassment.

Despite the seriousness of such events, they are all too often deemed of little importance in educational settings. As one scholar notes, incidents of sexual harassment rarely receive “the same public exposure, legitimation or respect” as other sorts of problems in institutional settings. This may be especially true in the context of education. All too often such concerns are deemed plebeian, mean and inimical to the storied liberal values, high-minded erudition and studied self-reflexivity thought to prevail in many educational institutions. Hence, narratives of sexual or gender-based harassment may be “sequestered”—intentionally segregated from the mainstream and rarely considered an appropriate subject of publicly shared anecdotes. Because exposure of sexual or gender-based harassment may be harmful to dominant interests in such settings, such narratives are frequently re-framed by rhetorical devices that influence interpretation of the incident without being part of the content of the incident. In such re-framing, victims are often said to have harmed institutional interests, and/or to have misunderstood the harasser and/or to be “too sensitive” to the natural, harmless, and socially appropriate ebullience or humor of the harasser. Finally, re-framing may deny the occurrence of harassment altogether. In short, re-framing can and does make claims of sexual and gender-based harassment “go away.”

Given the climate of sequestered stories of sexual or gender-based harassment found in many educational settings, employing Title IX in such cases can be a challenge since liability is typically triggered only once an institution knows or reasonably should know of the claimed sexual or gender-based harassment. Victims must therefore be empowered to tell their stories, whether of persistent or single episode harassment–in school and out. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights April 2011 “Dear Colleague Letter” was a needed reminder of the responsibility that educational institutions bear in addressing claims of sexual harassment, gender-based harassment or sexual violence under Title IX. While not a solution to the these problems, when deployed Title IX can offer push-back to re-framing and allow victims yet another means of articulating the legal and ethical wrongness of such behavior.

-Lolita Buckner Inniss

cross-post from Ain’t I a Feminist Legal Scholar, Too?

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Law Prof Riff on Chescaleigh’s “No Homo” Substitutes

Posted on July 5, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

The very funny Franchesca Ramsey (nom de video blog= Chescaleigh) pokes fun at the phrase “no homo,” a verbal addendum following a compliment, designed to distance the speaker from any implication that the speaker is gay or lesbian.

You can view Chescaleigh’s channel here.

Any suggestions for a law prof version? Let’s start a list:

“I liked your article about originalism.  No Scali-0, ‘though.”

“Great ideas about free speech. No Waldron-o.”

Additions?

-Bridget Crawford

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Alimony Should Be Gender-Neutral

Posted on July 5, 2012 by admin

Marriage has been showing up in headlines across the country, from new stories trumpeting Obama’s statement of support for marriage equality to those debating the First Circuit’s judicial blow to DOMA. While shifts in access to legal marriage and the economic benefits that it brings are taking center stage, shifts in divorce law are quickly becoming a hot topic as well. Giving questions of divorce top billing – and, some might say, putting the cart before the horse – the highest state court in Maryland has granted same-sex couples divorce rights even though same-sex couples cannot marry in the state.

That changes to divorce come with changes to marriage should come as no surprise to anyone. Marriage and divorce are, after all, two sides of the same coin. But divorce law is going to have to move fast if it is going to keep up the pace with the changes that are transforming marriage.

A major topic in divorce law right now, and one that will continue to be highly relevant given a shaky economy and significant un- and underemployment, is alimony. Last year, when New York transitioned to no-fault divorce, the legislature adopted the use of formulas for temporary alimony, making New York on of the few states with such guidelines. Since then, other states — including Massachusetts and Florida— have been reforming their alimony laws by severely curtailing lifetime awards and capping payments.

While these reforms are important because they shake the dust from outdated alimony statutes, more is needed in terms alimony reform than the establishment of formulas or the termination of lifetime entitlements. What states need are truly gender neutral alimony awards, ones that push back against the historical gender bias inherent in alimony and bring alimony into the twenty-first century.

A first strike for alimony equality came in 1979 with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Orr v. Orr. In Orr, the Court held that Alabama statutes requiring men and not women to pay alimony violated the Equal Protection Clause. The Court stated Alabama’s alimony statutes reflected the “old notion” that “it is the man’s primary responsibility to provide a home and its essentials.” In the wake of Orr, alimony laws across the states changed to reflect gender-neutral values.

Changes in women’s labor force participation and the significant increase in women’s earning power have also hastened the modernization of alimony. A recent survey conducted by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers (AAML) confirmed that times have indeed changed. According to the survey, which looked at trends in the last three years, 56% of the nation’s top divorce attorneys report seeing an increase in the number of mothers paying child support and 47% also saw a rise in the number of women paying alimony.

Thirty years after Orr and in the face of sweeping social change, however, courts continue to make assumptions about the economic roles and capacities of both husbands and wives. One Connecticut lawyer has pointed to the problem, saying that while “Connecticut’s alimony laws are gender neutral as written, . . .  in practice, despite women’s tremendous advancements and considerable economic power, alimony decisions are often lopsided.” The judicial practice of alimony awarding does not always match either law on the books or the realities of modern household economics.

Moving forward, making alimony awarding gender neutral in both theory and practice will be a necessity. Courts can no longer operate on the assumption that alimony is only for wives. Alimony is for husbands too, just ask lawyers in Connecticut. Or consult the U.S. Census Bureau report documenting a rise from 2.4% to 3.6%  in the number of men receiving alimony. In addition, marriage equality may slowly but surely change the gender roles that have so long defined the dynamics of traditional marriage, bringing new challenges for courts looking to use gender as a proxy for entitlement. Thoroughly modern marriage — marriage free of traditional gender roles — calls for thoroughly modern divorce.

