U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced an important new climate change financing group last week, but out of the 19 people named, no women were included. This is unfortunate because women will bear the brunt of the effects of climate change and are key to any climate solutions.
The group is tasked with investigating potential sources of revenue to support developing countries in their efforts to cope with the impacts of climate change and the shift to low-carbon development pathways. The Copenhagen negotiations in December called for $30 billion in climate financing for 2010 to 2012, ramping up to $100 billion annually by 2020. …
The secretary-general’s choices for the advisory group will bring intellectual energy and political gravitas. The group is chaired by U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. It includes two additional heads of state, ministers of finance, and leaders of central banks. Taking part are financier and philanthropist George Soros and economist Sir Nicholas Stern. It includes equal representation between industrialized countries and developing countries (though only two smaller, highly vulnerable developing countries). But what it does not include at all is women.
1. Penny Marshall, who started as an actress (“Laverne and Shirley”), went on to direct films that included “Awakenings,” “Big,” and “A League of Their Own.”
2. Amy Heckerling is the director of “Clueless” and the neglected gem “I Could Never Be Your Woman.”
3. Betty Thomas also started as an actress (“Hill Street Blues”) and went on to direct “The Brady Bunch” and “28 Days.”
4. Nora Ephron, the daughter of successful screenwriters, began as a writer and then went on to direct films like “Julie & Julia,” and “You’ve Got Mail.”
5. Gurinder Chadha directed the international hit “Bend it Like Beckham” as well as “What’s Cooking” and “Bride and Prejudice.”
6. Nancy Meyers also began as a writer and has gone on to direct some of the most successful movies of the last 10 years including “It’s Complicated,” “The Holiday,” and “Something’s Gotta Give.”
7. Penelope Speeris made a successful documentary about a topic considered very male — punk music — in “The Decline of Western Civilization.” That led to her directing the wildly successful “Wayne’s World.”
8. Kasi Lemmons is another actress turned director with “Eve’s Bayou” and “The Caveman’s Valentine,” starring Samuel L. Jackson.
9. Mabel Normand was one of the most gifted comic actors of the silent era and one of the first female film directors. She often worked with Charlie Chaplin.
10. Mira Nair directed “Monsoon Wedding” and the recent biopic “Amelia,” starring Hillary Swank.
Vulnerability, Resilience, and the State
A Feminism and Legal Theory Project Workshop—March 19 – 20, 2010
575 Gambrell Hall
Emory University School of Law
1301 Clifton Road, Atlanta GA 30322
Friday, March 19, 2010
4:00 pm – 6:30 pm – Vulnerability and Resilience
**Barbara Woodhouse – Emory University; An Ecogenerist Model of Vulnerability, Resilience and the Responsive State
**Linda McClain – Boston University; Toward a Feminist “Social Ecology”
**Deborah Steinstra – University of Manitoba; Resisting Resilience
**Martha McCluskey – SUNY- Buffalo; Toward a Law and Economics of Resilience: From Moral Hazard and Paternalism to Bargaining Power
6:30 pm – 8:00 pm — DINNER
Saturday, March 20, 2010
9:30 am – noon – Vulnerability and the State
**Michele Landis Dauber – Stanford University; We Lost Our All
**Teemu Ruskola – Emory University; The State of Disaster
**Gwendolyn Smith – Law Literacy Foundation; More Democracy, Real Resilience: On Creating Conditions for All Citizens to Flourish
**Laura Spitz – University of Colorado; Theorizing the More Responsive State: Transcending the National Boundaries of Law
12:15 pm – 1:15 pm — LUNCH
1:30 pm – 2:45 pm – Institutions of Resilience and Repression I — Education
**Risa Lieberwitz – Cornell University; The State and Higher Education: Responding to Public or Private Interests?
**Benjamin Reiss – Emory University; Creative Writing after Virginia Tech: From Psychiatric Risk to Institutional Vulnerability
3:00 – 5:00 pm – Institutions of Resilience and Repression II – Protection
**Nancy Millar – Atlanta, Georgia; Juvenile Justice, Resilience, and the State
**Jessica Weaver – SMU; Capturing the Psychological Abuse of Children
**Daniela Kraiem, American University; Resilient Caretaking Communities: Rethinking the State of Long Term Care
The Abstract:
The Fair Housing Act makes it illegal to publish discriminatory housing advertisements. This has long been applied to newspapers, which have effectively screened all discriminatory housing ads from sight. However, in 1996 Congress created a loophole when it immunized website operators from liability for the content posted to their sites by third parties. Without publisher liability, websites have no incentive to screen out discriminatory housing ads. The result is that such ads are proliferating in cyberspace.
While this situation is problematic from a fair housing standpoint, it presents a valuable opportunity. For the first time in a generation discriminatory housing advertisements are out in the open and available for analysis. This article contains a comprehensive review of discriminatory housing ads appearing on the popular website craigslist, which yields a number of interesting findings, including: (1) The vast majority of those who post discriminatory on-line advertisements for housing are placed by people seeking roommates. (2) The overwhelming majority of problematic ads discriminate on the basis of familial status. There are very few that discriminate based on race, ethnicity, or religion. (3) The few roommate ads that do mention race, ethnicity, or religion are more likely to discriminate in favor of minority groups. Thus, they appear more as expressions of individual diversity of backgrounds and beliefs than exclusionary tools of a majoritarian power structure.
This information can and should inform changes to the legislative and enforcement regime for dealing with discriminatory housing advertisements. For example, we should recognize that the roommate relationship is different from traditional rental housing, and accord roommate-seekers protection from the law – protection which is currently given to small landlords (who arguably do not need it) but not co-lessees. Fair housing advocates also must address the unique problems presented by familial status as a protected category, both in terms of public awareness and acceptance of the law.
… Women make up only 6 percent of the Marine Corps, which cultivates an image as the most testosterone-fueled service, and they are still officially barred from combat branches like the infantry.
But in a bureaucratic sleight of hand, used by both the Army and Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan when women have been needed for critical jobs like bomb disposal or intelligence, the female engagement teams are to be “attached” to all-male infantry units within the First Marine Expeditionary Force — a source of pride and excitement for them. …
I have no doubt that the women Marines will prove themselves more than capable. But what a shame they had to wait until their gender could be tactically leveraged to get this opportunity.
Last night Stephen Colbert sat down with Sean Hannity, who “joined [him] live from stuff [he] could edit together,” and with some crafty splicing, proceeded to turn Hannity into an aspiring prostitute.
Colbert was determined to get Hannity’s thoughts on the reports that James O’Keefe’s ACORN videos had been “heavily edited” to be deceptive. Hannity had been silent on the issue, despite being a vocal supporter of O’Keefe.
