Feminist Law Professors

When compared to the state of the law prior to their establishment, the ad hoc international criminal tribunals:namely the Yugoslavia (ICTY), Rwanda (ICTR) and Sierra Leone (SCSL) tribunals:have been nothing short of revolutionary in recognizing crimes against women as international crimes subject to international jurisdiction. Key cases have established the elements of rape under international law (Prosecutor v. FurundÅ¾ija (ICTY)), convicted a defendant of the crime of genocidal rape (Prosecutor v. Akayesu (ICTR)), characterized sexual violence as the crimes against humanity of torture and sexual enslavement (Prosecutor v. Kunarac (ICTY)), and recognized the crime of forced marriage (Prosecutor v. Alex Tamba Brima (SCSL)).

For every important development, however, there have been numerous missed opportunities. …

Posted in Acts of Violence, Coerced Sex, Feminism and Law, Sisters In Other Nations | Comments Off

Yes We Can, But We Might Do It More Effectively If Average Women Were Included

Posted on September 18, 2008 by Ann Bartow

Remember this powerful video will.i.am made to support Barack Obama? I thought it was brilliant the first dozen or so times I watched it, mesmerized. But after a while I noticed that while the men in the video vary a bit in age and size and traditional indicia of mainstream attractiveness, and most are wearing baggy raiment, the women are all young and thin and beautiful and generally wearing very body conscious clothing. It’s still a great video in a lot of ways, but by excluding average women, it illustrates one of the reasons so many preferred Hillary Clinton in the primaries. Like other humans, older, average women like to feel welcome and represented. Obama’s supporters haven’t facilitated this very well, though the campaign itself is trying hard to mend fences, with Hillary Clinton’s assistance. [NB: If I never have to read about “Obama courting women voters” again I’ll be very happy. He doesn’t want to date them, he wants their votes.]

The Obama campaign didn’t make the video, but by some accounts (see also, see also and see also) is still struggling to attract older women, whom he will need to win battleground states. I hope he will prevail in November, but if he doesn’t, I think it’s going to be because of the way too many of his high profile supporters ignored or belittled so many women during the primaries.

–Ann Bartow

Posted in Feminism and Politics, The Underrepresentation of Women | Comments Off

Anthony V. Alfieri, “Prosecuting the Jena Six”

Posted on September 18, 2008 by Ann Bartow

Available here. These are the first two sentences:

This Essay explores the racial norms animating the prosecution of the Jena Six in LaSalle Parish, Louisiana, a set of norms I will call Jim Crow legal ethics. By Jim Crow legal ethics, I mean the professional norms of practice in a time of de jure or de facto racial segregation.

Posted in Legal Profession, Race and Racism | Comments Off

Can we expect the Sarah Palin Email Privacy Act of 2009?

Posted on September 18, 2008 by Ann Bartow

Law prof Paul Ohm says so here, writing:

As has been widely reported, Sarah Palin’s Yahoo e-mail account has been breached, and its contents have been posted to wikileaks. Gawker.com is posting excerpts from the e-mail messages including photographs.

As usual, Orin Kerr (with some assists from his merry band of commenters) is doing a great job fleshing out the legal analysis. A crime has been committed, there can be no doubt, and Yahoo!’s lawyers will probably be kept up late tonight receiving and responding to incoming subpoenas and court orders.

I wanted to come at this story from a slightly different angle: I predict that some day we will look back on this breach as a watershed event in the history of statutory Internet privacy. As Dan and many others have noted in their articles, Congress often enacts privacy protecting legislation only in the wake of salient, sensationalized, harmful privacy breaches. Thus, Judge Bork’s video rental records begat the Video Privacy Protection Act and the murder of actress Rebecca Schaeffer by a stalker with DMV records led, eventually, to the Drivers’ Privacy Protection Act.

Compared to these examples, the breach of Sarah Palin’s e-mail account is on a higher plane of salience and sensationalization. The most scrutinized woman in the country has dozens of her private correspondences pasted all over the blogs. Even if nothing is found in these messages which damages her or the campaign, and whether or not the perpetrators are caught, many will call for tougher privacy laws, and Congress and state legislatures will feel great pressure to deliver.

InfoAdvocate notes the current difficulty that nonfamous victims of e-mail hacking have getting law enforcement to care:

… In a short career representing domestic violence survivors, I’ve represented a client in a protection order hearing whose account was broken into in this manner. The client and opposing party used to date, and the opposing party knew my client’s high school mascot : the question the webmail service asked. Thus he accessed her webmail account easily. I prepared for the court a brief memorandum on how this was a crime, and thus should entitle my client to a protection order : in DC you need to show by a preponderance of evidence that an intrafamily offense occured.