-Allison Tait

Allison Tait is a Gender Equity and Policy Postdoctoral Associate 2011-12, Yale Women Faculty Forum

 

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Cal State Fullerton Course on “Understanding and Addressing Bullying”

Posted on July 5, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

Karyl Ketchum (Women & Gender Studies, Cal State Fullerton) has created a You Tube Channel organized around the theme of “Bullying: Understanding its Underlying Dynamics.”  Here‘s the description:

The videos on this channel will change the way you understand bullying! Gender identity and presentation, along with sexual orientation and perceived sexual orientation, play a significant role in most cases of bullying. With the new safe schools laws that go into effect in California on July 1, 2012, understanding all forms of bullying is critical. California State University, Fullerton, University of Extended Education offers a course designed to give students, parents, administrators and educators the tools they need to understand these underlying dynamics of bullying and identify and address potential problems in schools. The videos on this Youtube channel are the introductory videos to the CSU Fullerton course’s five learning modules.

More info is here about the CSU Fullerton project and the school’s collaboration with the ACLU of Southern California, and the Orange County Equality Coalition’s Student Advocates Project.

The CSU Fullerton course on “Understanding and Addressing Bullying” is aimed at parents and educators.  Here are  five open-source videos in the series:

Module 1: What is Bullying and Why Does it Happen?

Module 2: The Underlying Dynamics of Bullying

Module 3: Moving Beyond ‘Tolerance’ to Campus Cultures that Celebrate Difference

Module 4: Schools, Bullying and the Law

Module 5: Addressing Bullying

The videos are smart and informative — definitely worth a look.

H/T Francine Lipman.

-Bridget Crawford

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One More Reason to Love Gloria Gaynor

Posted on July 5, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

Gloria Gaynor is currently serving as a spokesperson for the National Network to End Domestic Violence.  Here‘s the group’s announcement:

For more than three decades, “I Will Survive” has been a beacon of hope for countless victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.  The film industry has featured “I Will Survive” on the soundtrack of more than half a dozen major motion pictures, and VH-1 honored Gloria Gaynor with the number one spot during their countdown of Top 100 Dance Records of All Time.

Evident by numerous awards received over the years, Gloria Gaynor’s popularity has continuously flourished throughout the decades – a testament to how the message of survival resonates with women across generations.

As a spokesperson for the National Network to End Domestic Violence, Ms. Gaynor wants to bring greater awareness to domestic violence and help bring an end to this devastating social issue.

“I am truly honored to lend my voice to the National Network to End Domestic Violence,” said Gaynor.  “Over the years, so many women have shared their personal stories with me about suffering through abuse and seeing hope through my music.  Domestic violence affects everyone, and everyone should become part of the solution.”

To be sure, ending domestic violence is never as simple as saying, “Go on now, go.  Walk out the door.”  But what a message in “I will survive!”

-Bridget Crawford

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Jessica Gonzales v. United States: Blog Resource and Film Announcement

Posted on July 5, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

Filmmakers April Hayes and Katia Maguire are in the process of producing Jessica Gonzales v. United States, a documentary about one woman’s legal battle on behalf of domestic violence survivors.  Here is the producers’ description of the film:

In 1999, Jessica Gonzales’ estranged husband Simon abducted their three young daughters in violation of a court-imposed domestic violence restraining order. Jessica called the police repeatedly over the course of the night, begging the officers on duty to find her girls and bring them home safely, but they ignored and refused her pleas for help.

In the early hours of the next morning, Simon pulled up to the police station, got out of his truck, and started firing at the police station with a gun he had purchased earlier that night. The police came out of the station and shot him dead. When they looked into the back of the now bullet-ridden vehicle—the same truck that Jessica had been reporting to them all night—they found the dead bodies of Rebecca (10), Katheryn (8), and Leslie (7).

Jessica embarks upon a groundbreaking legal journey, suing the town of Castle Rock, Colorado, for non-enforcement of her restraining order, and pursues her case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, in hopes of strengthening the legal rights of the millions of women and children who depend on domestic violence restraining orders to protect them. Yet when the Supreme Court rules that she and other Americans have no Constitutional right to enforcement of their protective orders, Jessica presses on, becoming the first domestic violence victim to sue the U.S. government in an international human rights tribunal.

Yet even as this quest transforms Jessica into the figurehead of an international movement, she and her family face an ongoing struggle to come to terms with their immense tragedy and loss.

JESSICA GONZALES VS. THE UNITED STATES is currently in production. The film is the 2010 recipient of the Garrett Scott Documentary Development Grant and has received support from the Independent Television Service. The documentary is part of the Women Make Movies Production Assistance Program and participated in the 2009 Independent Film Week: Spotlight on Documentaries and the 2009 National Association for Latino Producers’ Latino Producers Academy.

Here’s a film clip:

For more information about the case and the film project, see the film’s website here.

Professor Carrie Bettinger-Lopez and her clinic students at the University of Miami School of Law were instrumental in achieving a positive legal result in the case.  See prior FLP blog coverage here.

-Bridget Crawford

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CFP: “Black Women in Politics”

Posted on July 5, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

From the FLP mailbox:

The editors of The National Political Science Review (NPSR) invite submissions from the scholarly community for review and possible publication for a Special Issue on:

BLACK WOMEN IN POLITICS: MOVING FORWARD — NEW QUESTIONS, NEW DIRECTIONS

A recent study, appearing in The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, suggests that Black women are often rendered invisible in the social sphere. This study brings to light what we might already know via anecdotal evidence. However, it leaves us wondering how do we study Black women? When Black women are the subjects of the research, must they always be compared to other racial/ethnic groups? Which methodologies and methods are better suited for unearthing and explaining Black women’s experiences as political and social actors?  And, finally what new knowledges are produced when interdisciplinary approaches and unconventional methodologies and methods are employed?