Using the same misleading tactics O’Keefe employed, Colbert quickly got what he needed out of Hannity and moved along, donning a pimp’s hat and coat. The “interview” was revealing, as Hannity was dying to get out on the streets and turn some tricks. The only thing holding him back: a lack of hooker boots and condoms.
More evidence that Supposedly Liberal Dudes view women as second class citizens. The way that Colbert frames prostitution as the most degrading thing possible is creepy and sad. And anyone who thinks legalization would make any difference in the level of contempt thrown at people who sell sex should investigate similar cultural references to women in pornography.
The Attorney General of Virginia has sent a letter to the state’s public colleges and universities opining that the addition of “sexual orientation” or “gender identity” to their nondiscrimination policies is invalid and advising them to “take appropriate actions” to bring their policies in line with his interpretation of state law. According to the Attorney General, only the state legislature can extend nondiscrimination protections to cover sexual orientation and gender identity, which it has persistently refused to do. (The Washington Post story is here.)
Among the reactions to this news on the Post’s “Virginia Politics” blog was one from a representative of the Family Foundation who doubted that “that this would be the final straw in whether or not someone’s going to come to Virginia’s universities.” He continued, “They are some of the best universities in the country. I think they can stand on their own without this policy.” Yeah, right. And that would be because there are no other colleges and universities in the country that Virginia schools compete with for students, faculty, and staff and that do offer such protections and thus a more welcoming environment for LGBT individuals? Way to shoot yourself in the foot in the middle of the race to compete for the best and the brightest.
Those interested in the intersections between feminist theory and animal law saw Ann’s post (here) about pork production. Folks also might be interested in the Animal Blawg’s series of guest posts by Bruce Wagman (Partner, Shiff Hardin LLP):
The Message is in the Music: Hip Hop Feminism, Riot Grrrl, Latina Music, and More
Twelfth Annual Women’s History Month Conference at Sarah Lawrence College
Bronxville, New York
Friday & Saturday, March 5 & 6, 2010
Free and open to the public
Keynote speaker: Carmen Ashhurst, former president of Def Jam Recordings and Rush Communications, and author of the forthcoming book, Selling My Brothers: The Movement, The Media and Me.
Music has long served social movements as a sound track, as a means of communication, and as its own arena for activism. While multiple generations of feminists have used music in these ways, it has played especially vital roles for those born since the 1970s. This conference will explore the ways in which young feminists have defined and expressed politics through music and musical cultures and communities. Among the questions we will ponder are: How does music reflect sites of agreement and conflict among different groups of feminists? How have movements like Riot Grrrl and Hip Hop feminism attracted young women to feminist activism? How do young feminists’ uses of music compare with those of earlier generations?
Scheduled presentations include:
Emma Carmichael, Vassar College, Female Subjectivity within Hip Hop: Rappers, Lyrics, and Performance
Iresha Picot, Temple University, Doorknockers: Black Female Rappers Knockin’ on a New Intellectual Discourse
María Santana, University of Central Florida, Her Sexy Stilettos Give a Women’s Point of View to Reggaeton: Ivy Queen and Latin Urban Music
… That’s how it’s gone with the British 2009 documentary film Pig Business. I watched this film in several 10-minute segments via YouTube (Part One) because it hasn’t been released in the U.S., primarily due to legal pressure brought upon the director (Tracy Worcester, who spent four years making the film) by the film’s main villain, Smithfield Foods. The world’s largest pork producer, Smithfield has 52,000 employees processing 27 million pigs per year in 15 countries, accruing annual sales around $12 billion. The UK’s Channel 4 ran the film last summer despite four letters from Smithfield threatening litigation, but since no U.S. insurer would back the film’s release here, it has become essentially a black-market film. Score another one for corporate censorship.
Some 35 years ago, the Michigan state legislature determined that a criminal defendant accused of rape may not introduce evidence about the victim’s past sexual behavior, because the victim’s past willingness is not relevant to the question of present consent. The majority here disagrees with that legislative determination and concludes that evidence of the victim’s promiscuity or previous willingness to engage in somewhat similar sex acts was not only relevant but was “indispensable” and “the most relevant evidence.” Moreover, because this appeal arises in the context of a habeas proceeding, the majority ultimately holds that the rape defendant has a “constitutionally protected” and “clearly established” right to introduce this evidence. In so holding, the majority effectively abrogates every rape-shield statute in this circuit….I do not believe that there is any such constitutional right to present evidence of a rape victim’s promiscuity or past willingness to engage in sex acts, nor do I believe that the majority is justified in its condemnation of the rape-shield concept. I dissent. Gagne v. Booker, 2010 WL 616436 (6th Cir. 2010) (Batchelder, J., dissenting).
I’m not sure that I agree with Judge Batchelder that the majority’s opinion in Gagne v. Booker “effectively abroagates every rape-shield statute in [the Sixth] circuit,” but it is a nasty piece of work that badly misconstrues the purposes behind the rape shield rule and its exceptions. Read the rest of this entry »
“The Tribunal is a women-directed and women-centered justice and advocacy initiative. Judges will hear testimony from several women of Burma who will share their personal stories of surviving human rights violations and crimes under miliatry rule in Burma. Their voices, and the findings and recommendations of the judges, will be directed to the Burmese regime and the international community. The Tribunal will provide a powerful spotlight on the oppression of women of Burma in order to support the development of a just and peaceful Burma.”
Bridget blogged about the call for papers a few months ago. Now that the conference is just around the corner, here’s another short reminder:
The UCLA Critical Race Studies program – along with a great group of co-sponsors including the Women and Law Project at Thomas Jefferson Law School, the Women of Color Collective at UCLA, the Williams Institute, LatCrit Inc., and a dozen more – is hosting a not-to-be-missed conference on intersectionality. Speakers include, just to name a few, Devon Carbado, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Angela Harris, Catherine MacKinnon, Mari Matsuda, Dorothy Roberts, and Patricia Williams, along with dozens of other nationally known scholars from law and from related fields, (including Feminist Law Professors founder Ann Bartow). If you’re in the area, you should definitely make plans to attend.
… According to the medical journal Sexually Transmitted Infections, 45 percent of men reported that they had experienced an ill-fitting condom within the last three months.
The misfits were significantly more likely to report breakage and slippage, along with difficulty reaching orgasm, both for their partners and for themselves, and a host of other sexual mishaps. Not surprisingly, men with ill-fitting condoms were more likely to take them off before sex was even over — all of which adds up to a massive failure for the one job a condom exists to fulfill.
Aside from a realistic range of sizes, there is a dizzying amount of condom variety. A non-exhaustive list: ribbed, for her/his pleasure, studded, lubricated, extra thin, scented, textured, unscented, flavored, extended pleasure, colored, with/without spermicide, glow in the dark, lamb skin, warming. But aside from the machismo-imbued “Magnum” designation, you’d be hard-pressed to find any size labels. What’s a modestly endowed guy to do? And perhaps more importantly, are the condom manufacturers being irresponsible by not being transparent in their sizing? Do they even make small condoms?
