Kay Jewelers is running a commercial showing a male uniformed soldier (presumably) overseas, speaking by video phone with his wife. As the wife opens a jewelry box, the husband says proudly that he had help from his “wingman” — his son.
Many military spouses are responding favorably to the ad (see, e.g., here), but there’s something too Oedipal about the ad for my tastes.
Son as wingman? Eww.
We start our Steelers fans out young! My daughter Rose is only a bit more than 14 months old. She watched every Steelers game with me this season, though she did miss parts of games for naps or because bed time arrived before the game was over. Whenever a great play happens she gets all excited and puts her index finger up in the air (to say that the Steelers are #1!). Here are some pictures of Rose all dressed up for the Superbowl tonight carrying the terrible towel that used to hang from her bassinet!
-Tony Infanti
The Georgetown Law Journal shows that it can get worse. Instead of publishing few female faculty authors (see here), how about none?
Here’s the line-up for volume 99, issue 2. Four articles, 5 authors, all men.
How International Financial Law Works (and How It Doesn’t)
by Chris Brummer
The Origins of the Privileges or Immunities Clause, Part II: John Bingham and the Second Draft of the Fourteenth Amendment
by Kurt T. Lash
In Defense of Bailouts
by Adam J. Levitin
Explaining Plurality Decisions
by James F. Spriggs II & David R. Stras
-Bridget Crawford
Click here to listen to Michelangelo Signorile’s interview on this topic with Rasha Moumneh, who is a researcher for Human Rights Watch.
-Tony Infanti
When people talk about “street harassment,” they are usually talking about a man harassing a woman he doesn’t know in a public place. They are usually talking about a man doing things like whistling, cat-calling, or offering crude commentary about a woman’s appearance or demeanor. In a classic article, Cynthia Grant Bowman documented both the grave harm and the terrible banality of such harassment; her work even validated the experiences of victims by envisioning a legal remedy for their injuries.
Surely the dynamic of the harassing man and the victimized woman is integral to the phenomenon of street harassment. But I this binary formulation is far too simple. Street harassment is the expression of complex and overlapping social dynamics, encompassing not only gender, but also race and class, and perhaps other identity categories as well. Race and class often mark a woman for harassment, or figure in the epithets directed her way. But the race and class of her harasser are also significant.
Understandably, in light of the serious harm that street harassment inflicts, organizations such as Hollaback encourage women to seize power from their harassers by confronting them and by sharing their stories online. Hollaback also encourages women to take pictures of their harassers and post them, along with the location of the harassment, even providing an iPhone app to facilitate this undertaking. I embrace the first two components of the project, but cannot help but feel ambivalent about the third. Scrolling through the Hollaback forums, one quickly notices that the vast majority of photographed harassers appear to be men of color, poor, possibly homeless. Many of the stories describe behavior by harassers that, while frightening and grossly inappropriate, also suggests mental illness. Continue reading
In the latest installment of “why tackle the difficult issues when you can score cheap political points through gay bashing,” LaVar Christensen, a member of the Utah House of Representatives, has introduced HB 270, the so-called Family Policy Bill.
As even local news reports highlight, the bill is far from a model of clarity (though Christensen is himself an attorney). Yet, it is worth taking a few moments to unpack the short text of the bill.
Most of the bill consists of a list of platitudes about marriage and unsupported/overblown (though far from uncommon) claims about its role in, and effects on, society. And, of course, no measure bashing same-sex couples would be complete without some troubling (constitutionally dubious?) references to religion thrown in for good measure (one report even observed that the language of the bill “mirrors a proclamation from LDS church leaders”). Here is the text of the first five paragraphs of the bill:
(1) The institution of marriage and family, consisting of the legal union of a man and a
woman and children conceived and born to, or adopted by, the married couple as father and mother, is the fundamental unit of society and the optimum environment in which to nurture and raise a child.
(2) Marriage and family predate all governments and are supported by and consistent with the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God, the Creator and Supreme Judge of the World, affirmed in the nation’s founding Declaration of Independence.
(3) Marriage represents the legal sanction and approval of society and is essential to ordered liberty and public virtue.
(4) Procreation within marriage links generations and is fundamental to the perpetuity of humanity.
(5) (a) Families anchored by both a father and a mother, fidelity within marriage, and enduring devotion to the covenants and responsibilities of marriage are the desired norm.
(b) Cultures and societies where laws, practices, and public policies protect, preserve, and promote such enduring and time-honored family values and principles are happiest, healthiest, and most stable.
Query whether Christensen counts different-sex married couples with children conceived using assisted reproductive technology within the charmed circle. Are children conceived with the help of in vitro fertilization or born to a surrogate who assists the couple in having a child “conceived and born to . . . the married couple as father and mother”? Are these families–along with families headed by same-sex couples, as discussed below–to be discouraged? Christensen claims that the bill won’t affect programs assisting single mothers but, for example, “could be used as an argument against changing Utah law to allow single people to adopt.”
Against that background, the bill lays the foundation for its attack on nontraditional families:
(6) The furtherance and protection of order and public morality are legitimate and substantial government interests.
(7) To the extent social problems arise that adversely affect the desired optimum family condition, such as the dissolution of marriage, crime, poverty, immorality, violence, and other conditions that place added responsibilities on individuals and communities through publicly funded and administered social programs and government services, laws and regulations shall be carefully scrutinized to determine how they impact the family and the protection of children.
The final paragraph of the bill contains the text that has been construed to exclude nontraditional families from publicly funded programs:
(8) (a) The laws of the state shall, to the fullest extent possible, strengthen, safeguard, and sustain families.
(b) They shall respect and promote the essential and complementary roles of both a father and a mother and uphold this public policy for the greatest public good.
So, the answer to the divorce, crime, poverty, immorality, and violence that adversely affect the so-called traditional family (or what Christensen calls “the desired optimum family condition”) is to “respect and promote the essential and complementary roles of both a father and a mother”; that is, disadvantaging families headed by same-sex couples will solve (not add to!) all our problems.
-Tony Infanti
Professor Danne Johnson (Oklahoma City), AALS Section on Women in Legal Education Chair, passes along this information about possible volunteer opportunities within the Section on Women in Legal Education and points of contact. Please reach out to committee chairs if you are interested. Calls for papers associated with the 2012 WILE panels will be issued shortly.
Committee 1: The Mentoring Committee is looking for a few additional members. If you are interested in becoming involved with the Mentoring Committee or being a mentor, please contact Professor Colleen Medill, at cmedill2@unl.edu. The list of Section members who are volunteer mentors is located here.
Committee 2: The Worklife Committee is looking for a few women who can work on worklife issues. The work is letter-drafting and advocacy within the academy and with the AALS. If you are interested please contact Professor Laura Kessler at laura.kessler@law.utah.edu
Committee 3: The Newsletter Committee needs a few good story-chasers. If you are interested please contact Professor Linda Jellum at jellum_l@law.mercer.edu
Volunteers are also needed to develop the programs for the 2012 Annual Meeting. The detailed descriptions of the various panels are below.
Panel Description: In recent years, scholars have begun to reach outside of the legal academy with their scholarship–on blogs and other social media, in articles and opinion pieces for newspapers and magazines, in amicus briefs and white papers, in popular books and novels, and through grant-funded research. The panelists will discuss their experiences with nontraditional forms of scholarship and debate its advantages and disadvantages in terms of the tenure and promotion processes, compensation and benefits, and the general public’s perception of the legal academy. One or more panelists will be selected from a call for presentations
Three Committee Members Needed: Volunteers are needed to serve on the panel planning committee to identify appropriate speakers and select one or more panelists from the call for presentations. To volunteer please contact Professor Colleen Medill, at cmedill2@unl.edu or Professor Nancy Levit, at LEVITN@umkc.edu
Panel/Program 2: New Voices in Gender Studies
This panel offers paper presentations by the winners of the New Voices in Gender Studies paper competition, sponsored by the Women in Legal Education Section. The papers relate to women in legal education; aspects of women’s relationship to the law; or gender, sexuality and the law. This competition for innovative works of scholarship is open to law professors who have been teaching for five years or less. One or more presenter(s) will be selected from a call for papers.