In addressing these questions, this special issue seeks to interact with and advance the continuum of Black women’s studies with a special focus on Black women and politics. The editors are soliciting articles for a themed issue of the National Political Science Review (NPSR) to be published in 2014. This special edition will be devoted to (1) questions of epistemology and the politics of knowledge production; and (2) the lives and lived realities of Black women–their cultures and politics, their representations in media, their involvement in new media, and their activism. We invite research length papers on Black women in politics and Black gender politics from a wide range of disciplines including Black women’s studies, political science, religion, Black Studies, sociology, Women’s Studies, and philosophy among others. Papers may take any theoretical and or methodological perspective that centers Black women’s political phenomena — broadly defined. All submissions should be written in a manner that is accessible to a wide scholarly audience. Papers should be no longer than 25 pages, inclusive of notes and references, and should conform to the Chicago Manual of Style (15th edition). We especially encourage papers that employ not only quantitative, but also qualitative and interpretive methodologies, which analyze and explain the triumphs and challenges faced by Black women domestically and globally.  Particular attention will be given to the ways in which feminist and womanist scholars have challenged disciplinary conventions in producing transformative, interdisciplinary knowledge. Articles may be inspired by, but are certainly not limited to, the following themes:

*             Black women and reproductive justice
*             Black women’s response to nation states, colonialism and neo-colonialism
*             Black women’s contemporary social and political activism
*             Black women’s experience with and negotiation of the criminal justice system
*             Black women and the politics of representation: sexuality, media, and/or texts
*             Black women’s informal political participation in movements and organizations
*             The politics of knowledge production
*             Transformational approaches to intersectionality scholarship
*             Black women in international relations and comparative politics
*             Black women in politics, new social media, and virtual social networks

The NPSR is a refereed journal of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists. Its editions appear annually and comprise the highest quality scholarship related to the experiences of African Americans in the American political community, as well as in the wider reach of the African Diaspora in the Western Hemisphere. It also focuses on the international links between African Americans and the larger community of nations, particularly with Africa.

Please email submissions and cover letter, no later than October 1, 2012, to: Dr. Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd at ngaf@rci.rutgers.edu AND Dr. Julia Jordan-Zachery at jjordanz@providence.edu.

-Bridget Crawford

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Book Igloo by Miler Lagos

Posted on July 5, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

The book igloo is the work of artist Miler Lagos.  Love it!

-Bridget  Crawford

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Where are the Women? Washington Law Review Edition

Posted on July 4, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

Volume 87  | June 2012 | Issue 2

June 2012 Symposium: The First Amendment in the Modern Age

Foreword:

The Guardians of Knowledge in the Modern State: Post’s Republic and the First Amendment

Ronald K.L. Collins & David M. Skover

Essays:

The First Amendment, the Courts, and “Picking Winners”

Judge Thomas L. Ambro & Paul J. Safier

Public Discourse, Expert Knowledge, and the Press

Joseph Blocher

The First Amendment’s Epistemological Problem

Paul Horwitz

A View from the First Amendment Trenches: Washington State’s New Protections for Public Discourse and Democracy

Bruce E.H. Johnson & Sarah K. Duran

Democratic Competence, Constitutional Disorder, and the Freedom of the Press

Stephen I. Vladeck

Reply:

Understanding the First Amendment

Robert C. Post

The one female co-author is a law firm associate.

-Bridget Crawford

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Contributions Welcome to Wikipedia Page in Memory and Honor of Ann Scales

Posted on June 28, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

From Rebecca Hunter (Harvard, Derek Bok Center), this information about a Wikipedia page in honor of Ann Scales:

She was my sister Anne Hunter’s best friend at Wellesley and I met her several times on their adventures.  I have arranged for a wikipedia page (here) to be created to honor and preserve the work of Ann C. Scales.

If there are adventures still to be had in the life after this, no doubt Ann is having them in abundance!

May her memory be a blessing.

-Bridget Crawford

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In Memory of Ann Scales 1952-2012

Posted on June 27, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

From the University of Denver College of Law:

University of Denver professor Ann C. Scales died June 24 in Denver Hospice, the result of a brain injury sustained following a fall in her home. She was 60.

Scales came to the University of Denver in 2004.  She taught Constitutional Law, Sexual Orientation and the Law, and Torts at the Sturm College of Law.

A noted feminist scholar, Scales was the author of numerous journal articles and books, including “Toward a Feminist Jurisprudence” 56 Ind. L.J. 375 (1981) and Legal Feminism: Activism, Lawyering and Legal Theory (New York University Press, 2006). The book analyzes sex discrimination in tort litigation and sexual assault in college athletic programs, among other topics. Throughout her teaching career, Scales practiced law, gaining expertise particularly in the fields of reproductive rights and GLBTI rights. She argued the case in which the New Mexico Supreme Court became the first high court of any state to hold that abortion funding is required by women’s interest in equality.

“Ann was a wonderful colleague, a wonderful person, a great teacher and one of the pioneers in feminist legal scholarship,” said Denver Law Dean Martin Katz.  “She leaves an amazing legacy of ideas that influenced the law and students she inspired.”

Scales earned a B.A. in Philosophy and History from Wellesley College in 1974 and earned a J.D. from Harvard University in 1978.

Before coming to DU, Scales taught at the University of New Mexico Law School for 18 years. She was also a visiting professor at the University of Iowa Law School, Boston College Law School, the University of British Columbia, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill College of Law.

Scales was born on May 29, 1952, in Shawnee, Oklahoma.  Her father, Dr. James Ralph Scales, was president of Oklahoma Baptist University from 1961–1965.  She was a rodeo queen in Oklahoma before moving to North Carolina, where her father served as the eleventh president of Wake Forest University, from 1968 to 1983.

Memorial contributions can be made to the Ann Scales Memorial Professor Fund, which, depending on the level of support, will be used either to endow a chair in her memory or to support scholarly and teaching activities in her field.  Contributions may be sent to the Office of Development, University of Denver Sturm College of Law, Attn: Ricki Kelly, 2255 E. Evans Ave. Ste. 315, Denver, CO 80208.

A memorial service will be held at the law school in September.

-Bridget Crawford

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Lipstick On a String?