In fact, there is some size variation in condoms, but it’s couched in jargon. LifeStyles has by far the most direct code, called “Snugger Fit.” Here is a sizing chart for Durex condoms.
Trojan seems to have recalibrated its sizes a la Starbucks (and there is something appealing, if patronizing, about the idea of buying a “Tall” condom when in fact it’s the opposite). The company organizes its products by Regular, Large, and Extra Large. Ah, so the regular is actually a small? Wrong. The regular is actually regular — 35 of their 42 lines fall under this category — not exactly following the bell curve. …
Described here. An essay by Douglas entitled “Girls Gone Anti-Feminist” that touches on the book’s themes is available here. Below is an excerpt:
… Enlightened sexism is a response, deliberate or not, to the perceived threat of a new gender regime. It insists that women have made plenty of progress because of feminism—indeed, full equality, has allegedly been achieved. So now it’s okay, even amusing, to resurrect sexist stereotypes of girls and women. Enlightened sexism sells the line that it is precisely through women’s calculated deployment of their faces, bodies, attire, and sexuality that they gain and enjoy true power— power that is fun, that men will not resent, and indeed will embrace. True power here has nothing to do with economic independence or professional achievement: it has to do with getting men to lust after you and other women to envy you. Enlightened sexism is especially targeted to girls and young women and emphasizes that now that they “have it all,” they should focus the bulk of their time and energy on being hot, pleasing men, competing with other women, and shopping.
Enlightened sexism is a manufacturing process that is constantly produced by the media. Its components—anxiety about female achievement; renewed and amplified objectification of young women’s bodies and faces; dual exploitation and punishment of female sexuality; dividing of women against each other by age, race and class; and rampant branding and consumerism—began to swirl around in the early 1990s, consolidating as the dark star it has become in the early 21st century. …
… Enlightened sexism is feminist in its outward appearance (of course you can be or do anything you want) but sexist in its intent (hold on, girls, only up to a certain point, and not in any way that discomfits men). While enlightened sexism seems to support women’s equality, it is dedicated to the undoing of feminism. In fact, because this equality might lead to “sameness”—way too scary—girls and women need to be reminded that they are still fundamentally female, and so must be emphatically feminine.
Thus, enlightened sexism takes the gains of the women’s movement as a given, and then uses them as permission to resurrect retrograde images of girls and women as sex objects, still defined by their appearance and their biological destiny.
Consequently, in the age of enlightened sexism there has been an explosion in makeover, matchmaking and modeling shows, a renewed emphasis on breasts (and a massive surge in the promotion of breast augmentation), an obsession with babies and motherhood in celebrity journalism (the rise of the creepy “bump patrol”), and a celebration of “opting out” of the workforce. …
Women’s figure skating gold medalist Kim Yu-na outscored her competitors by a wide margin. As reported by the LA Times (here) and other news outlets, here’s how 1984 men’s figure skating champion and sports announcer Scott Hamilton described Yu-na’s performance:
“Yuna is like Seabiscuit, a champion who found a way of breaking others’ will,” Hamilton said.
I liked Scott Hamilton as a skater and I (generally) like him as a commentator, but couldn’t he come up with a better comparison? Something other than the women’s gold medalist was like a horse? Yeah, yeah, Seabiscuit dominated horse racing, but surely Hamilton is more creative than that.
This isn’t the first time that women athletes have been compared to horses — no, wait, that horses have been considered “women athletes.” Remember the Fox Sports list of Top Women Athletes, blogged by Ann here? Scott Hamilton, please don’t stoop to Fox’s level.
I testified yesterday in opposition to Nebraska LB 1103, which would ban abortions starting at 20 weeks after fertilization, and which contains only a very narrow health exception. The ban is unconstitutional because, as the sponsor readily admits, it prohibits abortions before the fetus is viable. Moreover, its extremely narrow exception unconstitutionally endangers women’s health. Leslie Griffin (University of Houston Law Center) also testified against the bill, while Teresa Stanton Collett (University of St. Thomas Law School) testified in support. Nebraska has the country’s only unicameral legislature, so this will be the only hearing on the bill.
At the hearing, proponents of the bill were asked about the lack of a mental health exception. In response to questions about a woman who is suicidal, they suggested she be treated with electroconvulsive therapy and be confined and restrained for the duration of her pregnancy, rather than be allowed access to abortion. Meanwhile, as the hearing on LB 1103 was in progress, a committee in a nearby hearing room debated a prenatal care bill. Supposedly “pro-life” Governor Heineman has expressed his opposition to this legislation “because it would provide taxpayer-funded benefits to illegal immigrants.” Fetuses of “illegal immigrants” with wanted pregnancies don’t count as “unborn babies” that deserve protection?
A committee of the Nebraska Legislature heard from experts on constitutional law and pain management Thursday as it sifted through the question of whether the state should ban abortions as early as the 20th week of pregnancy.
Supporters and opponents of the bill (LB1103) introduced by Speaker Mike Flood filled the hearing room. For the first time, those attending had to pass through a metal detector at the door. . . .
Nebraska legislators are proposing a bill on abortion that, if passed, would be the strictest in the nation and would ban most abortions after 20 weeks into a pregnancy.
The first public hearing on the so-called Abortion Pain Prevention Act today drew a crowd of 100, and medical and legal experts from as far away as New York City, Alaska and Boston.
The bill’s history and text is available here (click on “Introduced Copy” for text).
… [T]he company ClearSight Interactive is getting ready to launch a form of targeting based on users’ IP addresses. ClearSight, which describes IP addresses as the bridge between users’ offline and online data, has spent the last 18 months acquiring more than 100 million IP addresses — along with email addresses and postal addresses — from publishers. As of today, ClearSight Interactive believes it has collected enough data from publishers to reliably link 65 million “sticky” IP addresses — typically for people who connect to the Web using cable modems — to specific individuals, ClearSight president Tim Daly told MediaPost today during a break at the OMMA Behavioral conference. …
People’s surfing can be tracked by exploiting a browser loophole basically which lets anybody see where else a site’s visitors have been on the Internet, see e.g. two “online target marketing services” Beencounter, and Haveyourfriendsbeenthere.
“New research is showing that eviction is a particular burden on low-income black women, often single mothers, who have an easier time renting apartments than their male counterparts, but are vulnerable to losing them because their wages or public benefits have not kept up with the cost of housing.
And evictions, in turn, can easily throw families into cascades of turmoil and debt.