Three Committee Members are Needed: A committee of scholars from the Section selected the winners. To volunteer please contact Professor Linda Jellum, at jellum_l@law.mercer.edu or Professor Kirsten Davis, at kkdavis@law.stetson.edu
Panel/Program 3: Speed Mentoring
This program will allow members to expand their networks in a fun and non-threatening way. Bring your cards and be ready to make new contacts and friends.
Three Committee Members are Needed: People interested in this concept who are highly organized need to work to arrange the program so that participants can achieve their goals. To volunteer please contact Professor Bridget Crawford, at bcrawford@law.pace.edu.
Program/Panel 4: Community Service
The Section will sponsor a hands-on community service project in the Washington, D.C. area during the 2012 annual meeting.
Three Committee Members are Needed: A committee will work to develop a placement site for volunteers, and other logistic issues. To volunteer please contact Professor Danne Johnson, at djohnson@okcu.edu
The AALS Section on Women in Legal Education is committed to inclusiveness and diversity. Please lend a hand, add your voice and get involved in this great section.
-Bridget Crawford
The Governor of Illinois signed that state’s civil union legislation into law yesterday. The law takes effect June 1. The copy of the legislation that I was able to find (and locating one was no easy task on the Illinois legislature’s web site) indicates that Illinois will recognize same-sex relationships solemnized in other jurisdictions (e.g., a same-sex marriage, civil union, or domestic partnership–but not a common law marriage) as an Illinois civil union.
-Tony Infanti
Various law blogs (including this one) have mentioned the news that University of Iowa law professor Angela Onwuachi-Willig is on the short list for the Iowa Supreme Court.
Angela is a leading scholar on topics of racial justice and critical race theory. She is the only woman on the shortlist, as well as the only person of color.
In addition, Angela is a longstanding supporter of LGBT rights who has written eloquently in favor of marriage equality and who signed a brief supporting marriage equality in Varnum v. Brien.
Given the backdrop of the current Iowa vacancies — they are the direct result of a homophobic right-wing smear campaign — I am thrilled to see Angela’s name on the shortlist. I can think of no better way to respond to the anti-gay hate machine than to fill a court vacancy with a smart, articulate, energetic Black woman who is committed to LGBT rights — and to a principled and progressive feminist and antiracist legal philosophy as well.
(Cross-posted at Concurring Opinions.)
This blog (i.e., Bridget and Ann) has (have) done a great job of calling attention to the underrepresentation of women in law reviews and symposia (for example, here and here). An article in the New York Times has now called attention to the underrepresentation of women in a more informal forum–that is, among the contributors to Wikipedia. A study revealed that “barely 13%” of Wikipedia’s hundreds of thousands of contributors are women.
A couple of things that I would like to highlight in the article and ask our readers to comment on: First, take a read of this paragraph from the story:
Sue Gardner, the executive director of the foundation, has set a goal to raise the share of female contributors to 25 percent by 2015, but she is running up against the traditions of the computer world and an obsessive fact-loving realm that is dominated by men and, some say, uncomfortable for women.
(The foundation they refer to is the Wikimedia Foundation, which is the organization that runs Wikipedia). Increasing the participation of women is a laudable goal. But do women really not “love” facts as much as men? Is this playing into stereotypes about women and emotion? Would women lawyers, legal academics, and law students say that they feel uncomfortable dealing with facts?
Continuing in the vein of questioning the extent to which this article is trading in/playing off of stereotypes, take a look at this passage:
With so many subjects represented — most everything has an article on Wikipedia — the gender disparity often shows up in terms of emphasis. A topic generally restricted to teenage girls, like friendship bracelets, can seem short at four paragraphs when compared with lengthy articles on something boys might favor, like, toy soldiers or baseball cards, whose voluminous entry includes a detailed chronological history of the subject.
Even the most famous fashion designers — Manolo Blahnik or Jimmy Choo — get but a handful of paragraphs. And consider the disparity between two popular series on HBO: The entry on “Sex and the City” includes only a brief summary of every episode, sometimes two or three sentences; the one on “The Sopranos” includes lengthy, detailed articles on each episode.
Gender disparity among contributors might very well lead to some differences in what is emphasized in articles, but are the only examples available friendship bracelets, fashion designers, and “Sex and the City”?
I would be interested in hearing what our readers think about this article.
-Tony Infanti
On Friday, the Hawaii Senate passed a civil unions bill similar to the one that was vetoed by the state’s last governor. The vote was slightly better than the last time around (19-6 rather than 18-7). The bill now goes to the Hawaii House for its consideration and, hopefully, eventually to a more receptive governor.
The previous governor, Linda Lingle, vetoed the bill last time around because “it was the equivalent to marriage, which she believes should be reserved for a man and a woman.” Though I could not disagree more with her substantive assessment of civil unions, I do share Lingle’s skepticism of civil unions. That is because civil unions are not the equivalent of marriage but an inferior second-class status, as the New Jersey Civil Union Review Commission firmly established in a report that it issued in 2008. Even when seen in the best light, civil unions are only a small (and clearly, not the final) step in the right direction.
-Tony Infanti
It is my pleasure to invite you to Thomas Jefferson School of Law’s upcoming 10th Anniversary Women and the Law Conference, “Gender Justice and Indian Sovereignty: Native American Women and the Law,” on Friday, February 18, 2011.
This one-day conference will be held at TJSL’s brand-new state-of-the-art building in downtown San Diego, and will feature the annual Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lecture (founded in 2003 with generous support from Justice Ginsburg), by our Keynote Speaker, Interim Associate Dean Stacy Leeds, University of Kansas School of Law, former Justice of the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court and currently chief judge of three Indian Nation tribal courts. Her Lecture will be titled: “Resistance, Resilience, and Reconciliation: Reflections on Native American Women and the Law.” Continue reading
Among the 9 finalists for the 3 vacancies on the Iowa Supreme Court Justice there is one woman, one racial minority, and one law professor – – – and then there are the 8 other candidates.
The 3 vacancies on the state’s highest court resulted from last November’s retention election in which the justices were targeted based on the court’s unanimous decision in Varnum v. Brien, holding the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage was unconstitutional.
More here.
-Ruthann Robson
The Pentagon held its briefing earlier today on the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. The signs are encouraging that repeal will become effective some time this year. Unsurprisingly, NPR was reporting this afternoon that there will be no changes to housing or benefits for LGBT military personnel because of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits the federal government (including the military) from legally recognizing same-sex relationships.
-Tony Infanti
A woman who decides to marry a man sets herself up for a lot of time spent thinking and talking about her name. If she decides to change her name, she opts in to a lengthy bureaucratic name-changing process so complex that various “name change kits” have emerged–available for only $29.95!–to help her navigate the transition (a transition that, according to some of my friends, is a massive hassle and never truly complete). If she decides not to change her name, she opts in to a lifetime of explaining to friends, relatives, coworkers, customer service representatives, financial planners, real estate agents, and so forth that her name is not “Mrs. His Name.”
We’re now well past the days when women were legally required to take their husbands’ names to do things like vote and drive. But although nominally women are free to do as they please with their names, their decision–regardless what the decision is–remains fraught. Professor Elizabeth Emens has documented the odd disparity between the legal default (by doing nothing, women keep their names) and the social default (most women do in fact change their names, although studies have shown quite a bit of variation among different demographics).