The Feds aren’t involved, and no-one is going to jail. The other party did consent to a protection order, however, so we never had a hearing. He has to stay away from her, and not contact her. I added to the order we negotiated that he is to not break into her email accounts again. Maybe if he does it again, the court would order him jailed : courts do not like their orders violated. But I do not think the feds would get involved. And it may take quite a bit to convince this court that a violation occurred. The court is familiar with other allegations : threats, physical abuse, the presence of children : and not so much with Internet abuse.

So what do I hope comes out of this? What’s my hope for the as of now fictional”Sarah Palin Email Privacy Act of 2009â€³? I hope this leads to webmail providers beefing up their security and cooperation with victims when breaches occur. I hope this leads to more awareness of this crime. I hope this leads to more enforcement of this crime. Not necessarily more Feds putting more people in jail, but the use of protection orders and other intervention as happens in many other cases of abuse. Not all of us get headline treatment when our email is broken into. But we should all be entitled to justice and protection.

Too many feminist bloggers have suffered various forms of internet abuse that most law enforcement officials simply refuse to address at all. If anything good can come out of this episode, I hope that will change.

–Ann Bartow

Posted in Feminism and Law | Comments Off

“Playing Fair: A Guide to Title IX”

Posted on September 18, 2008 by Ann Bartow

From the Women’s Sports Foundation:

Have you ever had that thought in relation to your school’s sports program? Your high school might schedule the girls’ basketball games on Thursday at 4:00 p.m. while the boys’ games are always on Friday evenings at 8:00 p.m. Or your college may restrict the best facilities for use by the men’s teams. Or the athletic department has been saying for years that there just isn’t enough money for the women’s soccer team to become varsity, even though they keep coming up with the money for other things.

Indeed, there is something wrong here, and it may be against the law. Girls and women in high schools and colleges have the right to equal opportunity in sports because of a federal law, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. States’ equal rights amendments, the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution and other laws may also apply. …

Download the Guide here.

Posted in Feminism and Law, The Underrepresentation of Women | Comments Off

What would you wish for by the end of today?

Posted on September 17, 2008 by Ann Bartow

Fifty People, One Question: Restored

Posted in Bloggenpheffer | Comments Off

Is this blogger clueless about pornography? Or a lying PR flack for the porn industry?

Posted on September 17, 2008 by Ann Bartow

Here is an excerpt from this post at Jezebel:

Say what you will about pornography, objectification and exploitation, the growing legitimization of the pornography industry : which led to much more government- and self-regulation : also led to a significant decrease in the kind of exploitation described by those performers as well as increased opportunities for women to participate in the higher-earning aspects of the production.

Where to even start. Self regulation? Government regulation? Who? What? Where? How? Why? She offers not a shred of evidence and, assuming the problem is cluelessness, she clearly needs to read this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And she should watch this, and the podcasts linked here.

A DECREASE in the exploitation of performers? Is she kidding? Notice how she doesn’t support any of these egregiously incorrect assertions with any actual links? It’s because she can’t. With the exception of efforts aimed at preventing child pornography, porn production may be the least regulated industry in the nation. See e.g. this. And she needs to read the first chapter of the late David Foster Wallace’s book, Consider the Lobster, which is about the adult film industry circa 1997. Within it Wallace observes:

The thing to recognize is that the adult industry’s new respectability creates a paradox. The more acceptable in modern culture it becomes, the farther porn will have to go in order to preserve the sense of unacceptability that’s so essential to its appealâ€¦. Whether or not it ever actually gets there, it’s clear that the real horizon late-90’s porn is heading towards is the Snuff Film. It’s also clear, with all moral and cultural issues totally aside, that this is an extremely dangerous direction for the adult-film industry to have to keep moving in.

–Ann Bartow

Posted in Acts of Violence, Feminism and Law | Comments Off

“Law and Poverty” is a “Waste of Time,” Scalia Says

Posted on September 17, 2008 by Bridget Crawford

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

On the eve of today’s 221st anniversary of the U.S. Constitution’s adoption, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told conservative lawyers in Chicago that the University of Chicago Law School : where he used to teach : has lost its edge and gone liberal.

Back in the days when Scalia … [t]he courses had more rigor and the school had a more conservative ethos, Scalia told 500 members of the conservative Federalist Society of lawyers at the Union League Club Tuesday. ***

But Scalia bemoaned the proliferation of exotic law classes in the country’s law schools.”I took nothing but bread-and-butter classes, not “Law and Poverty,” or other made-up stuff, Scalia said to laughter. He said his advice to law students was: “Take serious classes. There’s so much law to learn. Don’t waste your time.”

The full article is available here.