‘Just as incarceration has become typical in the lives of poor black men, eviction has become typical in the lives of poor black women[.]‘”
While job losses and the bleak economic picture are to blame in some cases, and tenant misbehavior in others, as the article point out, evictions sometimes occur when tenants complain to authorities about housing violations, making landlords angry. Eviction in these circumstances may be a textbook case of retaliatory eviction, which is, under certain circumstances, a defense to eviction. However, it is sometimes difficult to prove the reasons for an eviction, and, as in many legal matters, poor people of color often lack the resources to raise such defenses. Eviction appears to play a significant role in the cycle of poverty that traps some black women, but, unlike the attention given to foreclosures, evictions sometimes go unremarked and there are few bodies of data enumerating them. Indeed, one challenge to accurately counting evictions is the fact that a large number of evictions are not court-ordered—many people under the threat of eviction move before the process is completed. Some people still engage in what we in my childhood called a “night move”—moving out under cover of darkness to avoid the embarrassment of being seen by neighbors (or the landlord) when there was no hope of getting current on the rent. My aunt, with whom I lived for almost two years, was a night move professional. With her own ten children and the extra children (like me) that she often had residing with her, affordable, suitable housing was a continuous challenge. Note that engaging in a voluntary “day move” doesn’t necessarily mean that all is well in your life. My mother used to tell me stoically of the morning that she smiled and waved my father off to work, then packed her personal items and her two children to get away from an abusive relationship. My mother firmly believed that women in situations of domestic abuse did best to avoid confrontation and to disappear while the abuser was away. Sadly, some types of domestic violence “day moves” feature the removal of the entire household even when abused persons don’t wish to move out. As the New York Times article remarks, sometimes landlords evict tenants who have made domestic violence reports to police out of fear that authorities will somehow hold landlords liable for tolerating such disturbances.
As the article indicates, some temporary government programs have offered subsidies to those facing crisis in rental housing. The larger, longer term problem, however, goes unaddressed: housing represents a substantial expense even for people with middleclass incomes. This is even more true for the poor, as the cost of housing sometimes means choosing between shelter and food, clothes or medicine. To quote from the article:
“A minimum-wage worker may gross little more than $1,100 a month; a welfare recipient in Wisconsin receives $673 a month, while two-bedroom units start at about $475.
‘On $673 a month, how do you buy tennis shoes for the kids, clean shirts for school and still pay your rent?’”
A facsimile of a 15th Century Manuscript from the GERICHTLICHE ZWEIKAMPF, 1873, reproduced in HENRY C. LEA, THE DUEL AND THE OATH 154 (1878)
Mark Egerman (Staff Counsel, National Abortion Federation) has posted to SSRN his working paper, “Avoiding Confrontation,” a a feminist critique of evidence law. Here is a portion of the abstract:
This article takes seriously Justice Scalia’s facetious aside in Giles v. California and examines whether there should be a separate confrontation doctrine for domestic violence cases. The history of Confrontation is explored, starting with one of its predecessors, the judicial duel. Dueling was used as a judicial fact-finder for centuries and developed a complex series of regulations that focused not only on accuracy, but also on the status of the participants. As the doctrine of confrontation developed, it retained some of the substantive status-oriented elements of dueling. An analysis of major cases from the Common Law and the Supreme Court tracks these developments and uncovers these elements. Modern confrontation doctrine is shown to embody non-adjudicatory elements concerned with status and social power.
These elements imagine a series of relationships between accuser and accused that do not adequately address the concerns reflected in Domestic Violence situations. Hierarchical crimes which focus on the domination of a subordinated victim present different concerns than the types of crime anticipated by our doctrine of confrontation ….The article concludes by proposing the partial unincorporation of the Confrontation Clause as it applies to victims of domestic violence in state courts.
Egerman’s article includes a discussion of the origins of the “judicial duel,” which served as a form of discovery. Not just men dueled. Egerman uses the illustration, above right, showing a 15th century woman dueling with a man to explore the history of women’s participation in the evidentiary process:
Some locations forbid the practice altogether. Others made specific accommodations that resulted in a process that must rank high on any list of bizarre judicial practices. In order to ensure a fair fight between a man and a woman, and thus best establish the facts of the case, the man was placed up to his navel in a pit three feet wide. The man had his left hand tied behind his back while the woman was able to use all of her limbs. The man was given only a club, while “his fair opponent has the free use of her limbs and was furnished with a stone as large as the fist, or weighting from one to five pounds, fastened in a piece of stuff.” In at least one jurisdiction, this procedure was limited only to accusations of rape. These regulations reflect an interest in sex roles and the ability of women to participate in formal evidentiary practices – specifically their inability to participate as equals. (citations omitted)
The March 11, 2010 edition of the New York Review of Bookscontains poweful essay by David Kaiser (Chairperson, Just Detention International) and Lovisa Sannow (Executive Director, Just Detention International). In “The Rape of American Prisoners,” Kaiser and Sannow detail a significant “crisis of sexual abuse” in juvenile detention in the U.S. The authors rely on a report by the Texas Youth Commission, Office of the General Counsel; a report by the Texas Department of Public Safety, Texas Ranger Division; the Bureau of Justice Statistics study of Sexual Victimization in Juvenlie Facilities Reported by Youth, 2008-2009; and other works.
The statistics are staggering. Kaiser and Sannow explain the importance and implication of the studies, as well as their deficiencies and strengths. In describing one of the findings of the Bureau of Justice Statistics report (available here) the authors note:
Nearly 62 percent of all reported incidents of staff sexual misconduct involved female staff and male inmates. Female staff were involved in 48 percent of staff-on-inmate abuse in which the inmates were unwilling participants. The rates at which female staff seem to abuse male inmates, in jails and in juvenile detention, clearly warrant further study. Of the women in jail, 3.7 percent reported inmate-on-inmate sexual abuse; 1.3 percent of men did. Does this mean that women are more likely to abuse each other behind bars than men, or that they’re more willing to admit abuse? We don’t know—but if they’re simply more willing to admit abuse, then the BJS findings on men may have to be multiplied dramatically.
I was astounded at the rate of reported sexual abuse of male inmates by female staff members. It illustrates that in some circumstances, women use sexual violence as a form of domination and power over men in a way that is not so different from what men do to women. The authors point out that it is difficult to know why female inmates are more likely than their male counterparts to be sexually abused by another inmate of the same sex. It may be that women are more abusive of each other than men are.
The Washington Post is reporting that the Department of Housing and Urban Development is going to undertake a national study of LGBT housing discrimination. The federal Fair Housing Act does not currently prohibit sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination; however, this study is viewed as a first step toward extending such protection.
As a past victim of housing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, I am encouraged to see the federal government taking an interest in this important issue. I am even more impressed by the fact that the government is reaching out to the LGBT communities in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco (with plans to obtain input from LGBT persons in other areas of the country through e-mail or the web) for input on how to design the study. In past studies testing for race discrimination, testers of different races were sent out to determine whether landlords and real estate agents treated them differently based on their race. The concern with this current study is in making sure that the sexual orientation or gender identity of the applicant is clear and that any difference in treatment can really be attributed to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. That they have reached out to the LGBT community to consider how to do this demonstrates sensitivity to the LGBT community and evinces an intent to design a serious, meaningful study. It’ll be interesting to see the results that they obtain.