Posted on June 25, 2012 by Christine Corcos

Last week, the EU Commission on Research and Innovation launched a new initiative, the “Women in Research and Innovation” Campaign, with the slogan “Science: It’s a Girl Thing.” Apparently, it was an excellent idea marred by somewhat questionable execution. It came accompanied by a video that showed female scientists decked out in makeup and miniskirts.  The New Statesman was unimpressed, noting that

The EU Commission may as well have put a lipstick on a string, and filmed 18 year old models doing a belly crawl after it  from the nail parlour (or wherever they would normally be) to the lab bench. But that’s not what they think they’re doing:

“We want to overturn clichés and show women and girls, and boys too, that science is not about old men in white coats,” said Geoghegan-Quinn, European Research, Innovation and Science Commissioner speaking at the European Parliament in Brussels yesterday.

The video, initially released to YouTube, is now unavailable there, so we seem to be dependent on the assessments of those who saw it when it first aired. Critics have panned the video as sexist, concerned that it emphasizes women’s looks rather than their brains, and de-emphasizes the entire point of the campaign, which is to encourage girls to explore science as a career. More reaction here from Forbes, MSNBC.com, the Wall Street Journal, and Scientific American.

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In Memory of Ann Scales

Posted on June 25, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

Professor Ann Scales died on Sunday, June 24, 2012 after injuries sustained in an accident.

May her memory be a blessing.

At this time, plans for a memorial service are tentative.  I will post any information I receive.

-Bridget Crawford

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Sexual Assualt Survivor on Being a Pro-Life Surrogate

Posted on June 24, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

Kimberly, the “homeschooling mother of 4, surrogate mother of 2, and a military wife” over at A Little Crunchy, writes a bit about her decision to be a surrogate mother:

I had been assaulted sexually when I was little, it twisted my own sexuality a bit I think. When I was a teen another assault and it left me feeling like it should be my choice what happened to my body. Men had taken from me that which I did not give. In surrogacy I found my power back. I could give what others could not take and I could do it gently and with love, not with force and pain. I was reclaiming part of my soul, part of my womanhood. I am so blessed to have found a fantastic couple to help, two amazing men worthy of me and what I wanted to give. They let me make them a family, they let me heal the hurt and fill the void. TWICE! I feel so very lucky.

Kimberly’s full post, available here, is a response to a NYT opinion piece by Christine Overall (Philosophy, Queen’s [Canada]) entitled Think Before You Breed.

I was interested in Kimberly’s description of surrogacy as a way of taking control of her own body and healing after sexual assault.  I also was struck by Kimberly’s self-description as “pro-life” (here), combined with her words at the end of her post: “What you do with your body is your own choice.”  Kimberly critiques Overall for “trying to police motives and like any pro-lifer she is trying to guilt to make others bend to her views.”

I have asked before (here) whether one can be pro-life and a feminist, too.  The post over at A Little Crunchy helps clarify to the answer for me.  If by being “pro-life,” one means not wanting to choose an abortion for oneself, and if by being a “feminist” one means “what you do with your body is your choice,” then the answer seems to be that a pro-life view and feminism are entirely compatible.

-Bridget Crawford

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Posted in Feminism and Families, Reproductive Rights | 1 Comment

Dr. K. Ryan Ziegler on Being a Black Male Feminist

Posted on June 23, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

Over at blac(k)ademic v.2, Dr. K. Ryan Ziegler writes (here) about how his past “as a black woman informs [his] black male feminist perspective today.  Here is an excerpt:

For some transmen, their female past conjures up memories of pain and humiliation, and rightfully so. These feelings are not absent from my journey but I’ve come to embrace my past as a beneficial asset to my practice of a progressive black masculinity.

Primarily, I am very careful with my interactions with women in order to not be perceived as a physical threat. I am always thoughtful of my newfound “bulk” due to hormones and the ways in which my masculine body moves and occupies space. While walking on the streets, I maintain my distance from women. I avoid eye contact unless we are engaging in mutual conversation and even then, I do not stare. The memory of harassment as a woman doesn’t allow me to.

In professional situations, I am always aware of my male privilege. I do not hog the intellectual space and make it a point to deeply value the input of my female collaborators. My goal is not to be the dominant voice of reason but to attempt to exist as an equal colleague. Furthermore, in my work I find it very important to centralize the experiences of women to supplement the work that they are doing for themselves.

Although I identify as a heterosexual male, in my relationship with my partner I strive to avoid replicating the harmful gendered dynamics that are traditionally associated with heterosexuality. I make it a point to share my feelings and evaluate my shortcomings. I am not perfect and sometimes I slip but the emphasis I’ve placed on expressing my feelings has provided a deviation from conventional notions of black masculinity. This gesture does not negate my manhood; rather it permits me to love and perform gender in a much healthier way.

Read the full post here.

-Bridget Crawford

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Ann Scales – In Our Thoughts

Posted on June 22, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

From Law Week Colorado (here):

University of Denver law professor Ann Scales this week was moved to hospice after last week suffering an unknown brain trauma. She was taken off life-support on Friday.

“She’s still alive, but they’re not holding out any hope for recovery,” said Federico Cheever, senior associate dean for academic affairs at DU’s Sturm College of Law. “I’m not sure exactly what happened.”

The mystery continues to surround how Scales ended up in a hospital, but more details emerged Tuesday. Cheever said a friend of Scales early last week found the professor at the bottom of a set of stairs in Scales’ home. She was unconscious and according to doctors, had been unconscious for some time, Cheever said. She was taken to Swedish Medical Center in Denver where she was put on a life-support machine. On Friday, doctors informed the family that there was no chance of recovery, and Scales was taken off the machine.

The University of Denver Sturm College of Law held a candlelight vigil for Professor Scales earlier this week.  See here.

Ann Scales is the author of a wealth of feminist legal scholarship, including the recent book Legal Feminism: Activism, Lawyering, and Legal Theory (NYU 2006).

-Bridget Crawford

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If Anne-Marie Slaughter is a Dropout, We’re Chopped Liver

Posted on June 21, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

Over here at The American Prospect, E.J. Graff (Brandeis, Women’s Studies) has a great analysis of Anne-Marie Slaughter’s article Why Women Still Can’t Have It All from the July/August issue of The Atlantic.  Graff responds to the italicized portions of Slaughter’s article.