-Bridget Crawford

Posted in Law Schools | Comments Off

Kentucky Court Blocks Lesbian Couple Adoption

Posted on September 17, 2008 by Nancy Polikoff

The Kentucky Court of Appeals has made marriage the dividing line between those children who can have two legally recognized parents and those who can’t. In an opinion handed down last Friday, the court ruled that “second-parent adoption” is not permitted under the state’s statutes. Second-parent adoption is the way that lesbian and gay couples have both gained the legal status as parents of the biological child of one of the partners. The first such adoption was granted in Alaska in 1985. Several states allow them; some do not; and in others trial court judges have granted adoptions but they have never been reviewed by appellate courts. (That was the case in Kentucky until this court decision!)

Second-parent adoption is analogous to step-parent adoption, but of course the bio parent and the second parent are not married to each other. They can be a same-sex or different-sex couple, or the bio parent and second parent can have a relationship that isn’t romantic at all…like two sisters who adopted together in Maryland.

Adoption typically terminates the parental rights of the child’s biological parents. Obviously, in a second-parent adoption this is not the desirable or appropriate result. Thus the analogy to step-parent adoption, where the original parent retains parental rights while his or her spouse also becomes a parent.

Well, the Kentucky court ruled that state law limits this type of adoption to a married couple. (and Kentucky is one of the majority of states that bans same-sex marriage). So the only way a lesbian biological mother’s partner could become a legal parent is by terminating the parental rights of that biological mother! How absurd! Other states have ruled that such a termination can be waived, but the court ruled that it was against Kentucky’s public policy to allow such a waiver. How about a public policy that wants a child to have a legal relationship with both his parents??

The court got it all wrong when it said that the granting of the adoption “elevated the status of the relationship between [the two women] to legal marriage.” (The non-bio mom’s lawyer also got it wrong when she argued that the court should treat the non-bio mom as a step-parent because it was necessary to give equal rights to gay couples.)

Here are some other interesting points about this case. The couple split up before filing for the adoption. Although that did not affect the court’s legal ruling, the court does make a snide and dismissive reference to the idea of former spouses filing to adopt. I think a lesbian couple filing for an adoption AFTER splitting up is not that unusual (it’s what my partner and I did!). That is the moment when the legal inequality can seem most disadvantageous for the child.

So the trial judge granted the adoption, and the way the case got to the Court of Appeals was that, more than a year later, when the parents were disagreeing about visitation and other matters, the biological mother went back into the court to undo the adoption, arguing it should never have been granted. This is not the first time a bio mom has done such a thing, but all I can say about it is…someone needed to stop her! She ruined matters for all children of same-sex couples in Kentucky to achieve her goal by any means. And here’s the irony…the court did NOT void the adoption IN THIS CASE because it was challenged over a year after it was granted, and that is an absolute no-no in Kentucky unless the trial court was defrauded, which didn’t happen here. So this child still has two mothers…as do the children of Kentucky whose second-parent adoptions were granted more than a year ago…but that option will no longer be available in the state.

crossposted from Beyond Straight and Gay Marriage

Posted in Feminism and Families, Feminism and Law, LGBT Rights | Tagged kentucky, lesbian mothers, second parent adoption | Comments Off

Law Against Sagging Pants Ruled Unconstitutional By Palm Beach FL Circuit Judge

Posted on September 17, 2008 by Ann Bartow

From here:

A Florida judge has deemed unconstitutional a law banning baggy pants that show off the wearer’s underwear, local media reported Tuesday.

A 17-year-old spent a night in jail last week after police arrested him for wearing low pants in Riviera Beach, southeast Florida.

The law banning so-called “saggy pants” was approved by city voters in March after supporters of the bill collected nearly 5,000 signatures to put the measure on the ballot.

The teen would have received a 150 dollars fine or community service, but he spent the night in jail due to a history of marijuana use, the Palm Beach Post newspaper said.

“Somebody help me,” said Palm Beach Circuit Judge Paul Moyle, before giving his decision.

“We’re not talking about exposure of buttocks. No! We’re talking about someone who has on pants whose underwear are apparently visible to a police officer who then makes an arrest and the basis is he’s then held overnight, no bond.”

“Your honor, we now have the fashion police,” added public defender Carol Bickerstaff, who asked the law be declared “unconstitutional.”

The judge agreed with Bickerstaff immediately, reported the Post.

Laws that ban low-slung pants are on the books in several US cities, including Delcambre, Louisiana, where offenders can be fined up to 500 dollars or jailed for up to six months.

Dallas, Texas and Atlanta, Georgia are among the larger US cities considering similar measures.

Maybe the Tee Shirt Law class (see also) I’ll teach someday could be expanded to encompass pants and underwear.

–Ann Bartow

Posted in Feminism and Culture, Feminism and Law | Comments Off

Stealth Cat

Posted on September 16, 2008 by Ann Bartow

Starts off slowly but hilarious if you are a crazy cat lady feminist stereotype.