Feminist Law Prof Michael J. Higdon (Tennessee) has posted to SSRN his working paper, “To Lynch a Child: Bullying and Gender Non-Conformity in Our Nation’s Schools.” Here is the abstract:
In January 2010, a 9-year old boy named Montana Lance hung himself in a bathroom at the Texas elementary school he attended. Although certainly shocking, such acts are unfortunately becoming less and less unusual. In fact, the suicide of Montana Lance is very reminiscent of what happened in April 2009 when two 11-year-old boys, one in Massachusetts and one in Georgia, likewise committed suicide just days apart. What would cause these children to end their lives? The answer in each case is the same: all three suffered extreme levels of victimization at the hands of school bullies—bullying that others have described as involving “relentless homophobic taunts.” And, as we can see from the fate of these three little boys, this form of harassment was obviously very traumatic.
In this article, I look at the growing problem of school bullying in America today. Now, almost all children are teased and most will even face at least some form of bullying during their childhood. However, studies reveal that some children will unfortunately become chronic victims of school bullying. Chief among that group are those children whose gender expression is at odds with what society considers “appropriate.” As my article explores, the gender stereotypes that exist within our society are frequently to blame for the more extreme levels of bullying currently being carried out in our nation’s schools. And the impact this bullying has on its victims is staggering. Earlier I mentioned three children who took their own lives as a result of bullying. These are but three examples of those who have lost their lives to gender-based bullying. However, there are countless other victims who, although not paying with their lives, are nonetheless paying dearly in other ways. Specifically, the psychological literature on the emotional impacts that befall these chronic victims of bullying reveals a whole host of resulting problems—debilitating consequences that can last a lifetime.
As a result, my article argues that bullying on the basis of gender non-conformity is, in essence, a form of lynching. First, both are driven by unwritten social codes—in one instance, white supremacy; in the other, gender stereotypes. Second, both are carried out by perpetrators who do not act in isolation but with the support and sometimes involvement of the larger community. As I explain, one of the reasons gender-based bullying is so frequent is the degree to which peers and school administrators ignore such behavior and, in some instances, even become active participants. Third, both result in extreme harm—lynching, in its most basic form, resulted in dead bodies; however, a lynching need not be defined so narrowly. In the case of segregation, for example, we had living children with “lynched” spirits. As one commentator describes, “these children . . . were truly lynched spiritually, emotionally, and mentally.” As noted above, and as discussed quite extensively in my article, chronic bullying on the basis of gender stereotypes carries similar results. Finally, both lynching and gender-based bullying achieve maximum effectiveness by the way in which they generate fear in others. The clear message of both is the same: obey the “code” or become the next victim.
Although other scholars have addressed the topic of bullying, none have taken the approach that it is 1) heavily based on gender stereotypes and 2) as such, is in essence a form of lynching given the extreme harms it can cause. As a result, many articles propose remedies that focus more on the need for greater legal intervention. I argue that, first, only by recognizing this form of bullying for what it is—a form of lynching—can we even attempt to craft a solution to the problem. Second, given the degree to which social norms relating to gender animate this form of bullying, legal solutions alone will be inadequate absent some means of changing society’s adherence to these rigid and unforgiving stereotypes. Accordingly, I conclude by discussing ways in which litigation, legislation and education can work together to help try and effectuate some form of social change.
With all the attention here on the paucity of female authors in the top law reviews, here’s an interesting paper from Jonathan Gingerich calling for blind review as the norm at law reviews:
Abstract:
A number of studies suggest that non-blind review of manuscripts submitted to professional journals (including law journals) disadvantages female authors relative to blind review. Studies also suggest that non-blind review encourages professional journals (and particularly law journals) to make decisions about manuscripts on the basis of letterhead prestige rather than article quality, which can make it difficult for younger scholars to publish their work even when it is quite good. There are some costs to adopting a blind review policy, including the administrative costs of ensuring that an article is appropriately blinded before it is reviewed. But these costs are likely outweighed by the benefits of adopting a blind review model, such as decreased reliance on letterhead prestige, better perceptions of the journal’s review process by potential authors, and, theoretically, publication of higher quality articles. In this paper, I explore the of bias in student edited law reviews, survey literature on blind review from other disciplines, and recommend that student run law reviews adopt the following policy:
“We review submissions anonymously. We redact identifying information from submissions to ensure that no editor who participates in making any decision relating to whether a particular submission will be published knows the author’s name, affiliation, academic credentials, prior publications, or pending publication offers. We request that authors submit manuscripts that are suitable for blind review.”
The legal blogosphere has been embroiled recently in a series of discussions about Karen Rothenberg, formerly dean at Maryland law. For those living in a cave (or avoiding Above the Law as a paper-finishing strategy), the basic facts are these: Karen Rothenberg was UM’s first woman dean, and highly successful in her service as dean from 2000 to 2008. Several years into her deanship, the university president negotiated a compensation deal with her. She was eligible for a sabbatical, but it would have been counterproductive for her to take time off at the time, and so she was paid a lump sum for the sabbatical in 2007 but didn’t actually take the time off. The extra pay for her untaken sabbatical approximately doubled her salary that year. The news came out in a recent audit, and the story made it into the Baltimore Sun (here).
The story itself is a relatively minor event. Faculty members routinely negotiate the best compensation packages they can. A dean who has significantly raised the school’s profile is worth a good deal to a law school. As Dan Filler notes at the Faculty Lounge, this looks like a normal sort of compensation decision: “the basic goal was probably the retention of a successful dean who’d been in office for 8 years. Ordinary science.” (Though as Filler notes, the payment form chosen was rather risky.)
But the recent reaction has been troubling in many ways. The initial Baltimore Sun articles have been followed by a feeding frenzy of snarky commentary at Above the Law and other sites. Above the Law’s story was titled, “Is the Dean worth $800k?” Comments were the usual mix of insult and personal attack.
Now, I understand that 2010 is a bad time to have large bonuses disclosed. We’ve seen waves of populist outrage over recent bank bonuses. This payment is a few years old, but was first disclosed in 2010. Part of the reaction probably comes from that angle.
But I can’t help but see troubling gendered undertones in the reaction here.
The online comments have been very nasty and personal, an overreaction which may reflect resentment over the audacity of a woman dean to ask for (and get) a bonus just like men. Let’s remember, women are still significantly underrepresented in law school deanships. Women law deans have hovered at 20% for years. As the Faculty Lounge recently noted, until last year Yale Law had never had even a female acting dean. Dean Rothenberg was the first woman to be dean at Maryland. How much of the vitriolic reaction is based on hostility towards a female invader of a traditionally male domain? Would these folks be showing the same outrage if her name was George? (And why is everyone focusing on the woman who was paid, and not the man who decided to pay her?)