[Graff] Despite the title, Slaughter hasn’t left the elite policy realm by any means, as she notes early on:

I teach a full course load; write regular print and online columns on foreign policy; give 40 to 50 speeches a year; appear regularly on TV and radio; and am working on a new academic book.

[Graff] All this with two teenage sons! I can only dream of being that productive and organized. If she considers herself a dropout, what are us normal folk, chopped liver?

[Graff] But, as she notes, she’s managed that because academic royalty (er, elite institutions’ faculty) inhabit exceptionally flexible workplaces. That’s not at all true for university staff, and less so for faculty in less-prestigious institutions. Her rude awakening came when she joined an uber-elite government policy job, becoming part of the machinery that sets the country’s agenda instead of advising it from afar. In the quote below, the emphasis is my own:

The minute I found myself in a job that is typical for the vast majority of working women (and men), working long hours on someone else’s schedule, I could no longer be both the parent and the professional I wanted to be—at least not with a child experiencing a rocky adolescence. I realized what should have perhaps been obvious: having it all, at least for me, depended almost entirely on what type of job I had. The flip side is the harder truth: having it all was not possible in many types of jobs, including high government office—at least not for very long.

[Graff] Excerpting that paragraph brings me near tears; that’s how close to the bone her insight cuts. She’s right about this core truth: Being both a good parent and an all-out professional cannot be done the way we currently run our educational and work systems. When I talk to friends who’ve just had children, here’s what I tell them: Being a working parent in our society is structurally impossible. It can’t be done right, so don’t blame yourself when you’re failing. You’ll always be failing at something—as a spouse, as a parent, as a worker. Just get used to that feeling. Slaughter’s entire article is worth reading for her nuanced exploration of that alone. It’s true for people at the top; it’s even more  true for people at the bottom, who have no sick leave, no choice in their shifts, no freedom to run over to the school if a child is sick.

Read Graff’s full piece here.

Update 6/21: I’ve added [Graff] in order to indicate more clearly what is E.J. Graff’s commentary on Professor Slaughter’s piece.

-Bridget Crawford

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Posted in Employment Discrimination, Feminism and Culture, Feminism and Economics, Feminism and Families | 1 Comment

Cartoon History, Woman Suffrage and the Kewpie Doll

Posted on June 21, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

Comicbookgrrrl has an informative post (here) about cartoonist Rose O’Neill:

Rose O’Neill is regarded as the first woman cartoonist (1874-1944). Self taught, and from a poor family, her parents ensured she was never without paper to draw on, and her father in particular was keen to support her love of books and art as best he could. In 1888, at the age of 13, Rose won an art contest held in the local paper (the Omaha World Herald) and the judges were so doubtful that her entry, “Temptation Leading to an Abyss”, could have been drawn by a 13 year old, that they summoned her to prove her skills in person. Proving her skills, from then on Rose was able to supplement the family income with regular work in the periodicals. * * *

In 1934 Kewpie comics were published, full pages in today’s panel format. The twice divorced and bohemian Rose was passionately involved in the Suffrage movement – as were the Kewpies (see top illustration). Rose was known as the “Queen of Bohemian Society” due to her outspoken views on women’s rights, the considerable wealth that her work had amassed, and her widely admired beauty.

Read the full post here.

I never knew about this connection between the creator of the Kewpie doll and woman suffrage.  Maureen Finnegan’s Selling Suffrage: Consumer Culture and Votes for Women (Columbia University Press, 1999) will jump to the top of my reading list!

-Bridget Crawford

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Hip Hop Blogger Speaks Out Against Sexist Bullying on the Internet

Posted on June 20, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

Jay Smooth is the founder of New York’s longest running hip-hop radio show, WBAI’s Underground Railroad.  He has a video blog, Ill Doctrine, here.  He also video blogs at Animal New York, here, which bills itself as “a daily mix of art, news, culture, politics, and opinion–straight from the gut of New York.”

In the video “All These Sexist Gamer Dudes are Some Shook Ones,” Jay Smooth speaks out against sexist internet trolls in the gamer community, but his words have broad application in all corners of the internet.

My favorite line is this:

[W]hen you bully and harass a woman for speaking her mind, all you do is show us that you’re afraid of that woman’s voice, and you don’t think you can beat her intellectually without using a cheat code.

And Jay’s parting words — “We need to add some extra humanity into our scene” — contain good advice for us all.

-Bridget Crawford

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“Mating, Spending and the Lipstick Effect”

Posted on June 19, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

“Boosting Beauty in an Economic Decline: Mating, Spending and the Lipstick Effect” is the title of a paper forthcoming in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by Sarah E. Hill and Christopher D. Rodeheffer (Psychology, Texas Christian University), Vladas Griskevicius, Kristina Durante and Andrew Edward White.  Here is the abstract:

Although consumer spending typically declines in economic recessions, some observers have noted that recessions appear to increase women‘s spending on beauty products—the so-called lipstick effect. Using both historical spending data and rigorous experiments, we examine how and why economic recessions influence women‟s consumer behavior. Findings revealed that recessionary cues – whether naturally occurring or experimentally primed – decreased desire for most products (e.g., electronics, household items). However, these cues consistently increased women‘s desire for products that increase attractiveness to mates —the first experimental demonstration of the lipstick effect. Additional studies show that this effect is driven by women‘s desire to attract mates with resources and depends on the perceived mate attraction function served by these products. In addition to showing how and why economic recessions influence women‘s desire for beauty products, this research provides novel insights into women‘s mating psychology, consumer behavior, and the relationship between the two.

A full version of the manuscript available here.

I quickly skimmed the paper and didn’t see any mention of racial or geographical differences in “lipstick” spending during recessions.  I’d be interested to read more.

Via HuffPo (here).