And the absence of legal mandate has not foreclosed social judgment: one recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Indiana and the University of Utah found that 70% of participants agreed that women should take their husband’s names, with up to half of those participants advocating that the government require women to adopt their husband’s names. Continue reading
Next month’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is being cosponsored by GOProud, a gay conservative organization (that I will admit I’ve never heard of before). Because GOProud thinks that the question of same-sex marriage should be left to the states, the New York Times is reporting that a number of conservative organizations are boycotting CPAC, including the Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, and Liberty University–not to mention a number of church-based groups.
In the article, the Dean of Liberty University Law School is quoted as saying:
“GOProud is working to undermine one of our core values,” said Mathew D. Staver, dean of the Liberty University School of Law. Letting gay men and lesbians attend the conference is one thing, he said, “but they shouldn’t be allowed to be co-sponsors.”
So, apparently, LGBT persons are OK so long as they are not visible. The message from this law school dean is: stay in the closet and we will tolerate you; come out in the open and we will shun you.
-Tony Infanti
Georgetown University Law Center Associate Law Librarian Roger Skalbeck and Yale Law School Librarian for Emerging Technologies Jason Eiseman have published a study entitled “Top 10 Law School Home Pages of 2010.” Here are a couple of excerpts:
On the other side of the diagram, often included on the front page but not something people are looking for is a “Campus Photo Slideshow.” This is true also for law schools which may often include large photos of students, the campus or both. While these illustrations are thought to add an attractive element to a home page, often they are nothing more than filler. In fact eye-tracking studies suggest that such photos may be completely ignored.
In an effort to track this phenomenon we created the “Girls Under Trees” metric, which is more fully explained below. In our study, home pages with pictures of students of any gender under, near or around trees were found on sixty-five home pages. Had we expanded the photo metric to include such clichés as United States Supreme Court Justices, moot court trial teams, or students in class, we may likely find filler images on the majority of home pages. Again while thought to give potential students a taste of law school life, these photos usually do not add any content, context, nor important information for visitors to a site. [emphasis added].
…
Girls under Trees [t] – 3 pts. deducted
In 2008 usability expert Jared Spool decried the overuse of pictures of girls under trees in higher education websites. This meme has become a famous cliché in web design circles, mentioned by everyone from web design expert Jeffrey Zeldman to law professor/blogger Ann Althouse. Eye tracking studies suggest that such images are filler which is often ignored by users. Points were deducted for home pages displaying people (of any gender) under, near, or around trees.
I was heartened during the State of the Union speech last night to hear the President imply that the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell would become effective this year. Now, there are reports that the Pentagon will be issuing training guidelines this Friday that will provide for a three-month training period. Following the training, the President and his top military advisers will have to certify that lifting the ban will not adversely affect troops’ ability to fight. The repeal would take effect sixty days after that certification. So, according to this report, repeal could be effective some time this summer.
-Tony Infanti
To follow up on my earlier post and provide some more positive news:
Trying again under a new, more receptive governor, a Hawaii Senate committee passed a civil unions bill today. The bill is expected to come up for a vote in the full Hawaii Senate on Friday. And the Governor of Illinois is set to sign that state’s civil union bill next Monday.
-Tony Infanti
During the fall election campaign, we were–quite thankfully–spared a lot of the usual “culture war” rhetoric about protecting marriage from some imagined assault by same-sex couples. Instead, the campaigns seemed to focus primarily on the economy and addressing the deficit (at the federal level) and balancing budgets (at the state level).
Yet, a return of conservatives to power (or, in some states, their consolidation of power) has too often been followed by a return to the same old culture war politics of beating up on the LGBT community:
In Wyoming, the state Senate recently passed a constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage. The silver lining here is that the language of the original amendment was watered down to leave open the possibility of granting same-sex couples the second-class status of civil unions. The Senate measure must go through two more votes before it goes on to the state House, where its fate is uncertain. Its fate is uncertain not because the House favors same-sex marriage, but because the House has passed its own amendment that would merely “clarify” Wyoming law by denying recognition to out-of-state same-sex marriages. The House measure is considered more likely to ultimately to pass. Maybe these legislators never got the memo telling them that Wyoming’s state motto is “Equal Rights.”
A committee of the Iowa House has passed a resolution calling for a constitutional amendment in that state to overturn the decision in Varnum v. Brien (previously blogged here, here, and here), which extended marriage to same-sex couples in Iowa in 2009.
In our nation’s capitol, House Republicans are looking to use their new majority to push legislation that would ban same-sex marriage in Washington D.C. And this on the heels of the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear an appeal in the case that unsuccessfully sought to put a referendum to ban same-sex marriage on the ballot in DC.
And all five of the major candidates for chair of the Republican National Committee, including the person ultimately elected to the position, Reince Priebus, expressed their opposition to same-sex marriage during a debate leading up to that vote.
New Hampshire is a relative bright spot here because Republicans in that state actually decided not to go after a repeal of same-sex marriage this year and instead to focus on budget issues. (But, of course, they did seem to leave open the possibility of bringing up repeal next year!) The New Hampshire House Republican leader explained:
He said issues like gay marriage were not the primary reasons voters replaced the Democratic majority in the House with a Republican one, he said.
“We cannot allow ourselves … where we campaigned on one set of issues and governed on another set of issues,” he said.
The exclusion of the controversial issue comes a week after House Republican leaders battled criticism they were not focusing on the issues that voters sent them to Concord to deal with: the state budget, spending reductions and jobs.
-Tony Infanti
In his 1816 treatise, The Law of Baron and Wife, Tapping Reeve of Litchfield Law School fame, rejected the Blackstone/Coke maxim that a husband and wife were one person in law. This paper explains how Reeve used his book, his students, and his role as a judge to work against the principle of marital unity, for instance, causing his students to pass a statute in empowering married women to make wills. Reeve’s behavior was typical of ‘Fading Federalists,’ who losing their power in the political realm, turned to law book writing and law teaching in order to continue to press their influence. Reeve’s reasons for rejecting the one-person-in-law maxim are connected to his religion, his own marriage, and conditions that were unique to Connecticut during this period. This localism is ironic as Reeve maintained that his account was a description of English law and not anything specific to Connecticut. It is this pretense to the non-local, not avoided by his rival Zephaniah Swift, that made Reeve fit to be honored in later line-ups like Roscoe Pound’s celebration of the American ‘taught law’ textbook tradition. However, it is important to see that Reeve invoked English law as a way to challenge and contradict it, creating in effect a version of English law for America that no English lawyer would agree with. The strategy in the book was to invoke the authority of the common law while simultaneously challenging and re-creating it. What this paper shows is that the version of American common law the treatise put forward was tied very much to local conditions despite what it formally claimed and disclaimed.
Download the paper from SSRN at the link.
A company fires an employee. The employee files an action against the company, alleging that the firing was discriminatory. The company moves for summary judgement dismissing the complaint. The fired employee has no direct evidence that the supervisor who fired her had discriminatory animus. The employee does, however, have evidence that the superior’s subordinate had such discriminatory animus against her. What evidentiary showing must the fired employee make to avoid summary judgment on her claim (known as a “subordinate bias claim”)? According to the recent opinion of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in Burlington v. News Corp., 2010 WL 5341843 (E.D. Pa. 2010), courts have taken at least 3 different approaches. So, which approach is correct? In this post, I will argue that it is the approach consistent with the inevitable discovery doctrine under the Fourth Amendment. I will call this approach the “inevitable firing” approach.
Apparently spurred by Justice Scalia’s provocative comments a few months ago regarding the constitutional rights of women (or, according to him, lack thereof), Dennis Curtis and Judith Resnik have put together a slide show over at Slate that explores different portrayals of justice. Here is their explanation of the slide show:
Justice Antonin Scalia recently reminded us that when the 14th Amendment was drafted in the 19th century, it did not focus on ensuring that women were entitled to equal protection of the law. And yet women have long been used as the symbol of the law—as the image of Justice, a figure dating back centuries and deployed in many countries to mark a courthouse.