I’m all for thoughtful discussion of the topic, including legitimate discussion of Dean Rothenberg’s actions. But let’s remember that she’s been a highly successful woman dean (and that there are a lot of highly paid men in law). Let’s ask how much the outrage is driven by unstated gender norms. And let’s remember that internet attacks on Dean Rothenberg draw on a problematic history of silencing powerful women through anonymous internet sliming.
Call for Papers Announcement
AALS Section on Women in Legal Education
“New Voices in Gender Studies”
2011 AALS Annual Meeting
January 4-8, 2011
San Francisco, California
The AALS Section on Women in Legal Education will hold a program during the AALS 2011 Annual Meeting in San Francisco, California, with paper presentations by the winners of the New Voices in Gender Studies paper competition.
Submissions should be of scholarship relating to (1) women in legal education, (2) any aspect of women’s relationship to the law, or (3) gender, sexuality and the law. There is a maximum 30,000 word limit (inclusive of footnotes) for the submission. Since this is a paper presentation opportunity, and not one for publication, submitted papers can be committed for publication prior to their submission, but cannot be actually in print prior to their submission. 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 Linda Jellum, Mercer University School of Law, jellum_l@law.mercer.edu. The deadline for submission is Monday, August 16, 2010. Authors of accepted papers will be notified by October 1, 2010. Call for Paper participants will be responsible for paying their annual meeting registration fee and travel expenses.
Full-time faculty members of AALS member and fee-paid law schools, who have been teaching for seven or fewer years as of August 16, 2010, 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 members of the Executive Committee and Advisory Board of the Section. Any inquiries about the Call for Papers should be submitted to:
Professor Nancy Levit
Curators’ and Edward D. Ellison Professor of Law
UMKC School of Law
(816) 235-2391 levitn@umkc.edu
Abstract:
Sex-stereotypes are of perennial concern within antidiscrimination law and theory, yet there is widespread disagreement about what constitutes a “sex-stereotype.” This article enters the debate surrounding the correct understanding of “stereotype” and posits that the concept is too thin to serve as a criterion for distinguishing “discriminatory” gender generalizations from non-discriminatory probabilistic descriptions of behavior. Instead, “stereotype” is a heuristic that has been used by courts and commentators to crudely capture judgments about the justness of applying sex-respecting rules.
In this light, the article argues for abandoning the stereotype heuristic in favor of a rule-centered analysis of sex-respecting generalizations. Arguing that courts and commentators have not objected to gender generalizations because they are descriptively inaccurate (as the stereotype heuristic suggests) but because they also exert unique prescriptive force, the article provides a new understanding of the theoretical basis for subjecting gender generalizations to antidiscrimination scrutiny.
Forthcoming in the Yale Journal of Law & Feminism, and downloadable here!
Ross Davies (George Mason) (not pictured at left) has updated his study of law reviews, Law Review Circulation, 2009 Green Bag Alm. 164. His 2010 update, Law Review Circulation 2009: The Combover, 2010 Green Bag Alm. 419, adds circulation data for law reviews at Texas, UCLA, USC and Washington Univeristy, as well as the Tax Law Review (NYU) and Law and Contemporary Problems (Duke).
In both studies, Davies uses US Postal Service filings to document the total paid circulation for the journals. He especially takes on the puffery of the Harvard Law Review’s website, noting that the website boasts far greater “circulation” than it reports to the USPS. As Davies says, one explanation might be that:
HLR’s circulation is whatever the HLR can convince you it is….The HLR, like all law reviews, operates within a larger world driven in substantial part by USNews rankings and related culture. It is a world in which some law school leaders— that is, the people in charge of teaching law review editors and otherstudents about the law, its practice, and its values — are committed to being in the elite, to being highly ranked, even if that means also being not fully forthright about the numbers on which rankings are based.
“Combover” is such a great description of the phenomenon, not limited to Harvard, of journals claiming to have more circulations than they actually do! Major kudos to Ross Davies for that metaphor. I really did laugh out loud.
The National Law Journal reports here on Davies’ study. (Unfortunately, the NLJ reporter didn’t seem to get the humor of Davies’s title, or if she did, she didn’t mention it.) In that article, Davies suggests as possible causes for the drop-off in law review circulation the greater availability of open-source and/or electronic versions of articles and a decline in appeal/relevance of law review articles to judges and practicing lawyers.
As for me, I know that once I discovered HeinOnLine, I never went back to reading the print journals. Electronic versions are the reality of contemporary legal scholarship. Law reviews should just admit it. Combovers, push-up bras and flashy wads of singles are so 1990’s.
Here, the post and the comments. That is all I have to say – I have opinions, you have opinions, and we probably both have scabs we would rather not dislodge, in the hopes that some day the wounds will fully heal.
Posted on Mon, Feb. 22, 2010 SC man dies, wife injured in domestic shootings
The Associated Press
Police say a South Carolina man shot and killed himself after shooting his wife in the head.
Multiple media outlets reported that Therese Eddinger was being treated at the Medical University of South Carolina hospital in Charleston.
The Dorchester County coroner’s office says 49-year-old Grayland Keith Eddinger of North Charleston died from a gunshot wound Sunday afternoon.
Police were called to the couple’s home about 3:30 p.m. Sunday.
Dorchester County Coroner Chris Nisbet says the woman apparently was shot once in the side of her head and Eddinger walked off and turned the gun on himself. The coroner says Eddinger has a brother who lived in the house with the couple and saw what happened.
Why is the title of the piece so ambiguous? Why not the seemingly more accurate: “Man kills himself after attempting to murder wife”? The headline makes it sound like the man got the worst end of the deal, rather than being the cause of the tragedy.
Leslie Yalof Garfield (Pace) previously blogged here about France’s consideration of a criminal ban on psychological or verbal abuse of a spouse or live-in partner. See related news items here (BBC), here (Time Magazine) and here (NPR).
Professor Garfield has a short podcast here (running time approximately 12 minutes). In the podcast, Professor Garfield describes the French law as a model for the possible development of criminal law in the United States against the intentional infliction of emotional distress.
This article discusses the fact that Justice Thomas has not asked a question during oral argument for about four years, and has been mostly quiet his entire time on the SCOTUS bench. It notes that a recent graduate of the University of Florida School of Law, David Karp “argues in the Florida Law Review that, by keeping mum, Thomas in essence hides the ball and shields his often provocative legal positions from being tested before they make their way into Court opinions.”