Posted in Bloggenpheffer | Comments Off

Sisters are Doing It For Themselves

Posted on September 16, 2008 by Ann Bartow

You know you love it! cf: If I have to, I can do anything.

Posted in Feminism and Culture | Comments Off

Why Hollywood Does Not Require”Saving”From the Recordkeeping Requirements Imposed by 18 U.S.C. Section 2257

Posted on September 16, 2008 by Ann Bartow

In the latest edition of The Pocket Part Professor Ann Bartow responds to Alan Levy’s earlier piece How”Swingers”Might Save Hollywood from a Federal Pornography Statute. Bartow argues so “eager was Levy to ‘save Hollywood’ from having to keep records to verify that performers engaging in actual sexually explicit conduct are legally adults, that he grossly distorted the meaning and effect of 18 U.S.C. § 2257.” She also argues that, “[i]ronically, while exaggerating the negative impact of § 2257, [Levy] simultaneously underestimated the problematic nature of a different statutory provision potentially requiring record keeping for performers who engage in simulated sexual conduct.”

A more detailed version of the linked essay is available here.

–Ann Bartow

Posted in Feminism and Law, Feminist Legal Scholarship | Comments Off

Absentee Ballot Guide

Posted on September 16, 2008 by Ann Bartow

From this site:

Many states have slightly different requirements. In most cases, the application and the ballot must be sent to your individual county! The links are all here. Click on your state and follow the instructions on the web-site for your home state! The deadline in some states for receiving the application is October 15th, so get on it!

Please pass this on to anyone who has a child in college or a friend with a child in college or, as I do, an ex-husband in London. And if you have a facebook page, you might want to throw the link up.

Posted in Feminism and Politics | Comments Off

“Most teen girls still experience sexual harassment and sexism, according to new study”

Posted on September 16, 2008 by Ann Bartow

From here:

Nine of 10 teen girls report experiencing sexual harassment, and majorities also say they have received discouraging comments about their abilities in school and athletics, according to a new study that appears in the May/June issue of the journal Child Development.

The study of 600 girls between the ages of 12 and 18 from California and Georgia was conducted by Campbell Leaper, professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Christia Spears Brown, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky.

“Sexism remains pervasive in the lives of adolescent girls,” said Leaper. “Most girls have experienced all three types of sexism–sexual harassment, sexist comments about their academic abilities, and sexist comments about their athletic abilities.”

Sexual harassment included receiving inappropriate and unwanted romantic attention, hearing demeaning gender-related comments, being teased about their appearance, receiving unwanted physical contact, and being teased, bullied, or threatened with harm by a male. “Our findings on sexual harassment are, sadly, consistent with previous research,” said Leaper. “But on the other hand, most girls said they’d experienced sexual harassment at least once, as opposed to several times.”

Girls also commonly reported having received discouraging comments about their abilities because of their gender. In particular, 76 percent of girls said they had received discouraging comments about their abilities in sports, and 52 percent said they’d received discouraging comments related to their abilities in science, math, or computers–three areas Leaper focused on because of the persistent gender gap in academics. …

The study abstract is as follows:

This study investigated predictors of adolescent girls’ experiences with sexism and feminism. Girls (N = 600; M = 15.1 years, range = 12â€“18), of varied socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds, completed surveys of personal experiences with sexual harassment, academic sexism (regarding science, math, and computer technology), and athletics. Most girls reported sexual harassment (90%), academic sexism (52%), and athletic sexism (76%) at least once, with likelihood increasing with age. Socialization influences and individual factors, however, influenced likelihood of all three forms of sexism. Specifically, learning about feminism and gender-conformity pressures were linked to higher perceptions of sexism. Furthermore, girls’ social gender identity (i.e., perceived gender typicality and gender-role contentedness) and gender-egalitarian attitudes were related to perceived sexism.

The full text of the study is available here.

–Ann Bartow

Posted in Academia, Feminism and Culture, Women's Health | Comments Off

“Carnival Against Sexual Violence 55”

Posted on September 16, 2008 by Ann Bartow

Here, at abyss2hope.

Posted in Carnival time!, Feminist Blogs Of Interest | Comments Off

Cripes is Joe Biden an idiot.

Posted on September 15, 2008 by Ann Bartow

Click here and watch him importuning Missouri State Senator Chuck Graham to stand up and be recognized. Graham couldn’t do it, because Graham is confined to a wheelchair. “God love you,” says Biden, when he figures this out, about ten minutes after the rest of the audience.