That worldwide tradition offered up hundreds of images of white women in paintings, prints, and statues. Then, in the 20th century, as real women of all colors gained access to courts, questions emerged about which women could be the models for Justice. In government-sponsored courtroom art, what skin tones could artists use? What scenes could properly adorn new courthouse walls?
It’s definitely worth taking a few moments to look at.
-Tony Infanti
Well, to round out my posting for today, I have to voice my hope that the Pittsburgh Steelers cream the Jets later this afternoon!
As I observed two years ago in a similar post: Given that this is the Feminist Law Professors blog, I would be remiss if I didn’t note here that the Steelers have, by far, the largest female fan base of any professional football team. According to a 2007 report, 34% of women living in this area identify themselves as Steelers fans. Green Bay came in second “with 29.4 percent, but no other market surveyed had even one-quarter of its women identify themselves as fans.”
-Tony Infanti
Probably recognizing that further legislative advances in LGBT rights are unlikely in the near term, the Obama administration has taken some further administrative steps toward advancing LGBT rights. At the end of this past week, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced proposed rules that would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity in federal housing programs.
This comes on the heels of announced changes to the passport forms to make them more gender neutral. The forms will now refer to parent 1 and parent 2 rather than mother and father, as they currently do. This only makes sense given the reality that many same-sex couples have children. It also brings the federal government into line with some conservative states. Georgia, for example, will issue a “parent, parent” birth certificate to a child of a same-sex couple rather than its standard “mother, father” birth certificate.
And earlier in the week, the new federal rules extending hospital visitation rights to LGBT partners at Medicare- and Medicaid-participating hospitals became effective.
These changes may not be on the order of magnitude of December’s legislation repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” but they will provide real benefits to the LGBT community. Hopefully, we will see more such steps in the coming months.
-Tony Infanti
This new book announcement from the University of Texas Press caught my eye:
Unruly Girls, Unrepentent Mothers, a companion to Kathleen Rowe Karlyn’s groundbreaking work, The Unruly Woman, studies the ways popular culture and current debates within and about feminism inform each other. Surveying a range of films and television shows that have defined girls in the postfeminist era—from Titanic and My So-Called Life to Scream and The Devil Wears Prada, and from Love and Basketball toUgly Betty—Karlyn explores the ways class, race, and generational conflicts have shaped both Girl Culture and feminism’s Third Wave. Tying feminism’s internal conflicts to negative attitudes toward mothers in the social world, she asks whether today’s seemingly materialistic and apolitical girls, inspired by such real and fictional figures as the Spice Girls and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, have turned their backs on the feminism of their mothers or are redefining unruliness for a new age.
Table of contents and excerpt available here.
-Bridget Crawford
As I discussed in my last post, I’m currently engaged in a long-term project examining student note publication—including the role of gender in that process—that builds on my previous article on that topic.
One piece of the puzzle is how students go about writing. After all, at the time a note is written, it is often a student’s deepest engagement to date with a particular area of the law. How do students select the legal problem they will grapple with for several months, and once they’ve made their choice, how do they go about the process of research, writing, and submission?
For insight into that process, I sent an online survey via email to 1,020 student note authors. (Twenty authors were selected from each of the 51 schools in the study by randomly selecting two from each academic year in the ten-year time period.) Two hundred forty-eight people—161 men and 87 women—completed the survey, yielding a response rate of 24%. Continue reading
Theresa Beiner (University of Arkansas) has posted to SSRN her article, White Male Heterosexist Norms in the Confirmation Process (forthcoming 2011). Here is the abstract:
Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing took a controversial turn when commentators picked up on a reference in the New York Times to a portion of a speech she gave in 2001. In that speech, then Judge Sotomayor opined that, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” That statement, along with her participation in the per curiam decision in Ricci v. DeStefano, caused a minor storm during her confirmation. More recently, former Harvard Dean and former Solicitor General Elena Kagan came under fire during her confirmation hearing for supporting her faculty’s position on the military’s treatment of gay, lesbian, and bisexual lawyers and her opposition to “don’t ask don’t tell.” This led some conservative commentators to speculate that she is a Lesbian. Both Justices Sotomayor and Kagan were attacked for bringing a perspective to the bench that supported minority groups – whether it be Latinas, women, or the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered communities. Yet, having judges who understand these perspectives would no doubt add diversity to the bench. Juxtaposing arguments in favor of a diverse bench with the treatment of these two Supreme Court nominees leads one to wonder whether those in public office are really interested in true diversity on the bench. Could it be, instead, that it is only acceptable for a judicial candidate to be “diverse” or have sympathy for minority communities if he or she does not act on them and instead complies with established white male norms? The brouhaha that both Justice Sotomayor’s comment engendered and Justice Kagan’s position created makes one wonder how truly committed to diversity on the bench or protecting minority groups those in public office really are. This article examines the affects of diversity on the bench, the confirmation processes for these two justices and contrasts it with the arguments in favor of a diverse bench. Ironically, these two well-qualified nominees were criticized during the confirmation process for “fear” that they would bring diverse perspectives to the bench and for their ultimate failure to conform to white heterosexist norms.
The full article is available here.
-Bridget Crawford
Allentown has now joined Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Harrisburg in offering domestic partner health benefits to the city’s LGBT employees. The city has also extended family and bereavement leave to cover domestic partners. However, the Allentown Morning Call reports that discussions are still ongoing with the relevant unions to extend benefits to police and firefighters. And a vote on extending pension benefits to domestic partners was apparently put on hold due to concerns regarding the permissibility of extending such benefits under state law.
-Tony Infanti
Tamar Birckhead (UNC) has posted to SSRN her article, The ‘Youngest Profession’: Consent, Autonomy, and Prostituted Children, 88 Wash. U. L. Rev. 1 (2011). Here is the abstract:
Although reliable estimates do not exist, the data suggests that the number of children believed to be at risk for commercial sexual exploitation in the United States is between 200,000 and 300,000 and that the average age of entry is between eleven and fourteen, with some as young as nine. The number of prostituted children who are criminally prosecuted for these acts is equally difficult to estimate. In 2008 – the most recent year for which data is available – approximately 206 males and 643 females under age eighteen were reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation as having been arrested within United States borders for prostitution and commercialized sex. Anecdotal evidence suggests, however, that these numbers reflect only a small fraction of the children who face criminal charges as a result of their prostituted status. Research also reveals that because most states have laws that hold children criminally liable for ‘selling’ sex, law enforcement and the courts readily pathologize these youth, a significant percentage of whom are runaways, drug addicted or from low-income homes in which they were neglected and abused. Statistics additionally suggest that the number of American girls who are sexually exploited is increasing, particularly for those between the ages of thirteen and seventeen. Likewise, it is estimated that eighty percent of prostituted women began this activity when they, themselves, were younger than eighteen. Yet, nearly all states can criminally prosecute children for prostitution even when they are too young to legally consent to sex with adults, and very few communities have developed effective programs designed to prevent or intervene in the sexual exploitation of youth.
This Article critically examines the prevalence of laws allowing for the criminal prosecution of minors for prostitution. It argues that rather than maintain a legal scheme that characterizes and treats such juveniles as willing participants who, if harmed, are merely getting what they deserve, a more nuanced approach must be developed in which – at a minimum – criminal liability should be consistent with age of consent and statutory rape laws. It analyzes the range of ways in which states have addressed the problem of prostituted children, and it highlights those few that have successfully utilized strategies of intervention and rehabilitation rather than prosecution and incarceration. It contrasts the impact of state versus federal legislation as well as domestic versus international policy in this area and the ways in which these differences serve to perpetuate pernicious stereotypes vis-à-vis youth and crime. The Article addresses the historical treatment of prostituted children as criminals rather than victims by both American law and society, and critiques contemporary rationales for continuing a punitive approach toward these youth. The Article explores the conflicting statutory, common law, and colloquial meanings of the terms ‘prostitution,’ ‘consent,’ and ‘bodily autonomy’ as they relate to children and sexuality. It also considers the extent to which the criminal offenses of prostitution and statutory rape address different sets of harms and explores how gender and sexual orientation are implicated in the discussion. The Article concludes by highlighting model programs directed at prevention, intervention, and rehabilitation as well as proposing strategies for reform, such as decriminalization and diversion.