I have always thought oral argument was an inefficient way to approach justice. It gives judges an excuse not to closely read the pleadings; it advantages people who are smooth and quick on their feet over people who are smart and thoughtful who like to listen to questions thoroughly and frame their answers carefully; and it privileges the element of surprise over foundational deliberation. It can also benefit white male lawyers over women lawyers and lawyers of color, and especially women lawyers of color if judges hold biases. Eliminating oral argument in favor of judges issuing a series of questions in writing that lawyers must answer succinctly strikes me as worthy of serious consideration.
Joshua L. Friedman (Attorney Advisor, U.S. Social Security Administration) and Gary C. Norman (Staff Attorney, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) have published their article, Protecting the Family Pet: The New Face of Maryland Domestic Violence Protective Orders, 40 U. Balt. L.F. 81 (2009). Here is the abstract:
Domestic violence is on the rise, and pets are increasingly becoming the victims of marital disputes. There is a demonstrated link between acts and offenses of domestic violence and animal abuse. Domestic abusers often do not think twice about beating or otherwise harming pets that have bonded with the other spouse in order to control, coerce, intimidate, or cause emotional harm to that spouse.
There is an emerging awareness that animals are more than just property. Several states have recognized, through the enactment of legislation fortifying their family law systems, that animals play an integral role in the lives of their human counterparts. Legislatures throughout the country have granted local courts the power to issue protective orders that account for the unique circumstances that arise when victims of domestic abuse have companion animals.
Despite attempts from the Animal Law Section of the Maryland State Bar Association and its fellow sponsors in the Maryland State Senate and the House of Delegates, similar legislation has yet to take root in Maryland. Two critical components are needed in order to advocate and move this issue forward in Maryland: The realization that animals are a mainstream issue, and political will.
This article reviews the literature that demonstrates the linkages between animals and domestic violence. In conducting this review, the authors discuss media reports and published works on the subject. The authors also provide an overview of current legislation enacted in other jurisdictions across the United States. Additionally, a review of bills recently introduced in the Maryland General Assembly from 2007 to 2009 is provided. Finally, the authors put forth arguments in support of the enactment of legislation authorizing the inclusion of pets and service animals in Maryland protective orders.
A gay Oklahoma college student’s application for a vanity license plate that reads “IM GAY” was rejected by the Oklahoma Tax Commission last year, and that rejection was upheld by three tax commissioners after an administrative hearing. The student, Keith Kimmel, has now filed suit to get his application approved. (Click here for the news story.)
The reason for the rejection:
The Oklahoma Tax Commission turned Kimmel down last year because of an internal rule against special license tags that “may be offensive to the general public.”
Apparently, however, it is not offensive to have a license plate that reads STR8FAN or STR8SXI. What’s next? Are they going to try to ban rainbow flag bumper stickers because they make a statement about the car owner’s (homo)sexual orientation and are “offensive”? As Kimmel’s lawyer argues, the tax commission’s decision smacks of viewpoint discrimination. Things are definitely not “OK” in Oklahoma.
The AALS Section on Women in Legal Education will hold a program during the AALS 2011 Annual Meeting in San Francisco, California, with paper presentations by the winners of the “New Voices in Gender Studies” paper competition.
Submissions should be of scholarship relating to (1) women in legal education, (2) any aspect of women’s relationship to the law, or (3) gender, sexuality and the law. There is a maximum 30,000 word limit (inclusive of footnotes) for the submission. Since this is a paper presentation opportunity, and not one for publication, submitted papers can be committed for publication prior to their submission, but cannot be actually in print prior to their submission. 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 Linda Jellum, Mercer University School of Law, jellum_l@law.mercer.edu. The deadline for submission is Monday, August 16, 2010. Authors of accepted papers will be notified by October 1, 2010. Call for Paper participants will be responsible for paying their annual meeting registration fee and travel expenses.
Full-time faculty members of AALS member and fee-paid law schools, who have been teaching for seven or fewer years as of August 16, 2010, 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 members of the AALS Section on Women in Legal Education’s Executive Committee and Advisory Board, including Professor Bridget Crawford, Professor Nancy Levit, Professor Kathryn Stanchi, and Professor Ettie Ward.
Any inquiries about the Call for Papers should be submitted to:
Yesterday, the Fifth Circuit issued its decision in Adar v. Smith. This case concerns Louisiana’s refusal to issue an amended birth certificate to an out-of-state same-sex couple who adopted a child born in Louisiana. The State of Louisiana had lost in the federal district court and had appealed to the Fifth Circuit. While the appeal was pending, the Louisiana House of Representatives thumbed its collective nose at the federal district court’s decision by passing a bill that would prohibit birth certificates from being revised to show the names of two adoptive parents who are unmarried. That bill later died in the Louisiana Senate.
In its decision yesterday, the Fifth Circuit unanimously and resoundingly rejected every argument proffered by the state’s Registrar of Vital Statistics. Indeed, the attorney who argued the case for the state was quoted as saying that “the 36-page opinion written by Judge Jaques L. Wiener, Jr. ‘is a thorough rejection of the state’s position.’” The court held that (1) the parents had standing to challenge the Registrar’s decision, (2) the Full Faith and Credit Clause applied and Louisiana must recognize the same-sex couple as the child’s adoptive parents, and (3) the Registrar must, under Louisiana law, issue an amended birth certificate that reflects the names of both of the child’s adoptive parents. The opinion leaves the distinct impression that the judges had little patience for some of the arguments that the Registrar proffered, including interpretations of the Full Faith and Credit Clause that flew in the face of precedent and an attempt at reading into state law an unconstitutional delegation of unfettered discretion to her to determine which out-of-state adoptive parents, if any, are entitled to an amended birth certificate. Amazingly, the state apparently plans to ask for a stay of the court’s decision and a rehearing in this case.
From the FLP mailbox, this notice of an upcoming conference at Santa Clara:
The Power of Women’s Stories II: Examining Women’s Role in Law and the Legal System
Friday, April 16, 2010
8:30 a.m. – 5 p.m.
142 Bannan Hall Santa Clara University
Law schools began offering Women and Law courses in the early 1970s. Since that time, many textbooks have examined law through the lens of feminist legal theory. Women continue to feel the impact of changing legal developments in areas as disparate as violence against women, sexual harassment, discrimination at work, mothering and reproduction, families, women and the legal profession, education, and health. Yet scholars have often neglected the power of women’s stories and the lessons these stories teach us about law and social change.
This conference focuses on the women whose lives led to these legal changes and who continue to inspire the need for further progress. It also celebrates Women and the Law Stories (Elizabeth M. Schneider & Stephanie M. Wildman, eds.) (forthcoming). Many panelists have contributed chapters to this volume.
Panel topics will include Women: History, Identity, and Standard of Review; Women and Work; Women: Health and Safety; and a Roundtable on Women in the Legal Profession and the Academy. For more information about the panels or roundtable, or for registration, see here.
