The National LGBT Bar Association is looking for LGBT law student groups that are interested in signing on to its amicus brief in Christian Legal Society Chapter v. Martinez, which is the case coming before the U.S. Supreme Court regarding UC-Hastings’s refusal to fund that school’s Christian Legal Society chapter because CLS discriminates against LGBT individuals. For more information, click here.
-Tony Infanti
That is, according to the Kansas judge presiding over the trial of Dr. George Tiller’s murder. Apparently, murdering someone in cold-blood for performing a lawful medical procedure for women who seek it might be a form of “deadly force [that] was justified in self-defense.” Watch out women of Kansas who want an abortion — you could be the next victim of voluntary manslaughter (not murder). After all, if stopping the doctor from performing the abortion is justified, then so would stopping the woman who is seeking it, right?
Emily Bazelon at Slate has an excellent reaction to this ruling which you can read here. Here’s her conclusion:
Surely the Kansas appeals courts will set the judge straight if he doesn’t fix this himself by the trial’s end. But by then, harm will have been done. Scott Roeder will get to put on testimony about why he thought he was justified in killing Tiller. He will have a show trial in which he can present himself as a martyr to the cause of the unborn. Judge Wilbert has repeatedly insisted that he won’t let this trial become a trial about abortion. But that’s exactly where his ruling is taking us.
– David S. Cohen
The Prop 8 trial in San Francisco has captivated the homo-imagination, not surprisingly. (Posts about the first couple days here and here.) So this seems like an awkward time to suggest anything critical about the institution of marriage itself (even though Nancy Cott did a magnificent job as expert witness in the case over the last day and a half outlining the complicated history of marriage). But here goes:
Among the things that drives me to the highest levels of frustration when I consider the state of feminism today is the way in which women, particularly mothers and wives, have given up on men. Not so long ago we had a rich, systemic and unrelenting critique of the ways in which fathers and husbands felt little or no obligation to do domestic work – whether it be taking care of kids, maintaining the household – even clearing the table – or other “reproductive” work. The fact that men felt entitled to and received a free pass when it came to this work received a thorough working over by those who cared about dismantling the second class status of women. I know this sounds all “second wavy,” but it does make me nuts that we, today’s feminists included, no longer press these issues, and instead shift to other institutional sites (such as employers or the state) the burden of sharing what Martha Fineman calls dependency work.
What restimulated this annoyance was Liesl Schillinger’s review of Mika Brzezinski’s new book All Things At Once this weekend in the The New York Time Book Review. The review, entitled Her Way, could have just as easily been written by the Times‘ Work and Family beat reporter Lisa Belkin – it was one more relatively shallow account of how tough it is for upper class white women to have it all. Belkin has written this article over and over for the Times, and now Schillinger joins the beat.
The take home “insight” Schillinger offers is how “Brzezinski’s questioning (of the wisdom of being a working mother) will be familiar to all women who shoulder the triple load of career, motherhood and guilt.” This echoes the book’s media pitch put out by the publisher: the book is “a candid and inspiring motivational book that will help women of all ages confront the unique professional and personal challenges they face in the key moments of their lives.”
The Schillinger review highlights how Brzezinski, the well-known TV personality and daughter of Zbigniew Brzezinski, struggled with her fatigue when juggling her demanding job and two small children.”How could I have let myself get so run-down,” Brzezinksi laments, “so exhausted at work that I would fumble over my own feet and fall down a steep flight of stairs with my newborn in my arms?”In response, Schillinger offers empathetically yet problematically: “It’s a question that has no answer, but which is asked, in infinite permutations, by all women who shoulder the triple load of motherhood, career and guilt.” Triple load of motherhood, career and guilt!??? Oh please.
The review, much like Belkin’s writing (see her infuriating NYT Magazine cover article on the “opt-out revolution” for starters), leaves the reader with the impression that poor Mika has taken on this impossible task all by herself – the burden of raising her two kids and the demands of her job are hers alone to manage. I don’t want to minimize the real pressure that upper class women feel who have children and demanding jobs – they surely do. But writing of this sort perpetuates the old-fashioned idea that mothers, even privileged ones, are doing something bad for their children when they work. That’s where the guilt comes in. Guilty of what? Of not devoting all their energies to being a mom?