-Bridget Crawford

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Sisters Speaking Out, Nuns on the Bus

Posted on June 19, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

From the AP:

The accompanying news story (here) explains:

A group of Roman Catholic nuns began a nine-state bus tour protesting proposed federal budget cuts Monday, saying they weren’t trying to flout recent Vatican criticisms of socially active nuns but felt called to show how Republican policies are affecting low-income families. The tour was organized by Network, a Washington-based Catholic social justice group criticized in a recent Vatican report that said some organizations led by nuns have focused too much on economic injustice while failing to promote the church’s teachings on abortion and same-sex marriage.

Speak out, sisters!

-Bridget Crawford

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Phoebe Hart, “ORCHIDS: My Intersex Adventure”

Posted on June 17, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

A documentary by Australian filmmaker Phoebe Hart aired on Showtime earlier this month.  Here’s the distributor’s description of the film “ORCHIDS: My Intersex Adventure”:

Gen X filmmaker Phoebe Hart always knew she was different growing up – but she didn’t know why. This award-winning documentary traces Phoebe’s voyage of self-discovery as an intersex person, a group of conditions formerly termed hermaphroditism. Learning only in her teens that she was born with 46XY (male) chromosomes, Hart now seeks to understand her own story and the stories of others affected by this complex and often shameful syndrome.

With help from sister Bonnie (also born with the same condition) and support from partner James, Hart drives across Australia, interviewing individuals whose struggles and victories mirror and differ from her own. Some advocate systemic change ending shame and controversial genital surgeries, while others debate coming out or staying closeted with a stigmatized secret. Questioning rigidly defined constructs of gender, sexuality, and normality, often with lively good humor, ORCHIDS is the first film to look at intersex from a positive perspective. Its engaging portrait of survival, courage and reconciliation will speak to a variety of audiences and spark lively discussion about what it means to be perceived as “different.”

The film has won several awards (see here) and may be of interest to those teaching Law & Sexuality or Feminist Legal Theory.

Folks might also want to check out this short clip of the Dr. Hart’s presentation at TEDxYouth Brisbane:

Receiving notice of this film was a good reminder to me that documentary films are a unique and valuable method of storytelling and advocacy.

-Bridget Crawford

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Loving is as Loving Does

Posted on June 17, 2012 by Lolita Buckner Inniss

On June 12, 1967, in the case Loving v. Virginia, the United States Supreme Court unanimously struck down Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law, thereby invalidating such laws across the country and allowing interracial couples across the nation to enter into legally recognized marriages. The plaintiffs, Mildred Delores Jeter Loving and Richard Perry Loving, were arrested in the wee hours of the morning in June 1958, confronted in their marriage bed by police officers and arrested for violating Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act. The couple pled guilty, received suspended sentences and were barred from the state. Several years later they reopened the case, leading to the now famous ruling. Click here to see a short film about the Lovings.

Many people celebrate June 12 as Loving Day, the day when racial barriers to marriage equality were toppled and when African Americans came a giant step closer to achieving full civil rights. Today is perhaps a particularly poignant celebration as we debate the status of same-sex marriage by recalling that less than fifty years ago whites and blacks (and people of some other racial backgrounds) could not marry in almost one-third of U.S. states. For decades, there has been a political and legal debate about the meaning of Loving and its implications for the status and rights of same-sex couples in our society. Some have argued that Loving, while useful to the same-sex marriage debate, is not a matter of simply or impulsively matching familiar figures in a test of legal reflection. Maybe not,  maybe so.

The case of the Lovings was not necessarily simple or straightforward, either in law or in fact….                                    [continue reading –>]

-Lolita Buckner Inniss

cross-post from Ain’t I a Feminist Legal Scholar, Too?

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Fenton, “An Essay on Slavery’s Hidden Legacy”

Posted on June 17, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

Zanita Fenton (Miami) has published An Essay on Slavery’s Hidden Legacy: Social Hysteria and Structural Condonation of Incest, 55 Howard L.J. 319 (2012).  Here is the abstract:

The history of slavery and its effects within the United States, especially the impact on the black family and individuals who are African American, have been studied and postulated since before slavery formally ended. What is less often discussed is the impact of slavery on white families and the individuals who comprise those families, or generally the American family within society at large. For both the commission of incest or miscegenation, the event(s) were publicly condemned while simultaneously ignored and hidden, and thereby condoned. Despite the imperative for racial purity, white men enjoyed a presumption of free access to slaves, as well as to freed women. Indeed, because acts of miscegenation were so common, as was their denial, they occurred in transparent obscurity. Further, this white, patriarchal, sexual prerogative was unfettered and all but unchallenged, even when such access resulted in an actual biological, incestuous coupling. Thus, the convergence of the taboos, miscegenated incest/incestuous miscegeny, prompted the hidden exhibition of incest, first for relations between family members of “opposite” races, but also for any correlate relations within a “same” race family. Indeed, acknowledgment or exposure of incest between relatives of so-called opposite race challenged both the social construction of race and therefore the basis for social stratifications. In the least, it calls into question any alleged biological distinction and rationales for this stratification. Unfortunately, it may also be that the social construct of difference may have made these kinds of relations psychologically palatable because the relation could not be considered familial.

Nonetheless, once there was silent condonation for the liaisons between a white father and his reflection in brown, it must have become more psychologically plausible that such liaisons could also occur, with impunity, with his reflection in white. The common sense progression within this power dynamic includes the unchallenged access of these same fathers to their white children.

Incest taboos have the purpose of permitting the development of children in safe environments, free of sexual exploitation. These taboos also make the interdependence of families within society necessary. The strength of the incest taboo may, alone, be enough to prompt the intensity of the silence surrounding the subject matter, even in the face of strong indicators of its prevalence and the associated problems with its occurrence. However, in the United States, the silence surrounding incest ought to be understood in tandem with the silence pertaining to interracial relations from the era of anti-miscegenation.