The full article is here. I look forward to reading it.
-Bridget Crawford
I often get asked by students for tax topics for their student notes. Normally, I suggest some places to look where they can get a sense of hot topics, etc., but don’t suggest an actual topic. But yesterday, I came across what seems like a really interesting topic for a student note and thought that I would put it out there for whomever might be interested.
On the drive home from work yesterday afternoon, I was listening to All Things Considered on NPR when a story about tariffs (yes, tariffs–I do teach tax, after all!) grabbed my attention. The story nominally concerned President Obama’s order for a review of government regulations and focused particularly on the lengths to which the government (sometimes, it seems, rather pointlessly) goes to determine the tariff applicable to a specific good. (During the story, they actually cut a sneaker apart with an autopsy saw to determine what exactly it was made of so that the appropriate tariff could be determined.)
What really caught my attention was the fact that these tariffs, which are all listed in the voluminous Harmonized Tariff Schedule, can not only be rather arbitrary but also vary based on gender. The story mentioned in passing that for a certain type of woman’s shoe the duty is 12.5% while the duty on the same man’s shoe is 8.5%. It got me to wondering how this passes constitutional muster, so I did a little bit of searching to see if anyone had ever challenged these tariffs on equal protection grounds.
Sure enough, I quickly found a case brought by Totes, an importer of gloves, challenging the differential tariff rate that applies to men’s seamed leather gloves (14%) and to “other” seamed leather gloves (12.6%). Totes-Isotoner Corp. v. United States, 594 F.3d 1346 (Fed. Cir. 2010). Amazingly, Totes’s complaint was dismissed for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. Both the Federal Circuit and the lower court seemed to go out of their way to take equal protection challenges off of the table in the tax/tariff context, except in the most egregious of circumstances.
Here is a quote from the end of the Federal Circuit’s opinion explaining its decision,which will give you a flavor of the opinions:
“[W]e hold that because the challenged provisions of the HTSUS are not facially discriminatory, Totes is required to allege facts sufficient to establish a governmental purpose to discriminate between male and female users. Here, an allegation of mere disparate impact is not sufficient to satisfy this pleading requirement. Because Totes does not meet its burden to allege facts sufficient to infer a governmental purpose to discriminate, we hold that Totes’ complaint fails to state an equal protection claim.”
Yes, that’s right, these provisions were not deemed facially discriminatory even though they imposed one rate of tax on men’s gloves and another on women’s gloves. And it wasn’t enough for Totes to allege disparate impact (after all, these tariffs are passed directly on to the purchaser of the product as part of its price); Totes needed to allege a governmental purpose to discriminate. The soundness of these opinions–both legally and as a policy matter–could bear some further scrutiny and would seem to make an ideal topic for a student note. Anyone interested?
-Tony Infanti
An interesting article in the New York Times today focuses on recent data from the Census Bureau indicating that parenting by same-sex couples is more common in the South than in any other region of the country. (Note that the data that forms the basis for this story is not from the 2010 census, which promises to have all sorts of interesting data now that the Census Bureau is counting same-sex couples, but from the American Community Survey.)
This data is interesting because it helps to break down stereotypes and paints a picture of the LGBT community as a mosaic. As the article points out, the data undermines the notion that lesbians and gay men live only in big cities in the Northeast and on the West Coast. In addition, it shines a light on Black and Latino/a members of the LGBT community in finding that they were twice as likely as white same-sex couples to be parenting. As we get more and more data relating to the LGBT community, more and more stereotypes fall under their own weight.
On a less positive note, the article offers an explanation for the higher rate of parenting by same-sex couples in the South. The theory proffered by experts is that the strong disapproval of homosexuality in the South pushed many of these lesbians and gay men to marry and have children before coming out of the closet. The children that are being parented are thought to often be the children of these prior heterosexual relationships.
Something that the article only briefly touches upon is that the South, from a legal perspective, is a particularly hostile place for these LGBT families. The children in these families will be attending school and may be discriminated against, bullied, or harassed, yet, in the South, only DC, Maryland, and North Carolina have school laws in place that specifically address discrimination, harassment, and/or bullying on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Only DC and Maryland afford legal recognition to the parents’ same-sex relationships, prohibit housing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, and prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. And only DC permits joint adoption by same-sex couples.
Taken together with the explanation for the prevalence of LGBT parenting in the South, this view of the data paints a rather discouraging picture. It seems that a climate of discrimination and disapproval led to the creation of these families and now keeps them in a vulnerable position. Indeed, the story notes that one family hides the fact that their daughter has two mothers, because one of her mothers works at the school that their daughter attends and they worry about protecting that mother’s “privacy” at work.
Let us hope that the silver lining here is that these LGBT parents and their children pave the way for a more accepting future for all LGBT persons living in the South.
-Tony Infanti
Today the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law issued a report (here) about employment discrimination against LGBT people in Utah. From the press release:
The study found that Utah’s LGBT employees are being discriminated against because of their sexual orientation and gender identity. Over 43% of LGB respondents and 66% of transgender respondents to the 2010 survey reported that they had been fired, denied a job, or not promoted because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Nearly 30% of LGB respondents and 45% of transgender respondents experienced workplace harassment on a weekly basis during the previous year.***
Discrimination negatively affects employers, as well as employees. Several of Utah’s cities and private employers have already adopted anti-discrimination ordinances and policies protecting sexual orientation and gender identity, suggesting that doing so makes good business sense.
30-45% experiencing harassment? 100% depressing.
-Bridget Crawford
From the FLP mailbox:
Five College Women’s Studies Research Center
A collaborative project of Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and Smith Colleges and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst
The Center invites applications for its RESEARCH ASSOCIATESHIPS for 2011-2012 from scholars and teachers at all levels of the educational system, as well as from artists, community organizers and political activists, both local and international. Associates are provided with offices in our spacious facility, faculty library privileges, and the collegiality of a diverse community of feminists. Research Associate applications are accepted for either a semester or the academic year. The Center supports projects in all disciplines so long as they focus centrally on women or gender. Research Associateships do not provide a stipend. We accept about 15-18 Research Associates per year.
Applicants should submit a project proposal (up to 4 pages), curriculum vitae, two letters of reference, and on-line application cover form. Applications received by February 7 (including letters of recommendation) will receive full consideration. Submit all applications to: Five College Women’s Studies Research Center, Mount Holyoke College, 50 College Street, South Hadley, MA 01075-6406. Deadline is February 7, 2011. For further information, contact the Center (here) at TEL 413.538.2275, FAX 413.538.3121, email fcwsrc@fivecolleges.edu, website: http://www.fivecolleges.edu/sites/fcwsrc
-Bridget Crawford
From the FLP mailbox:
CALL FOR PAPERS
Demeter Pressis seeking submissions for an edited collection on:
Incarcerated Mothers: Oppression and Resistance.
Co-Editors: Gordana Eljdupovic and Rebecca Jaremko Bromwich.
Publication Date: 2012
Deadline for abstracts: May 31, 2011.
A large proportion – and in many jurisdictions the majority – of incarcerated women are mothers. Popular attention is often paid to challenges faced by children of incarcerated mothers while incarcerated women themselves often do not “count” as mothers in mainstream discourse. This anthology will explore complex issues relating to incarcerated mothers, from connections between mothering and incarceration, through criminalization of motherhood to understanding experiences of mothers in prison.