(Surely a woman of Brzenzski’s class has at least one nanny who cares for Mika’s young children while she’s at work. Indeed, Mika’s successful career likely depends upon the no doubt low-paid work of other women. What of the guilt, the stress, the fatigue her nanny feels caring for someone else’s children as her full-time job?)
You’d think, from the way the article was set up, that Brzezenski was a single mom. Mentioned only in passing was the seemingly marginal fact that she is married to Jim Hoffer, a successful journalist himself. He does not figure in the review as someone who has any role in taking care of the kids, taking care of Mika, or taking care of anything. The kids are her responsibility, and she may well have let them down by having a career. His career is a credential, hers is a liability and a source of guilt. Arghhh.
A couple months ago Suzanne Goldberg and I held a breakfast at a midtown law firm with a group of women who had graduated from Columbia Law School to talk about the law school’s Center for Gender & Sexuality Law. The women we met with had very different experiences of law school and law practice: some having graduated as long as 40 years ago and others only a couple years ago. Perhaps the most interesting moment was when the more senior women asked the younger women whether they would call themselves feminists. “No” most replied – “it’s not something for our generation. We feel burdened by feminism – it means we have to do it all, but we haven’t been given any tools to pull this off: be successful lawyers, mothers, and good wives/partners.” What emerged from the conversation was a sense that the younger women didn’t see feminism as opening up opportunities for women, but rather heaping on expectations. The older women in the room were shocked.
There’s no denying that combining motherhood with wage labor work remains a challenge for most women. I hear it from my female students all the time – unlike their male classmates, the women in law school who want to have children agonize over how to time their legal education, the start of their careers, and beginning a family. Working women continue to be burdened with what Arlie Hochschild termed “the Second Shift,” and the younger women at our breakfast felt the heavy weight of that burden in ways equal to or greater than earlier feminists because of the enormous pressure on them to have robust careers and be mothers, while the men still get a free pass.
As the lgbt community pounds on the gate to marriage, demanding to be let in, it bears repeating that the institution, while an enduring signifier of full citizenship, remains one deeply stratified by gender inequalities and status hierarchies that seem as durable as the institution itself.
Some have argued that allowing same-sex couples to marry will have the revolutionary effect of dismantling the role stereotyping and status hierarchies that persist in marriage. We’ll see – I don’t know. The profoundly conventional arguments being marshaled in favor of marriage equality in the Prop 8 case seem to point in the other direction.
Katherine Franke – cross posted from Gender & Sexuality Law Blog
Via Alternet – 4-Year-Old Boy Suspended From School for Months Because His Hair Is ‘Too Long’. This is a public school holding a four-year old boy to a different standard than girls for hair length. The Fourteenth Amendment applies, and gender stereotyping should be forbidden here. Sure, gender stereotyping from parents, relatives, and peers starts very early, probably at birth. But, the state needs to stay out of that business at all times.
More:
So what’s the problem? Apparently his hair violates school district dress code. Why on earth a 4-year-old has a dress code, I don’t know. I would think if you’re dealing with a bunch of kids that young, you’d pretty much just hope they show up with their shoes still on. But on further review, the school district seems to have lots of ridiculous dress restrictions. And there are some that just drive me nuts. For instance, girls can have piercings, boys cannot. Girls can have long hair, boys cannot.
So what’s this really about? Messed up cultural norms that put boys in one box and girls in the other and don’t allow any kind of freedom of expression. What do the people of Texas think will go wrong if a boy has long hair? Does it have anything to do with *gasp* gender identity? Will it get in the way of that algebra they’re surely teaching 4-year-olds? I’m guessing the only thing that really interferes with education is not letting a kid go to class.
– David S. Cohen
Over the recent holidays I went with my family to see the Disney filmThe Princess and the Frog. As many of you know, it features a character who has been billed as Disney’s “first black princess,” Tiana. My whole household had eagerly awaited this as we are to a person enamored of magic and are especially fond of Disney animated magic. My daughter was particularly keen on going, not because the princess was going to be black but because for her any princess is a good thing: I am of like mind (yeah, I’m just a girly girl at heart). That’s why I was so sorely disappointed at the film. Movies are supposed to be fun and escapist. This movie struck me as just the opposite, and it has taken me days to mull over my feelings. (Warning: some spoilers below.)