This Essay is a “thought” piece, relying on historical texts concerning society, politics, and the development of psychoanalytic conventions. The analysis offered in this Essay relies often on the absence of text and direct evidence as a means to elucidate the apparent, yet veiled problem of modern-day incest. It discusses the political considerations and legal thought regarding the connections between incest and miscegenation, primarily from the Ante-bellum South, which sustained the social order of the time. It goes on to discuss the prevailing family and its role in maintaining both patriarch and the racial social order. It then identifies the parallels between the mythologies associated with incest and with miscegenation. It further discusses psychology as it affects an individual victim and situation. It completes the discussion by addressing the possibility of community-based psychology and mass hysterics contributing to the denial of existing social transgressions. The Essay concludes by suggesting how the various constructs identified have modern-day relevance.

The full piece is available here.

-Bridget Crawford

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Choudhury, “A Comparative Perspective on Polygamy in the United States and India”

Posted on June 17, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

Cyra Akila Choudhury (FIU) has posted to SSRN  her article Between Tradition and Progress: A Comparative Perspective on Polygamy in the United States and India, 83 Colo. L. Rev. 101 (2012).  Here is the abstract:

Both the United States and India have had longstanding experiences with polygamy and its regulation. In the United States, the dominant Protestant majority has sought to abolish Mormon practices of polygamy through criminalization. Moreover, the public policy exception has been used to deny recognition of plural marriages conducted legally elsewhere. India’s approach to polygamy regulation and criminalization has been both similar to and different from that of the United States. With a sizable Muslim minority and a legal framework that recognizes religious law as family law, India recognizes polygamy in the Muslim minority community. However, it has criminalized it in the Hindu majority community. Despite the existence of criminal sanctions for Hindus, the incidence of polygamy among the majority community is roughly equivalent to that of Muslims for whom it is permitted. In the United States, despite harsh measures to abolish the practice, it continues and might even be growing in urban communities. This article takes seriously the feminist critique of traditional polygamy as distributionally unfair to women. However, it also acknowledges that polygamy may be an attractive alternative and an acceptable family form. This is particularly true if it is reformed and made to progress as was monogamous marriage in the mid-twentieth century. This article argues that rather than focusing on the criminalization of a family form that has been in existence for millennia, a more fruitful approach to regulating polygamy is focus on the distribution of rights and obligations within the family. This approach accepts that abolition is a goal that is unlikely to be met and that women and men may choose polygamy for rational reasons. As such, feminists are more likely to see gains for women by directing their efforts toward reform and recognition rather than criminalization and abolition.

The full paper is available here.

-Bridget Crawford

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CFP: Gender, Public Space and Surveillance

Posted on June 17, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

From the FLP mailbox, this CFP:

CALL FOR PAPERS
Expanding the Gaze: Gender, Public Space, and Surveillance
Deadline: September 15, 2012

The past decade has witnessed an explosion of scholarship covering the broad area of surveillance studies. Surveillance, or the ability to engage in what David Lyon (2003) calls ‘social sorting’, is understood by social scientists to be key to neoliberal governance, in large part because of its capacity to reconfigure both public space and forms of citizenship.  And yet, to date, very little scholarly work systematically considers the gendered dimensions of, and experiences with, surveillance. The little research that does exist indicates the need for more in-depth study. This edited collection seeks to engage  with contemporary studies on surveillance by expanding the gaze to include a critical analysis of gender and public space.

The aim of the collection is to capture a wide range of gendered experiences, identities, and subjectivities, including, but not limited to, those of ‘women’. By public space we are referring to those places to which the public has reasonable expectations of access.  This space might be privately owned, public space, or a hybrid; it may be physical (e.g. shopping malls, city streets) or virtual (e.g. public on-line profiles and social media platforms). Surveillance itself may be technological (e.g. CCTV) or informal (e.g. ‘eyes on the street’). The key uniting theme of ‘Expanding the Gaze: Gender, Public Space, and Surveillance’ is the ways that the dimensions of gender, public space, and surveillance interact to produce particular configurations that have yet to be fully explored.

This call for papers seeks innovative feminist and/or intersectional scholarship for an interdisciplinary edited collection of original works. We welcome submissions from a variety of perspectives and academic disciplines, including: communication studies, criminology, geography, law, sexuality studies, socio-legal studies, sociology, and/or women’s and gender studies.  Papers may be theoretical or empirical in nature.

Topics may include (but are not limited to)

– Surveillance, bodies, and forms of citizenship
– Sexuality/ies and surveillance
– Masculinity/ies and surveillance
– Gendered resistance to surveillance
– Gender and urban CCTV
– Surveillance and the intersectionality of gender, race, and class
– Queer and trans perspectives on, and experiences with, surveillance
technologies
– Media/cinematic representations of surveillance
– Relationships between the watchers and being watched

Abstract submission:

Interested contributors should send a 300-500 word abstract and 200 word
bio to genderedlens@gmail.com no later than September 15, 2012.

Those invited to contribute to the collection will be notified in October
2012 and full papers will be due in April 2013.

Please direct questions to collection editor:

Emily van der Meulen,
evandermeulen@ryerson.ca
Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology
Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada.

-Bridget Crawford

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Posted in Call for Papers or Participation, Feminism and Technology | 2 Comments

Women and Inheritance Rights

Posted on June 12, 2012 by Christine Corcos

Shelly Kreiczer-Levy, Academic Center of Law and Business, and Meital Pinto, Carmel Academic Center, Law School, University of Toronto, have published Property and Belongingness: Rethinking Gender-Biased Disinheritance, in volume 21 of the Texas Journal of Women and the Law (2012). Here is the abstract.