This book will examine how incarcerated mothers are ascribed identities, and especially how society scripts of the mother role and what “counts” as a “good” or “real” mother in Western patriarchal society. We encourage submissions that interrogate popular discourses about mothering, virtue and criminalization and especially those that focus on resistance and agency by incarcerated mothers.
Suggested topics include, but are not limited to: -health of mothers in prison -,- experiences of mothers in prison, -representations of incarcerated mothers in popular culture – prison narratives by and about mothers- history of incarcerated mothers- public policy- the law, – stated above – Criminalization of pregnancy and motherhood -constructing identities – survival patterns as incarcerated mothers- negative cultural portrayals of mothers who are criminalized – relationship of patriarchal discursive systems to portrayals of incarcerated mothers – Incarcerated mothers in the press and other mainstream cultural media – adolescent incarcerated mothers – race, class, ethnicity and incarcerated mothers – foster families and incarcerated mothers- mother and caregiver relationships – mothers after incarceration – transitioning from carceral settings to the community – Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered and Transsexual incarcerated mothers – gender identity, criminalization and the social construction of motherhood
Submission Guidelines: Abstracts should be 250 words. Please also include a brief biography, including citizenship (50 words).
Please send to Rebecca@jbbarrister.com. Accepted Papers of 4000-5000 words (15-20 pages) will be due November 1, 2011 and should conform to MLA citation format.
-Bridget Crawford
Menah Pratt-Clark (Assistant Chancellor and Director of the Office of Equal Opportunity and Access at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) has published a new book with Palgrave Macmillan Here is the publisher’s description of the book:
Critical Race, Feminism, and Education: A Social Justice Model, by Menah A.E. Pratt-Clarke, provides a transformative next step in the evolution of critical race and Black feminist scholarship. Focusing on praxis, the relationship between the construction of race, class, and gender categories and social justice outcomes is analyzed. An applied transdisciplinary model – integrating law, sociology, history, and social movement theory – demonstrates how marginalized groups are oppressed by ideologies of power and privilege in the legal system, the education system, and the media. Dr. Pratt-Clarke documents the effects of racism, patriarchy, classism, and nationalism on Black females and males in the single-sex school debate.
-Bridget Crawford
That’s the title of the report (PDF here) issued by the non-profit (admittedly viewpoint-specific) group Tibet-Truth. Here is an excerpt:
Unless a card-carrying member of China’s Communist Party, there is no doubt that a spiral of birth-control enforcement is imposed upon Buddhist-Tibetan women. As will be shown by the included testimony, measures which include fines, arrest, detention, degrading treatment and physical force. There is an extensive and well researched body of evidence, including firsthand testimony, eyewitness accounts, and a range of supportive information from a variety of sources, including Chinese documentation, international media reports, television documentaries, and accounts from former birth control officers.
-Bridget Crawford
…for LGBT state employees to find out how (in)secure their jobs are for the next four years. Most states still do not have nondiscrimination legislation in place that protects their LGBT citizens from being fired because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. (For a map indicating the 21 states and DC that have legal protections in place, click here.) The governors of a handful of states have stepped in to fill this void somewhat, by protecting at least public employees from employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. But these protections only last as long as the governor is in office. Each time a new governor is elected, the new governor can either continue those protections or revoke them–or where they have not existed before, extend them to LGBT state employees.
With the turnover in a number of governorships this year, the waiting game has begun once again to see which LGBT state employees will (or will not) be protected from being fired because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. It is already clear that LGBT public employees in Florida will be getting no protection from newly installed Governor Rick Scott (not that they had any before). In fact, in his executive order concerning nondiscrimination in public employment, Scott not only refused to extend protection to the state’s LGBT employees, but he also appears to have left off some categories (e.g., disability and marital status) that are specifically covered by state nondiscrimination laws!
In my home state of Pennsylvania, nondiscrimination protections have been in place under outgoing Governor Ed Rendell. It will be interesting to see whether newly elected (and yet to be sworn in) Governor Tom Corbett will reverse these protections. There is some serious question about Corbett’s support for nondiscrimination protections for the LGBT community.
Stay tuned! And get out your scorecard, if you want to keep track of these changes yourself. Or, check back periodically at the map that I link to above. The Human Rights Campaign, who created this map, seems to be quite good at updating it as changes occur.
-Tony Infanti
The New York Times web site today includes an article highlighting some of the costs associated with same-sex couples’ recent victory in their fight for marriage equality under the federal tax laws. The article is interesting but misses the larger context—because these costs are a natural concomitant of a piecemeal approach to marriage equality and are in no sense either unique or new.
Before explaining this point, let me give you some background on the issue the article covers. The article explains how the IRS last year decided that same-sex couples whose relationships are legally recognized and who live in community-property states (e.g., California) can now file federal tax returns that split all of their income equally, just as married different-sex couples in those states can choose to do. This decision accords respect to the state property law treatment of these couples, which basically deems property acquired during the relationship to belong equally to the members of the couple. If the members of a same-sex couple have unequal incomes, this can result in an overall federal tax savings for the couple (because some of the income of the higher-income partner can be shifted to the lower-income partner and be taxed at lower rates). Notably, this represents a complete reversal of the position taken in a ruling issued during the Bush administration, which refused to recognize state property law as applied to same-sex couples (even though these same state property laws have long been recognized for federal tax purposes as applied to different-sex married couples). Naturally, at the time, this reversal was viewed as a victory in the battle for marriage equality.
The article then, however, goes on to explain all of the hassles that same-sex couples will now experience because of this ruling–and that their different-sex married counterparts are spared. Because same-sex couples have no box to check on their returns to indicate their relationship, they will have to attach some sort of explanation of the splitting of their income to their returns. This is an extra compliance burden that will likely prevent same-sex couples from being able to file electronically and that will often require them to hire an adviser to help correctly complete their returns. Otherwise, they are very likely to be the subject of IRS audit because the amount of income reported on their returns will not match the amount reported to the IRS by employers and others (e.g., banks).
(Not to mention that many IRS employees do not seem to be aware of this policy change, which means that even further explanation for the splitting will be required. This problem is likely the result of the IRS’s wholesale refusal to provide generally applicable, public guidance to same-sex couples, a practice that was recently the subject of harsh criticism from the National Taxpayer Advocate.)
And, of course, there are already nightmarish tales of people who have experienced just these problems. Married different-sex couples don’t experience these problems because they are required to either file their returns jointly, in which case all of their income is reported together, or to file separately and check a box on the return indicating that they are married and include the name and Social Security number of their spouse on their returns. This makes it easy for the IRS to see that all of the income was reported between the two returns.
As mentioned at the beginning of this post, the imposition of such costs as the price of achieving equality are neither unique nor new. Until now, same-sex couples who live in states that recognize their relationships have experienced extra costs in filing their state tax returns. Because the federal government still refuses recognition to same-sex relationships, as such, for federal tax purposes and most states with income taxes piggyback on the federal income tax, married same-sex couples in states that recognize their relationship have often had to complete not only two separate federal income tax returns for filing with the federal government, but also a “mock” joint federal income tax return to use as the basis for (and which often must be attached to) their joint state income tax return. (One of my students wrote a note on this issue a few years back. See Catherine Martin Christopher, Will Filing Status Be Portable? Tax Implications of Interstate Recognition of Same-Sex Marriage, 4 Pitt. Tax Rev. 137 (2007).) Indeed, I blogged a couple of years ago on problems that Connecticut civil union couples had with H&R Block when filing their state tax returns.