Tiana is established at the outset as a shadow princess, one who is eclipsed by an actual princess. The film opens with two little girls, one white, one black, sitting and listening to a story. Charlotte (rhymes with Scarlet), the white child, is depicted as spoiled and demanding but cute and sweet (gee, how to be all of that at once?). Charlotte is dressed in princess finery while Tiana, the black child, bears but one indicia of royalty: a crown that seems to have been borrowed from the white child. As the scene expands we learn that the story is being read by the black seamstress mother of the black child and that the black child has accompanied her mother to the large, beautiful and indeed almost castle-like home of the white child in order to make for the white child yet another of what we learn are oodles of fine dresses. Job over, the seamstress and her daughter exit and go out and catch the street car back to their modest home in the black part of New Orleans where we see that Tiana is part of that now elusive social phenomenon, the Intact Black Family. Yes, there is a Dad! But he conveniently disappears early in the film, apparently a casualty of World War I. Nobody says so exactly, but the characters seem to sigh over a picture of Dad in his Doughboy uniform and intimate that he isn’t coming back, offering an extremely fuzzy epitaph. Combat death is just too real for the folks in the Magic Kingdom–so I’ll say it for them, borrowing from Joseph Conrad by way of T.S. Eliot:Mr. Dad, he dead. Of course, being orphaned or partially orphaned is a common trope in fairy tales. But why introduce the Dad at all?
I received this message in an e-mail from the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) this morning:
SALT Launches List Serve on LGBT Issues at Religiously-Affiliated Law Schools
SALT member and Seton Hall University law professor Marc Poirier announces Constellation!
A project of the SALT LGBT Committee, Constellation is a moderated list serve intended to provide a forum for discussing the concerns of LGBT faculty, administrators, and staff at religiously-affiliated law schools. We are open to all permanent faculty, administrators, and staff at U.S. law schools, regardless of a participant’s sexual orientation and regardless of the institutional structure of a particular law school. Constellation will facilitate general discussion, communication of news and concerns, and the consideration of responses to specific and general concerns. Our goals are to generate a shared sense of support and possibility, to support networking, and to facilitate productive general and institution-specific conversations and resolutions. Varying perspectives are welcome. Civility is expected. Although membership is limited, confidentiality cannot be assured.
Constellation will begin operation during the week of January 11. You may email constellation@umn.edu and request subscription.
I plan to subscribe to this list serve even though I am not at a religiously affiliated law school. I am interested in learning about the issues faced by those at religiously affiliated law schools, some of which do much better than others on LGBT issues.
For a great take on the collision between religiously affiliated law schools, the AALS, and institutional pluralism, I would highly recommend José Gabilondo’s recently published piece Institutional Pluralism from the Standpoint of Its Victims: Calling the Question on Indiscriminate (In)tolerance, 21 Law & Literature 387 (2009) (available through Westlaw).
-Tony Infanti
Click here for Ann Telnaes’s animated take on the subject over at the Washington Post.
-Tony Infanti
Throughout watching Avatar, I kept thinking, “What would be different about the story if the sexes of the main characters were different? What if the lead were a woman, and her love interest, the Pandoran local, were a man?” That might have made Avatar a feminist movie, but otherwise, I’d disagree with Rebecca Keegan of Vanity Fair who argues it’s a feminist film. I’d agree more with Lauren Bans of XX Factor, who questions (here) what a “feminist” movie is.
The women are not the drivers of the story, a critique levied (here) against Nancy Meyers by Daphne Merkin in the NY Times recently. More importantly, each person’s role fits neatly within his or her sex identity. On whether Avatar is “feminist,” I’d agree more with Lauren Bans of XX Factor, who questions what a “feminist” movie is. In Avatar, there’s no breaking out of sex stereotypes, and for me, that’s its failure.
-Darren Rosenblum
The creative folks at the Japan Trend Shop (here) are marketing a new gadget to help … um …. quiet down the men in your life. There’s a choice between the wood (single-piece) model, or the polyurethane dual-part model.
