In May, 2017, I participated in a fantastic international workshop at the Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law in Spain. The workshop brought together participants from the various international Feminist Judgments Projects. Collectively, these projects focus on rewriting judicial opinions from a feminist perspective using the same law and facts in existence at the time the initial case was decided. Projects in Canada, England, Australia, the U.S., Ireland and New Zealand have resulted in published volumes of rewritten judgments. There are ongoing projects devoted to international law, as well as the law of Scotland, India and Mexico.
The first U.S. book focused on rewriting decisions of the United States Supreme Court. It inspired a series of subject-matter specific books. Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Tax Opinions was published by Cambridge University Press in 2017. There are volumes at various stages of development devoted to U.S. law in the areas of torts, employment discrimination, reproductive justice, family law, health law, and trusts & estates.
The May 2017 in-person meeting of representatives of the various jurisdictional projects resulted in the publication of a thought-provoking set of papers (edited by Linda Berger, Kathy Stanchi and me). All papers went through a double-blind peer review process with two external referees, which was a new (and positive) experience for me as an editor. All of the papers are open-access. Here’s the table of contents (with links to papers):
The Oñati Socio-Legal Series Vol 8, No 9 (2018): Feminist Judgments: Comparative Socio-legal Perspectives on Judicial Decision Making and Gender Justice
Issue edited by Linda L. Berger (University of Nevada Las Vegas, USA), Bridget J. Crawford (Pace University, New York, USA), and Kathryn M. Stanchi (Temple University, Philadelphia, USA).
Introduction
| Feminist Judgments: Comparative Socio-Legal Perspectives on Judicial Decision Making and Gender Justice | |
| Linda L. Berger, Bridget J. Crawford, Kathryn M. Stanchi |
Part I: Methods in the Feminist Judgments Projects
| Collaboration as Feminist Methodology: Experiences from the Feminist International Judgments Project | |
| Loveday Hodson |
| Accessing Court Files as a Feminist Endeavour: Reflections on ‘Feminist Judgments of Aotearoa – Te Rino: A Two-Stranded Rope’ | |
| Elisabeth McDonald, Paulette Benton-Greig |
| Women’s Court of Canada Act and Rules | |
| Melina Buckley |
Part II: Measuring the Impact of Feminist Judgments
| Feminist Judging in the ‘Real World’ | |
| Rosemary Hunter |
| Turning Feminist Judgments into Jurisprudence: The Women’s Court of Canada on Substantive Equality | |
| Denise Réaume |
| Impact of the Feminist Judgment Writing Projects: The Case of the Women’s Court of Canada | |
| Jennifer Koshan |
Part III: The Reach of Feminist Judgments
| ‘Benchmarking’ a Supreme Court and Federal Court judge in Australia | |
| Francesca Bartlett, Heather Douglas |
| The Scottish Feminist Judgments Project: A New Frontier | |
| Sharon Cowan |
cross-post from The Faculty Lounge (here)