More of the same can be expected if the appeals courts uphold the recent federal district court decision in Gill v. Office of Personnel Management, which held the federal Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional as applied to several married Massachusetts same-sex couples who were unable to file joint federal income tax returns. This decision holds the promise of extending marriage equality to same-sex couples for purposes of all federal law, including tax law. But, because that decision involved an “as applied” challenge to the federal Defense of Marriage Act, it is unclear how it will be applied to same-sex couples outside of Massachusetts. Will it only apply to same-sex couples who reside in other states that legally recognize their relationships? Will it apply to all same-sex couples who are married, even if their home state does not recognize their relationship? If it applies to all same-sex couples who are married, no matter where they reside, how do you make that determination? What about couples who, at the time of their marriage, lived in a state that adamantly refused legal recognition to same-sex relationships and went to another state (e.g., Massachusetts) to be married, immediately thereafter returning to their home state? What if the relevant conflict of laws rules would invalidate such an “evasive” marriage? What if, instead, the couple leaves their home state to be married in another country (e.g., Canada)? Would the federal government recognize that marriage as a matter of comity? These are all thorny issues that would need to be resolved. But by whom? Would the courts provide guidance on this? The IRS? Or, again, would it essentially fall to taxpayers to hire lawyers (at great expense) to determine the impact of this decision on them?
And, if the federal government ends up recognizing same-sex relationships that are not recognized by the state where the couple resides, then we will end up with the converse of the current situation. In other words, same-sex couples will be able to file joint federal income tax returns, but then may end up having to fill out two “mock” separate returns to form the basis for (and that must be attached to) their separate state filings because their home state does not recognize their relationship.
So, the article on the Times‘s web site is interesting and highlights a problem that already exists and, from all indications, will not be going away any time soon. Sometimes the path to equality requires you to take a couple steps back every time you take a step forward.
-Tony Infanti
For the past year or so, I’ve been engaged in a large-scale data collection project relating to gender and student note publication. Over winter break, I came to think that the time had come when the project could benefit from the thoughts of this blog’s readership and the academic community more generally, so I’ll be discussing the project in a series of posts over the next few weeks with the hope of receiving thoughts and reactions.
The current project expands on a short article I authored in 2009 presenting data showing that, over a three-year time period, women at the U.S. News top-fifteen-ranked law schools authored 36% of the student notes published in their schools’ general interest law reviews.
I was surprised by how much interest that article received, and so I decided to look further. The current project presents a significantly larger set of data. With the help of several very dedicated research assistants, I created a database of every student note published during the past ten years (academic years 1999-2000 through 2008-2009) in the “general-interest” law review at a school that U.S. News listed in the “top fifty” in either 2009 or 2010 (a total of fifty-two schools). The database currently includes just under six thousand student notes, coded by the gender of the author and the general subject area of the note.
I’m still in the process of auditing the data, so I’ll save the exact numbers for a later post. For the present purpose of fostering discussion and input into the project, I can say that the larger data set does document a disparity in the number of notes published by men and women law students that tracks the disparity I described in my previous article. The disparity is consistent from year to year over the ten-year time period. As in my previous project, however, I found considerable variation between schools, with large disparities at some and no disparity at others. Continue reading
From the FLP mailbox:
The Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, part of the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University, announces the availability of Mary Lily Research Grants for research travel to our collections.
The Sallie Bingham Center documents the public and private lives of women through a wide variety of published and unpublished sources. Collections of personal papers, family papers, and organizational records complement print sources such as books and periodicals. Particular strengths of the Sallie Bingham Center are feminism in the U.S., women’s prescriptive literature from the 19th & 20th centuries, girls’ literature, zines, artist’s books by women, gender & sexuality, and the history & culture of women in the South. An overview of our collecting areas can be found here.
Mary Lily Research grants are available to any faculty member, graduate or undergraduate student, or independent scholar with a research project requiring the use of materials held by the Sallie Bingham Center. Grant money may be used for travel, photocopying, and living expenses while pursuing research at the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library. Applicants must live outside of a 100-mile radius from Durham, NC. The maximum award per applicant is $1,000.
The deadline for application is January 31, 2011 by 5:00 PM EST. Recipients will be announced in March 2011. Grants must be used between April 1, 2011 and June 30, 2012.
For more information and to download a copy of the application form, please visit here.
-Bridget Crawford
Rebecca Alvin (Cape Cod Community College) has made a documentary film, “Women of Faith”, about women and the Catholic Church. Here is the description from the film’s distributor, Women Make Movies:
This absorbing documentary examines women’s decisions to lead religious lives in the Roman Catholic tradition in the post-feminist era. Throughout history, nuns were given certain advantages over other women, while still oppressed within their vocational pursuits. They were taught to read and write, encouraged to pursue music, literature, art, philosophy and spirituality, and officially allowed to escape marriage’s powerless role of wife. But why would a woman choose a nun’s life today?
Individual interviews with seven women provide answers—and explore how rebellion can happen within and outside the Church, how women in the Church reconcile conflicting, religious, personal, and political beliefs, and how they view official Church positions on contraception, homosexuality, and women’s ordination as priests. The diverse group includes Poor Clares, contemplative nuns who spend most of their days in prayer, Maryknolls who have served in Central America, and a Roman Catholic Womanpriest. Both timely and insightful, the film provides a rare look at their experiences and current controversies over tradition, change and power within the Catholic Church.
Clip below.
-Bridget Crawford
The January 2, 2011 edition of the Chronicle reviewed “6 Top Smartphone Apps to Improve Teaching, Research, and Your Life.” Here are the ones that looked most useful to law profs:
Attendance by David M. Reed (Computer Science, Capital University). Can take attendance and create “flashcards” with student names and photos (your school supplies the photos). I’m using the hand-held student response systems for pedagogical reasons (in addition to attendance), but for folks who only use them to take attendance, this seems worthwhile. $4.99.
Dropbox. For saving scholarly articles to read later. You can also store PDFs of course material, etc. My Mac-loving colleagues swear by it. Free.
GoodReader. PDF reader that allows you to also highlight and take notes. I like this app, but haven’t yet gotten into the groove of taking notes on a PDF. I think it’s just a question of habit for me. $2.99.
Evernote. Pretty similar to GoodReader. Free.
JotNot Scanner Pro. Turns pictures taken from your iPhone into PDFs. Cool for taking pictures of individual pages from book you’re reading or the whiteboard, before you erase. This sounds like one that I could put to good use. $0.99.
“Mind Mapping” programs, including Thinking Space (for Android), MindJet (for iPhone, $7.99), MindBlowing (iPhone, free), Popplet (iPad, lite version free, $8.99). Like with taking notes on a PDF, I haven’t become habituated to the iPhone or iPad for mind mapping. But if I practice more, the digital version would sure look nicer than a scribbled-on yellow pad.
Any others that readers use or prefer?
-Bridget Crawford
Law and Religion scholars, Law and Science scholars and legal historians might be interested in thsi announcement from the Mary Baker Eddy Library in Boston:
Fellowships are open to academic scholars, independent researchers, and graduate students. The Library’s newly public collections, centered on the papers of Mary Baker Eddy and records documenting the history of Christian Science, offer scholars countless opportunities for original research. A select list of such resources includes: Mary Baker Eddy’s scrapbooks and copybooks; household account ledgers and receipts; a fully-indexed file of newspapers clippings that date to the late nineteenth century; Eddy’s sermons and lectures; an extensive historic photograph collection; architectural records; early histories of branch Churches of Christ, Scientist; and Eddy’s voluminous correspondence and manuscript material, which offer opportunities for new analyses of her life and ideas.
Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910) authored a ground-breaking book on science, theology, and healing titled Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures and founded the Church of Christ, Scientist, a publishing society, and The Christian Science Monitor.
Previous fellowship topics have included: Mary Baker Eddy and Bronson Alcott; demographic survey of early Christian Science church members; Emmanuel Movement; material culture and memory; church architecture and feminine sacred space; Christian Science and divine healing.
Stipend provided. Application and supporting materials must be postmarked by February 7, 2011. For further information about the Library’s holdings and the fellowship program, including the application and instructions, please see here.
-Bridget Crawford
From the FLP mailbox, this notice that Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio will sponsor its 7th Annual Wells Conference on Adoption Law on March 17, 2011.