–Ann Bartow

Posted in Feminism and Politics | Comments Off

Feminism and Legal Theory 25th Anniversary Conference â€“ November 6-8th Emory University School of Law â€“ Atlanta, GA

Posted on September 15, 2008 by Ann Bartow

In 1991, Routledge published At the Boundaries of Law, the very first anthology in feminist legal theory. This book has proven invaluable to scholars and students alike. The volume grew out of workshops given by the Feminism and Legal Theory Project (FLT Project), which began at the University of Wisconsin in 1984. That initial volume included chapters based on papers presented at FLT workshops by such now-notable interdisciplinary scholars, as Patricia Williams, Robin West, Mary Jane Mossman, and Lucie White. Over the years, the FLT Project has continued to generate significant and path-breaking work by well known critical law and society scholars.

In 2008, as the FLT Project is entering its 25^th year of programming, we are calling together these and other significant scholars to mark this auspicious anniversary and to assess the past transformative power and present ongoing viability of feminist legal theory both inside and outside of the academy. The conference:Transcending the Boundaries of Law:will be a”retrospective”on 25 years of theoretical engagement and evolution in regard to gender and law. It will also chart the course for the future of feminist legal thought in the Law and Society tradition.

The conference will be organized according to a three-generation schema. First is what might be termed the transitional generation of feminist legal scholars (those who moved us from women-in-law to feminist legal theory). There are many untold stories about that transition. Second, will be work from the students who followed in our wake. Their path was”easier,”in that they had both feminist theoretical material and academic mentors to facilitate their scholarly projects. They raised important intersectional ideas and concepts, complicating the very concept of gender. They have also taken on counter and conservative movements in law, such as that represented by law and economics and sociobiology.

The third group are those developing new challenges, broadening the inquiry, sometimes questioning the now deemed”traditional”feminist model with more critical takes on gender theory. This group would be defined not by age or generation in its narrow sense, but by the breadth of their ideas of what should constitute feminist inquiry. This group would of necessity address the tensions that have emerged between queer and feminist theories as well as the increasingly obvious inadequacies of identity-based theories even supplemented by concepts such as intersectionality.

More information, including the list of participants, here.

Posted in Feminists in Academia, Upcoming Conferences | Comments Off

CFP: “Applied Feminism: How Feminist Legal Theory is Changing the Law”

Posted on September 15, 2008 by Ann Bartow

This call for papers seeks submissions for the University of Baltimore School of Law’s Second Annual Feminist Legal Theory Conference. The conference will be held at the University of Baltimore on Friday, March 6, 2009. The conference will bring together law students, legal academics, practitioners and activists to explore the concrete ways in which feminist legal theory is (or is not) changing the law.

This conference will look at discrete areas of the law and ask how feminist legal theory operates or could operate to expand existing law, create new law, or combat contractions in the law. This conference will address these issues from the perspectives of activists, practitioners and academics. The conference will provide an opportunity for participants and audience members to exchange ideas about the current state of feminist legal theory by looking at how those theories are being actualized in practice and in specific areas of the law. From the conference, we hope to further the discourse about the future of feminist legal theory and its practical applications to the law. In addition, the conference is designed to provide presenters with the opportunity to gain extensive feedback on their papers.

The format of the papers is flexible in order to encourage academics, law students and practitioners to participate. Papers should address the themes discussed above and could focus on the following subject areas: sex, sexuality and gender; education; family law; employment law; poverty and welfare law; civil rights law; bioethics; immigration; international human rights; reproductive justice; criminal law; and women and politics. We encourage papers that explore the intersectionality of gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, class, and/or age.

Abstracts for the papers should be sent by October 17, 2008 to Leigh Goodmark (lgoodmark@ubalt.edu). Abstracts should be no longer than one page. Abstracts for the papers selected to be presented at the conference will be posted on the website and distributed to all presenters and attendees. Working drafts of papers are due no later than February 13, 2009. The working drafts will be posted on the conference website to be shared with other participants and attendees. Materials from last year’s conference can be viewed on our website at http://law.ubalt.edu/femconf/. Finally, please note that a limited amount of money may be available to presenters for travel expenses.

Posted in Academia, Call for Papers or Participation, Upcoming Conferences | Comments Off

“Score One for Disability Rights”

Posted on September 15, 2008 by Ann Bartow

That’s the title of this post at Angry for a Reason, below is a short excerpt (but you should read the whole thing):

On September 11th the Senate passed S. 3406, the ADA Amendments Act of 2008. This is a big fucking deal for people with disabilities. Now I’m gonna ask you to send a short email to you reps and ask them to vote for it (it had 77 cosponsors in the Senate (including my own, Patty Murray, who I love, and Hillary Clinton) so hopefully that’s some indication that it will easily be passed in the House as well). What is so great about this? It changes the language, it removes some of the worse paragraphs, it gives people with disabilites (more) legal recourse if discriminated against, and it changes the definition of disability as well as putting in writing (thank god-this is something that means a lot to me personally as someone *on* disability who is mostly functional on medication) that the determination o whether or not one has a disability is made without taking into account things that aid in helping the person to lead a “normal” life.