Warning: the instruction manual is available in Japanese only, in case the user has trouble … um … figuring out how it all works.
-Bridget Crawford
An update on Perry v. Schwarzenegger, including a discussion of the expert testimony is available on Constitutional Law Professors blog here.
-Ruthann Robson
Upon being named the first “CNN Hero” of 2010, Wynona Ward, the founder of Have Justice Will Travel, said:”I think it’s wonderful to get the exposure for our program, but it’s even more important that people realize domestic violence is an epidemic and so many people need help. It’s a society-wide problem, but we’re making progress in helping people to start their lives over.” View a short video about Wynona Ward’s personal story and exceptional advocacy here.
A survivor of childhood domestic abuse, Wynona Ward had worked for 15 years as a long-haul truck driver when she enrolled at Vermont Law School and worked on domestic violence cases in its legal clinic. In her third year of law school, with funding from a NAPIL Fellowship (now Equal Justice Works) and a grant from the Vermont Women’s Fund, she founded Have Justice Will Travel in order to provide legal and social services for victims of domestic violence in rural areas, as well as transportation to court hearings and social services appointments.
Another core component she developed is a Women in Transition program that, as noted here, “provides life skills knowledge such as balancing a checkbook, preparing a resume, furthering their education, obtaining study skills, gaining further parenting skills, learning to network, finding out how to access services, and assuring that they register to vote.”
Ms Magazine’s Uppity Women story about Wynona Ward and her work notes some of what women in domestic violence situations face in rural areas:
For women who live on the back roads, with unreliable cars, no telephones, and no money to hire attorneys, there’s often nowhere to turn. Wynona Ward is determined to change that.
In 1998, after graduating from Vermont Law School, Ward won a grant to start “Have Justice–Will Travel,” a law office on wheels. Today, in her four-wheel-drive Dodge Ram Charger, Ward visits battered women who are too isolated to get legal help and finds assistance for their abused children. The vehicle is outfitted with a CB radio, scanner, and cellular phone, as well as a computer and printer–all equipped with batteries, in the event a woman she is visiting has no electricity.
Wynona Ward hopes that her organization’s approach may serve as a successful working model for providing domestic violence services throughout rural America. A chart showing her working model is available here.
-Stephanie Farrior
Via the fabulous Rebecca P.; see also.
From the FLP Mailbox, this notice of a student writing competition that Feminist Law Profs might want to pass along to their students:
National Association of Women Lawyers ® Fifth Annual Selma Moidel Smith Law Student Writing Competition
The National Association of Women Lawyers (NAWL) ® has established the annual Selma Moidel Smith Law Student Writing Competition to encourage and reward original law student writing on issues concerning women andthe law. The rules for the competition are as follows.
TOPIC: Entrants should submit a paper on an issue concerning women’s rights or the status of women in the law.
ELIGIBILITY: Essays must be typed on 8 1/2 x 11 inch paper, double-spaced in 12-point font, Times New Roman font type. All margins must be at least one inch. Entries must not exceed fifteen (15) pages of text, excluding notes, with footnotes placed as endnotes. Citation style should conform to the 18th edition of The Bluebook – A Uniform System of Citation.
SUBMISSION AND DEADLINE: Entries must be received by April 30, 2010.
Further details are here.
-Bridget Crawford
Content creation by teenagers continues to grow, with 64% of online teenagers ages 12 to 17 engaging in at least one type of content creation, up from 57% of online teens in 2004.
Girls continue to dominate most elements of content creation. Some 35% of all teen girls blog, compared with 20% of online boys, and 54% of wired girls post photos online compared with 40% of online boys. Boys, however, do dominate one area – posting of video content online. Online teen boys are nearly twice as likely as online girls (19% vs. 10%) to have posted a video online somewhere where someone else could see it.
The survey found that content creation is not just about sharing creative output; it is also about participating in conversations fueled by that content. Nearly half (47%) of online teens have posted photos where others can see them, and 89% of those teens who post photos say that people comment on the images at least “some of the time.”
However, many teen content creators do not simply plaster their creative endeavors on the Web for anyone to view; many teens limit access to content that they share.