For centuries, women have been disinherited from family wealth because of cultural traditions and religious rules that suggest their social role does not require an inheritance. Religious or traditionalist testators still adhere to this belief, exercising their testamentary freedom. Moreover, American law respects the testator’s wishes whether they are petty, vindictive or discriminatory. We make the novel argument that the law should not protect gender-biased bequests, as they are contrary to public policy. Our argument centers on a reconfiguration of inheritance in a way that includes its symbolic effect on disinherited relatives, redefining the social, relational and familial role of the institution of inheritance. We claim that in our society today inheritance functions as the communication of statements about a child’s belongingness to the parent and, more generally, to the family. It is closely connected to the child’s need for roots and continuity. Inheritance is located at the intersection of an individual’s vision of continuity and social ideals. The parties’ interests in continuity are broader than a particular relationship between a daughter and her father; they are embedded in a project that has a social and cultural meaning. Therefore, within the doctrine of public policy, we balance conflicting interests. We stress the values of dignity, self-respect, autonomy, and participation in the family property and continuity of the family name. These values are balanced against the freedom of religion and culture.

 

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

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American Nuns Tell the Vatican, “We Don’t Need Your Stinkin’ Bishops”

Posted on June 4, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

From Reuters (here):

The largest organization of U.S. Catholic nuns on Friday rejected a Vatican assessment that they had fallen under the sway of radical feminism and needed to hand control of their group over to a trio of bishops.

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, whose members represent about 80 percent of nuns in the United States, issued a sharp statement calling the Vatican’s rebuke unsubstantiated and “the result of a flawed process that lacked transparency.”

The nuns said the Vatican’s report has “caused scandal and pain throughout the church community and created greater polarization.”

Tensions between U.S. nuns and church authorities, both in Rome and in the United States, have been simmering for decades as nuns have taken an increasingly independent and outspoken role in politics and social outreach.

The Leadership Conference has aired frank discussions of issues that deeply discomfit the Vatican, from ministry to gays and lesbians to the patriarchy of church culture. Some nuns have made public calls for the church to relax its stance against contraception; others have worked to ordain women as priests, in ceremonies the Vatican does not recognize as valid.

The Vatican also complained that the nuns have focused attention on social justice issues, such as poverty, and have not spent enough time promoting the church’s view on divisive political questions such as abortion and gay marriage.

To bring the sisters into line, the Vatican announced earlier this spring that it would put the Leadership Conference under the effective control of three bishops, who would have the power to rewrite its statutes, its meeting agendas and even its liturgical texts.

In their response on Friday, announced after three days of discussion and prayer in Washington, D.C., the conference board called the punishment “disproportionate” and said it “could compromise their ability to fulfill their mission.”

The bishop assigned to oversee the conference, Archbishop Peter Sartain of Seattle, did not discuss that complaint directly on Friday but issued a statement vowing that he would address both the Vatican’s concerns and the nuns’ response “in an atmosphere of openness, honesty, integrity and fidelity to the Church’s faith.”

Read the full story here.

-Bridget Crawford

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14-Year Old Boy “Emulating” Pornography Rapes 9-Year Old Girl

Posted on June 4, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

From the (UK) Guardian (here):

A 12-year-old schoolboy who raped and sexually assaulted a younger girl after viewing hardcore pornography on the internet has been spared a custodial sentence.

A judge was told that the boy, who is now aged 14, was “emulating” with the nine-year-old victim adult acts he had seen following unfettered access on a computer to explicit websites. The high court in Edinburgh heard that the case could be “the tip of the iceberg” and many others may not have been identified or reported.

The boy’s defence counsel Sean Templeton said: “There is a real risk that young people of the current generation of teenagers are growing up with a skewed view of what sex is and sexual activity.” He said it was a great concern that they may be getting their sex education through pornographers. He revealed that during a police interview the accused child was asked why he had done it and his answer was: “Temptation.” When questioned about the temptation he responded: “To feel grown up.”

“This was an emulation of an adult act witnessed by him at this young age,” said the defence counsel. “He was afforded unfettered access to the internet and it has become apparent from a very young age, the age of 12, he was accessing hardcore pornography.”

Read the full story here.

-Bridget Crawford

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Hasday on “Siblings in Law”

Posted on May 30, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

Jill Hasday (Minnesota) has posted to SSRN her article Siblings in Law, 65 Vanderbilt Law Review 897 (2012).  Here is the abstract:

Legal regulation of the family focuses on two canonical relationships: marriage and parenthood.  Courts, legislatures, and scholars routinely take family law’s concentration on just two family ties to be so commonsensical as to require no explicit discussion or explanation.  Yet marriage and parenthood are not the only family relationships that can be central to family life.  Family law’s reflexive orientation around marriage and parenthood diverts attention and scrutiny from considering how the law should regulate and protect other family ties.  For instance, the sibling relationship is a crucial, yet noncanonical family tie.  Family law views children almost exclusively through the lens of children’s relationships with their parents, rather than the lens of children’s relationships with their siblings.  The law offers siblings only modest and sporadic protection, too often permitting adoption and parental divorce or death to separate siblings and sometimes leave them with no right to contact each other or even learn of each other’s existence.  But siblings can be vital sources of support, love, nurturing, and stability for children, and family law could and should do much more to safeguard sibling ties when they are threatened.  This Essay uses the example of sibling relationships, which have received remarkably little legal attention, to explore the law’s treatment of noncanonical family relationships and to consider some of the reform possibilities that emerge when we free ourselves from the assumption that family law should focus narrowly on marriage and parenthood.

 The full article is available here.

-Bridget Crawford

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Fellowship Announcement: Center for Reproductive Rights

Posted on May 30, 2012 by Bridget Crawford

From colleagues at the Center for Reproductive Rights:

The Center for Reproductive Rights is thrilled to announce an academic fellowship opportunity for recent law school graduates who are interested in careers in law teaching.

The CRR-CLS Fellowship is a two-year, post-graduate fellowship offered by the Center for Reproductive Rights and Columbia Law School. The Fellowship is designed to prepare recent law school graduates for legal academic careers in reproductive health and human rights. Fellows will be affiliated with the Center and the Law School and will participate in the intellectual life of both programs. Applicants do not need to be graduates of Columbia Law School to be eligible for this program.

After the successful launch of the CRR-CLS Fellowship in the summer of 2008, we are excited to begin the process of selecting a Fellow for 2013-2015. The deadline for this cycle is October 29, 2012.

For more information please see here.

-Bridget Crawford

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