Posted in Feminism and Law, Women's Health | Comments Off

A Very Sad Sign of Feminism’s Success

Posted on September 15, 2008 by Ann Bartow

Among the dead, officials confirmed, was a police officer, Spree Desha, 35. When her identity was learned, all officers on the scene formed lines, stood at attention and saluted in silence as her body, covered in a white sheet, was lifted down a ladder and placed with 10 other victims a short distance from the tracks.

That paragraph, from this NYT article about the recent commuter train crash near Los Angeles, just wrecked me. Was Spree shown that kind of professional respect when she was alive? I hope so. I like to think that she was.

–Ann Bartow

Posted in Feminism and Culture | Comments Off

Does “the right to privacy” encompass sex with a comatose spouse?

Posted on September 15, 2008 by Ann Bartow

It does according to this disturbing article.

A Wisconsin appeals court says a man charged with allegedly having sex with his comatose wife in a nursing home had the right to an expectation of privacy.

The District 4 Court of Appeals Thursday upheld the dismissal of videotape evidence of David W. Johnson, 59, of Watertown, Wis., allegedly having sex with his wife, a stroke victim, in Divine Savior Nursing Home in Portage in 2005, The Madison Capital Times reported Friday.

Portage police installed the camera without Johnson’s knowledge after nursing home officials said they suspected Johnson was sexually touching his wife, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Friday.

A spokesman for state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen said his office may appeal the case to the Wisconsin Supreme Court because prosecutors view the case as sexual assault, the Sentinel reported.

Johnson’s lawyer, T. Christopher Kelly, of Madison, said his client should be left alone.

“Mr. Johnson deeply loves his wife,” Kelly said. “He’s spent every day talking to her, holding her, trying to stay connected with her and bring her back. I think he’s entitled to privacy in this matter.

Does he get to keep “having sex” with his unable-to-consent wife too? What a horrible story.

–Ann Bartow

Posted in Acts of Violence, Feminism and Law | Comments Off

The “Cleavage Caddy”

Posted on September 15, 2008 by Ann Bartow

“A Northern California woman has invented something called the ‘Cleavage Caddy’ which is like having a purse in your bra.”

If more designers would actually put capacious pockets in pants and skirts, there probably wouldn’t be a market for this.

–Ann Bartow

Posted in Bloggenpheffer | Comments Off

Essays By Feminists About Sarah Palin

Posted on September 15, 2008 by Ann Bartow

Gloria Steinem’s is entitled: Palin: wrong woman, wrong message

Katha Pollitt’s is entitled: Lipstick on a Wingnut, and she has a second piece entitled: Sara Palin, Wrong Woman for the Job.

Dr. Violet Socks’ is entitled: Sarah Palin on feminist issues

Historiann’s is entitled: Sarah Palin round-up: git along, little mommies

–Ann Bartow

Posted in Feminism and Politics | Comments Off

Aware that the blog was down, thanks for the expressions of concern.

Posted on September 15, 2008 by Ann Bartow

Apologies for any inconvenience.

–Ann Bartow

Posted in Blog Administration | Comments Off

“A Case For Obama”

Posted on September 13, 2008 by Ann Bartow

That’s the title of a guest post I wrote here, at The New Agenda blog. Learn more about The New Agenda here, at Reclusive Leftist.

–Ann Bartow

Posted in Feminism and Politics | Comments Off

They Always Eat the Boy

Posted on September 13, 2008 by Bridget Crawford

“Why do they always eat the boy?” That was the (not-really-serious) question my witty colleague Sasha Greenawalt whispered to me when someone mentioned the case of Regina v. Dudley and Stephens, 14 Q.B.D. 273 (1884), that staple of first-year Criminal Law casebooks. Sasha pointed me to a long string of shipwreck/cannibalism cases and noted a common thread: who gets eaten in the end. Reality-as-metaphor? Crim Law Feminist Law Profs, please weigh in.

-Bridget Crawford

Posted in Law Teaching | Comments Off

Trial Judge Strikes Down Florida Ban on Gay Adoption

Posted on September 13, 2008 by Tony Infanti

In granting an adoption by a gay man of a foster child that he and his partner had been caring for for years, a trial judge in Key West recently struck down Florida’s ban on adoption by lesbians and gay men.

The ban had previously been upheld against challenge in Lofton v. Secretary, Florida Department of Children and Family Services, 358 F.3d 804 (11th Cir. 2004), and Cox v. Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services, 656 So. 2d 902 (Fla. 1995). (The Lofton decision, coming after the Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas, was particularly criticized by commentators.)