The conference will include nationally-recognized professors and practitioners speaking on such timely issues as:
The Wells Conference strives to include both academic ideas and practical advice for attorneys.
The theme for this year’s conference was inspired by the case of the young Russian boy who was sent back to Moscow after his adoptive mother in Tennessee became overwhelmed with his emotional problems. Our hope is to focus this year’s conference on ways to prevent an adoption from going wrong, and to recognize potential issues early in the adoption process in order to prevent situations like what happened in Tennessee.
For registration and more information, see here.
-Bridget Crawford
From the FLP mailbox, this call for abstracts from the Isis Center for Women and Development:
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
WOMEN & NEW MEDIA IN THE MEDITERRANEAN REGION
ISIS CENTER FOR WOMEN & DEVELOPMENT
June 24, 25, 26, 2011 – Fez, Morocco – Palais des Congres
With the growing dominance of the Internet, blog, chat and mobile telephony, the great “big bang” of the new media has begun. Communication is rapidly changing and becoming mobile, interactive, personalized and multi-channel. This extraordinary revolution is affecting the basic structure of Mediterranean societies, especially those in the south, and is raising various discussions and debates that profoundly impact women: the rapid transformation of the boundaries between the public and the private spaces, the relationship between new technology, orality and women’s literature, changes in the relationship between written and oral languages, the increasing use of mother tongues (mainly oral) in the field of education, and the challenges of new transmissions of women’s knowledges.
These issues are the five main axes of the International Congress Forum on “Women and New Media in the Mediterranean Region”, to be held on June 24, 25 and 26, 2011 at the Palais des Congrès, Fez , Morocco :
1. The transformation of the relationship “gender and public space / private space” in the era of new media
2. New media, orality and literature Women
3.Femmes, written languages and mother tongues
4. The new media and education
5. The challenge of new transmissions of women’s knowledge
Papers may be in Arabic, French or English and will last 15-20 minutes.
The deadline for receiving abstracts is March 1, 2011.
The successful participants will be notified by March 31, 2011, and the completed papers need to be emailed send before June 1, 2011.
Participants are responsible for their trip and lodging expenses.
-Bridget Crawford
This morning, I attended the “New Voices in Gender Studies” program sponsored by the AALS Section on Women in Legal Education. The presenters were the five winners of the section’s scholarly paper competition, chosen on a blind basis. (Self-disclosure: I was one of the judges for the competition.)
The presenters were David S. Cohen (Drexel), Suzanne A. Kim (Rutgers Newark), Melissa E. Murray (Berkeley), Nicole B. Porter (Toledo) and Kara Swanson (Northeastern). Here is a brief overview of each professor’s project.
David Cohen presented his work on The Stubborn Persistence of Sex Segregation (available here). He gave a taxonomy of the different types of sex segregation and explained how sex segregation limits equality. Professor Cohen’s scholarship is some of the best on the subject. Definitely worth reading in connection with his related piece Keeping Men Men and Women Down: Sex Segregation, Anti-Essentialism, and Masculinity (available here).
Suzanne Kim presented Toward Skeptical Marriage Equality, which is forthcoming in the Harvard Journal of Gender and the Law. Professor Kim asks to what extent equality-based arguments can inform marriage-skeptical arguments (and vice versa) in leading to a more descriptively egalitarian marriage.
Melissa Murray presented her work, Marriage as Punishment. The same article was the co-winner of the annual AALS Scholarly Papers Competition. Professor Murray’s work highlights the way in which marriage is used as a form of state regulation and governance. The piece takes broad account of legal history and contemporary politics.
Nicole Porter spoke on the subject of employment discrimination, presenting her paper Paycheck Fairness Act to the Rescue! Precluding the Market Defense and Reviving the Equal Pay Act, 12 Georgetown Journal of Gender & the Law __ (forthcoming 2011).
Kara Swanson is an IP specialist who also has a Ph.D. in the History of Science. She is working on a book called Banking the Body, about how the commercial market in human body parts.
This was a super line-up of scholars. Attending the program made me feel very optimistic about the future of gender-related legal scholarship!
-Bridget Crawford
The Journal of Feminist Scholarship, a new online journal, has sent out a call for papers.
Why a new journal? Why now?
We believe it is time to explore the state of feminist scholarship at the turn of the new century, and we see the endeavor as part of a larger question of where feminism itself is heading. For example, we ask whether it still makes sense to talk of the “waves” of feminism. If so, what is the status of the third wave? Is there a post-third wave? We wish to encourage a discussion of feminist thought for the twenty-first century. What are its directions today, and what relationship does it sustain with the foundations laid down by feminist inquiry and action in earlier centuries? We aim to publish work that explores the multiple theoretical paradigms and political agendas of contemporary and historical feminist scholarship and the potential intersections and tensions between these paradigms and agendas. We are especially interested in examining productive controversies and divergences between local and global contexts of feminism. We also welcome submissions that focus on feminist pedagogies and activism.Publishing the journal online means that we are able to offer open access to its contents to feminist scholars anywhere in the world where there is an internet connection. It also has an immediacy that allows us to publish articles on topics that are in the here and now and to significantly shorten the time lag from submission to publication for our prospective contributors.
Please visit the submissions page to see our guidelines for authors and our contact page for contact information for the JFS. The rest of the site is currently under construction.
editors
Catherine Villanueva Gardner · CGARDNER@UMASSD.EDU
Anna M. Klobucka · AKLOBUCKA@UMASSD.EDU
Jeannette E. Riley · JEN.RILEY@UMASSD.EDU
The Journal of Feminist Scholarship is a new twice-yearly, peer-reviewed, open-access journal published online and aimed at promoting feminist scholarship across the disciplines, as well as expanding the reach and definitions of feminist research.
Should the AALS prefer programs with speakers making only a single AALS appearance? Stated another way, should there be a disincentive (or even a rule precluding) multiple conference appearances by the same faculty member?
Here’s what I observe in the Annual Meeting Program:
The AALS already gives scheduling preference for Annual Meeting programs that issue a call for papers (as well as co-sponsored programs and programs with papers that will be published). This opens up the meeting to more voices and helps combat a “clubby” atmosphere. I would support a similar preference for programs comprised entirely of “single-appearance” speakers. (In the same spirit, I’d also support a preference for programs comprised of those who have not spoken at any of the preceding three AALS annual meetings.)
Some conferences (like SEALS) strictly limit participant appearances. This further opens up a program to more voices. Other conferences (LSA) limit participants to one moderation/chair slot and one speaking slot.
Procedural preferences/rules can facilitate the inclusion of the maximum number of different voices as possible.
-Bridget Crawford
Back in August, I wrote that the Prop 8 case might never get decided by the Supreme Court. The theory was that by the time the Supreme Court could hear and decide the case, the California voters would vote to repeal Prop 8. As I understand things, advocacy groups in California are working to get a repeal on the ballot for November 2012 with the thinking being that demographics will be more favorable (i.e., younger people become voters, older people die off, attitudes generally become more tolerant, etc.).
The Ninth Circuit’s expedited hearing in December put a bit of a kink in my theory, but today the chances of the case being mooted increased by a lot. The Ninth Circuit decided to punt the case . . . for now. In its decision, the Ninth Circuit certified the question of standing to the California Supreme Court. I don’t have any information about the general timeline for questions certified to the California Supreme Court, but there’s no arguing that this doesn’t delay the case, possibly substantially.
Now, the following things must happen before the case is decided by the Supreme Court:
Under my theory that Prop 8 will likely be repealed by California voters, this all has to happen before November 2012, just 22 months from now. (And my list of things that have to occur doesn’t even include a possible en banc process in the Ninth Circuit.)
I just can’t see the wheels of justice moving this quickly, so I’m sticking with my original post – this case will probably be mooted.
Cross-posted at the Faculty Lounge blog.