The Feminist Theory Papers is an exceptional archival collection representing scholars who have transformed their disciplines and the intellectual landscape of universities in the United States and internationally. This focused and coherent manuscript collection is indispensable to historians, cultural critics, and theorists. …
The Pembroke Center is actively expanding the Feminist Theory Papers collection, which is housed at the John Hay Library. Inquiries regarding donating items or accessing to the Archives should be directed to Amy Greer.
Property Outlawsputs forth the intriguingly counterintuitive proposition that, in the case of both tangible and intellectual property law, disobedience can often lead to an improvement in legal regulation. The authors argue that in property law there is a tension between the competing demands of stability and dynamism, but its tendency is to become static and fall out of step with the needs of society.
The authors employ wide-ranging examples of the behaviors of “property outlaws”—the trespasser, squatter, pirate, or file-sharer—to show how specific behaviors have induced legal innovation. They also delineate the similarities between the actions of property outlaws in the spheres of tangible and intellectual property. An important conclusion of the book is that a dynamic between the activities of “property outlaws” and legal innovation should be cultivated in order to maintain this avenue of legal reform.
Ms. JD has announced a new fellowship opportunity for 2Ls, which will select 20 of the most promising second-year law students in the country and provide them with one-on-one career mentorship from the nation’s most accomplished female attorneys. I’m hoping you will help us spread the word about this opportunity to other law professors to ensure we really do identify the best of the best for this. What follows are the details of the Fellowship and the procedure for nominating and applying.
Who Are The Mentors?
Fellowship mentors will be assigned to the Fellows from among the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession’s alumnae of commissioners and Margaret Brent Award Winners. The list includes U.S. Circuit Court judges and state Supreme Court justices, general counsels from the Fortune 500, managing partners from the nation’s largest law firms, and leading professors and practitioners from around the country.
Mentoring pairs will be made based on geographic location and shared professional interests. We aim to identify the most promising students in a variety of fields and practice areas and pair them with the most successful woman in that field.
What Will the 1-Year Mentorship Entail?
In addition to being identified as one of the nation’s highest-achieving law students, mentees will receive:
* Invitation to the 20th Anniversary Margaret Brent Awards on August 8, 2010, in San Francisco
* Invitation to Ms. JD’s annual conference in March 2011, location TBA
* Mentor review of their resume and writing sample
* Invitation to 2 other networking events with their mentor
* At least 2 additional activities with their mentor, based on mutual interest and availability
How to Apply/Nominate?
Eligibility: Applicants must be enrolled full-time as a second year law student in an ABA-accredited law school.
If you would like to nominate a 2L to be considered for Ms. JD’s 2010 Fellowship, email her name and school to Fellowship@ms-jd.org.
If you would like to apply to be considered for Ms. JD’s 2010 Fellowship, email the following to Fellowship@ms-jd.org.
* Resume
* Transcript
* Writing Sample (legal writing, no length requirement, redacted documents accepted)
* Availability for phone interviews April 12 – 30th (indicate on what days you will be totally unavailable)
We will accept nominations and applications until 5:00 pm PST, April 1, 2010. Finalists will be announced April 9, 2010. Two rounds of finalist interviews will be held April 12 – 30, 2010. Ms. JD’s 2010 Fellowship winners along with their mentor-pairings will be announced May 10, 2010.
Former [Maryland] state poet laureate Lucille Clifton, a National Book Award winner whose work was lauded for its “moral quality,” died Saturday at Johns Hopkins Hospital after a long battle with cancer and other illnesses. She was 73.
With a mix of profundity, earthiness and humor – amply evident in her 11 books of poetry – Ms. Clifton often defied conventional notions of poetic expression, but in many ways her themes were traditional, Wallace R. Peppers wrote in the Dictionary of Literary Biography.
Women and Language. There’s a whole journal with that name:
WOMEN AND LANGUAGE, an international interdisciplinary research periodical, serves as a forum for innovative studies and critical conversations among feminist theorists and gender scholars. Women and Language accepts submissions of scholarly articles that make conceptual and research contributions to the study of communication, language, and gender. Book reviews and reviews of digital media are also welcome.
I didn’t know about this journal until I stumbled upon a reference to the most recent special issue, “Hip Hop’s Languages of Love.” Here’s an excerpt from the Introduction by Ebony A. Utley (Communication Studies, California State University Long Beach) and Brenda J. Allen (Communications, University of Colorado Denver):
Professor Ebony A. Utley
We sought critical analyses of this topic because hip hop has been and continues to be a significant cultural force that often refers to intimate relationships. Although critics often decry hip hop for being misogynistic, we hoped to provide a forum to both delve into that critique and provide insights about other facets of hip hop’s treatment of love. This exciting set of articles and poems accomplishes our goal by exploring diverse contexts, concepts, and constructs to illuminate complex dynamics of hip hop, love, language, and gender.
Here are the articles in the issue:
Lisa M. Corrigan, Sacrifice, Love and Resistance: The Hip Hop Legacy of Assata Shakur
Rachel N. Hastings, Black, Blue, and Loved All Over: Revolutionary Love, ‘Seven,’ and the Ritual of Spoken Solidarity
Evan Mwangi and Wanjiru Mbure, Passion in a Mathree: Metropolitan Love in Nazizi Hirji’s ‘Kenyan Girl/Kenyan Boy’
Heather Day, Falling Out of Love with Hip Hop
Michelle Jones, Love Magnified: Where Art Thou?
Michael P. Jeffries, Can a Thug (get some) Love? Sex, Romance and the Definition of a Hip Hop ‘Thug’
Jamel Santa Cruze Bell and Roberto Avant-Mier, What’s Love Got to Do With It? Analyzing the Discourse of Hip Hop Love Through Rap Balladry, 1987 and 2007
Tia C.M. Tyree, Lovin’ Momma and Hatin’ on Baby Mama: A Comparison of Misogynistic and Stereotypical Representation in Songs About Rappers’ Mothers and Baby Mamas
Cassandra Chaney, Trapped in the Closet: Understanding Contemporary Relationships in the African- American Hip Hop Community
Ebony A. Utley and Alisha L. Menzies, Show Me Some Love: Youth Responses to ‘Kiss Me Thru the Phone’
The issue isn’t available via open source, but it is accessible via the Communications & Mass Media Complete database of EBSCOhost (via Academic Search Premiere, available at many university libraries).
I especially liked the Bell & Avant-Mier article, which contrasts “I Need Love” (LL Cool J) with “Soulja Girl” (Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em). Videos after the jump.
Feminist Law Prof Michael J. Higdon (Tennessee) has posted to SSRN his working paper, “To Lynch a Child: Bullying and Gender Non-Conformity in Our Nation’s Schools.” Here is the abstract:
Leslie Yalof Garfield (Pace) previously blogged 