In the Key West case, the lawyers and the court focused on three grounds that they indicate had not been raised in earlier cases: (1) the Florida constitution’s prohibition against “special” (as opposed to “general”) laws in the area of adoption, (2) the Florida constitution’s prohibition against the enactment of “bills of attainder,” and (3) separation of powers. The court struck down the ban on all three of these grounds. In finding against the ban on the first two grounds, the court focused on the punitive nature of the ban. On the separation of powers ground, the court found that the ban usurps the court’s traditional role of determining what is in the best interests of children by creating an irrebuttable presumption that adoption by a lesbian or gay man is never in the best interests of a child—and does so without any basis in fact.

The Florida Attorney General was invited to intervene in the case, yet made no request to do so. According to a story in the Miami Herald, the Attorney General’s office said that it did not get involved because the child was no longer in the care of the Department of Children and Families because the man who petitioned to adopt the child and his partner had earlier been named permanent guardians of the child by the court. The Attorney General’s office has since indicated that it will not appeal the decision, which in effect makes it binding only in the Key West court. Nevertheless, as the editorial board of the Miami Herald points out: “Still, it is a victory for one family and, possibly, a chink in the state’s specious legal position that bias is OK.”

-Tony Infanti

Posted in LGBT Rights | Comments Off

“Women Against Palin”

Posted on September 12, 2008 by Ann Bartow

A blog.

Via Nancy Levit

Posted in Feminism and Politics | Comments Off

“Being a Lawyer and Male Makes You a Top Earner, Census Report Shows”

Posted on September 12, 2008 by Ann Bartow

Being a lawyer and female, not so much. From the ABA Journal:

The highest earners in 2007 were men in legal occupations, who earned a median salary in 2007 of $105,233, according to a Census Bureau report.

The online report (PDF) issued in August shows women in legal occupations, which includes paralegal as well as lawyer positions, didn’t fare as well. Their median salary was $53,790. As a whole women in computer and mathematical professions earned more, with a median salary of $61,957.

Because data was collected throughout the year, the salary figures were adjusted for inflation to reflect a fixed reference point for the year.

Even when particular jobs within the legal profession were examined, women lawyers continued to lag behind their male counterparts. Women lawyers made a median of $93,600, a salary that was 77.8 percent of male lawyers’ median salary of $120,400. Female paralegal and legal assistants earned a median of $42,600, which was 93.2 percent of the $45,700 median that men earned. Female judges, magistrates and other judicial workers earned a median of $69,500, which is 64.3 percent of the median of $108,100 earned by males. …

Via Kim Diana Connolly

Posted in Feminism and Law, Legal Profession, The Underrepresentation of Women, Women and Economics | Comments Off

ACLU Action Alert re: Proposed HHS Regs

Posted on September 12, 2008 by Ann Bartow

Let the Bush Administration know precisely what you think of its proposed health care denial regulations (PDF) by September 25th.

ACLU’s Action Alert

Posted in Feminism and Law, Reproductive Rights | Comments Off

Snark attacks on Palin feed Palin-mania

Posted on September 12, 2008 by Nan Hunter

Republicans have done a brilliant job of flipping the dynamics of this campaign. First, they took the Dems by surprise with their anointment of Sarah Palin as the VP candidate. Now they seize every opportunity, no matter how ridiculous, to swamp a news cycle with “defenses” of her against “sexist” attacks and false rumors, complete with a “Palin Truth Squad” led by another woman, former Mass. Gov. Jane Swift. Every time a false rumor goes viral on the web, it helps them, not Obama.

Hmm, kinda makes you wonder who is starting these rumors.

FactCheck.org now has a piece up on “Sliming Palin” that corrects a number of the false accusations:

Palin did not cut funding for special needs education in Alaska by 62 percent. She didn’t cut it at all. In fact, she increased funding and signed a bill that will triple per-pupil funding over three years for special needs students with high-cost requirements.

She did not demand that books be banned from the Wasilla library. Some of the books on a widely circulated list were not even in print at the time. The librarian has said Palin asked a “What if?” question, but the librarian continued in her job through most of Palin’s first term. [NB – there may be more here, see Ann’s earlier post.]

She was never a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, a group that wants Alaskans to vote on whether they wish to secede from the United States. She’s been registered as a Republican since May 1982.
Palin never endorsed or supported Pat Buchanan for president. She once wore a Buchanan button as a “courtesy” when he visited Wasilla, but shortly afterward she was appointed to co-chair of the campaign of Steve Forbes in the state.
Palin has not pushed for teaching creationism in Alaska’s schools. She has said that students should be allowed to “debate both sides” of the evolution question, but she also said creationism “doesn’t have to be part of the curriculum.”

Fact Check is essentially serving as an honest broker, correcting spin and filling in a gap that the MSM have not been able to fill. A friend who works there says that the web site has gotten 1.5 million hits so far this week, so hopefully it’s working.

When you visit Fact Check, you’ll discover that – surprise! – most of its posts refute misleading ads from the McCain-Palin campaign. But because Palin is the media obsession of the moment and because the Repubs have gotten off to a faster start with faux “correction” ads, the McCain campaign is trying (with considerable success) to inscribe a script in which she is the victim of the lefty blogosphere or the liberal media – you pick. All of which serves the purpose of keeping their star in the spotlight.

Beware of viral e/mails that depict Palin as a cartoon monster, which she is not, rather than as a savvy right-wing politician, which she is. Don’t leap with both feet onto every mistake she makes. If someone had asked me yesterday what I thought of “the Bush doctrine,” I wouldn’t have known what it was either. Hell, I didn’t think that man had a doctrine. And remember: people root for underdogs.

Meanwhile, here’s an obscure-fact-of-the-week quiz: where is Joe Biden?
Answer (according to the Times of London): American Legion Post 703 in Parma, Ohio.

Good luck, Joe! You’re going to need it.

—Nan Hunter – cross-posted at hunter of justice

Posted in Feminism and Politics | Comments Off

Lipstick on a Pig

Posted on September 12, 2008 by Ann Bartow

Time recently published ‘A Brief History Of: ‘Putting Lipstick on a Pig” noting that many politicians have used it publicly, including Barack Obama, John McCain, Dick Cheney, and both John and Elizabeth Edwards.

The Urban Dictionary’s definition of “lipstick on a pig” is:

slang for when someone tries to dress something up, but is still that something. usually used on ugly broads, when they put on a skirt and some lipstick and well, they still look like the same digusting pig.

–Ann Bartow

Posted in Feminism and Politics, Sociolinguistics | Comments Off

Palin Accused of Attempts to Ban Books from Public Library

Posted on September 12, 2008 by Ann Bartow

Unlike so many things being thrown at her, this seems like an entirely appropriate basis for criticism. From here:

… Shortly after taking office in 1996 as mayor of Wasilla, a city of about 7,000 people, Palin asked the city’s head librarian about banning books. Later, the librarian was notified by Palin that she was being fired, although Palin backed off under pressure.

Palin alleged attempt at book-banning has been a matter of intense interest since Republican presidential nominee John McCain named her as his running mate last month.

Taylor Griffin, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, said Thursday that Palin asked the head librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, on three occasions how she would react to attempts at banning books. He said the questions, in the fall of 1996, were hypothetical and entirely appropriate. He said a patron had asked the library to remove a title the year before and the mayor wanted to understand how such disputes were handled.

Records on the city’s Web site, however, do not show any books were challenged in Wasilla in the 10 years before Palin took office.

Palin notified Emmons she would be fired in January 1997 because the mayor didn’t feel she had the librarian’s “full support.” Emmons was reinstated the next day after public outcry, according to newspaper reports at the time.

Still, one longtime library staffer recalls that the run-in made everyone fear for their jobs.

“Mayor Palin gave us some terrible moments and some rather gut-wrenching moments, particularly when Mary Ellen said she was going to have to leave,” said Cathy Petrie, who managed the children’s collection at the time.

Recent outrage has been fueled by Wasilla housewife Anne Kilkenny, whose 2,400-word critique of Palin’s legacy as mayor is widely posted on the Internet. Kilkenny described Palin’s actions as “out-and-out censorship.”

But the McCain campaign, in a statement, said the charge “is categorically false … Governor Sarah Palin has never asked anyone to ban a book, period.”

Emmons, a former Alaska Library Association president who now goes by Mary Ellen Baker, did not return calls seeking comment.

According to the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman newspaper, Emmons did not mince words when Palin asked her “how I would deal with her saying a book can’t be in the library” on Oct. 28, 1996, in a week when the mayor had asked department heads for letters of resignation.

“She asked me if I would object to censorship, and I replied ‘Yup’,” Emmons told a reporter. “And I told her it would not be just me. This was a constitutional question, and the American Civil Liberties Union would get involved, too.”

The Rev. Howard Bess, a liberal Christian preacher in the nearby town of Palmer, said the church Palin and her family attended until 2002, the Wasilla Assembly of God, was pushing to remove his book from local bookstores.

Emmons told him that year that several copies of “Pastor I Am Gay” had disappeared from the library shelves, Bess said. …

–Ann Bartow

Posted in Feminism and Politics, LGBT Rights | Comments Off

Iceberg

Posted on September 11, 2008 by Ann Bartow

Why are you smirking? Does it look like something else to you?

Posted in Bloggenpheffer | Comments Off

Sue Johanson on Sex

Posted on September 11, 2008 by Ann Bartow

Here, via NPR. The shorter version: sex education is good; anal sex is risky.

Posted in Women's Health | Comments Off

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