There is a subset of teens who are super-communicators — teens who have a host of technology options for dealing with family and friends, including traditional landline phones, cell phones, texting, social network sites, instant messaging, and email. They represent about 28% of the entire teen population and they are more likely to be older girls.
The well-publicized trial on the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage begins today before Judge Vaughn Walker in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California (court website for case here). Recall that the California Supreme Court upheld Proposition 8 as we previously discussed here. Publicity of this federal trial has itself been an issue: SCOTUS has just stayed the order that the court’s trial proceedings were to be made available on You Tube.
Update: Live blogging of proceedings from anti-Prop 8 perspective here.
Although there are some statements in the press that this is the first same-sex marriage trial, that’s not exactly true. After the Hawaii Supreme Court decision in Baehr v. Lewin, state court judge Kevin Chang held a trial on the issue of whether the state had compelling reasons to prohibit same-sex marriage. In an extensive Order in late 1996, Judge Chang held that the state failed to satisfy its burden of showing compelling interests and that the law was therefore unconstitutional. This order was later stayed because of developments in Hawaii.
But certainly this is the first federal trial. Interestingly, counsel for plaintiffs in the case are outside the usual LGBT movement, but are Theodore Olsen and David Boies, the attorneys who represented Bush and Gore respectively in Bush v. Gore. Also interestingly, the state of California is not defending the lawsuit (Governor Schwarzenegger has taken no position and Attorney General Jerry Brown supports the plaintiffs). California’s position is therefore being argued by intervenors including protectmarriage.com, who the trial judge described as the”proponents”of Proposition 8. A New Yorker article published today discusses the attorneys, the parties, and some of the arguments.
The best description of the issues to be determined at trial is in Judge Vaughn Walker’s from-the-bench order denying the motion for summary judgment filed by the proponents of Proposition 8 (transcript available here; order at pages 72- 91). [post continues here at Constitutional Law Profs Blog]
-Ruthann Robson
“January 11th, 2010 is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day. Take a moment to lend your support to courageous girls and young women who are working to overcome the trauma of child sex trafficking by watching this video and sharing with your friends and followers. Then, visit http://gems-girls.org to join the movement to protect and empower girls. To buy the song featuring Sinead O’Connor, Mary J Blige and Martha B – and raise funds for critical services for survivors – visit http://bit.ly/motheryou or iTunes and other retailers.”
Abstract:
State invocations of God are common in the United States; indeed, the national motto is”In God We Trust.”Yet the Establishment Clause forbids the state from favoring some religions over others. Nonetheless, courts have found the national motto and other examples of what is termed ceremonial deism constitutional on the ground that the practices are longstanding, have de minimis and nonsectarian religious content, and achieve a secular goal. Therefore, they conclude, a reasonable person would not think that the state was endorsing religion.
But would all reasonable people reach this conclusion? This Article examines the”reasonable person”at the heart of the Establishment Clause’s endorsement analysis. The starting point is the feminist critique of early sexual harassment decisions, which often held that a reasonable person would not find that the alleged harassment created a hostile work environment. Feminists argued that the supposedly objective reasonable person was actually a reasonable man, that men and women often have different perspectives on what amounts to sexual harassment due to structural inequalities, and that reliance on this unstated norm perpetuates male privilege rather than remedies it. The Article argues that the same insights apply to the reasonable person used to evaluate ceremonial deism. The supposedly objective reasonable person too often equates to a reasonable Christian. Furthermore, just as men might find harmless comments that women would find offensive, certain invocations of God may seem acceptable to Christians that non-Christians would find alienating because of their status as religious outsiders. Finally, reliance on this norm perpetuates Christian privilege rather than ensures religious liberty and equality for all. Consequently, the constitutionally of ceremonial deism should evaluated from perspective of a reasonable religious outsider.
From here:
According to the U.S. Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report, some 800,000 persons are victims of trafficking each year, seven times more than in 1960. The victims are mostly woman and children who are often used as sex slaves, forced to endure harsh labor or even to fight wars. The numbers do not always include those who remain enslaved in their own countries, and many believe figures on trafficked persons are much higher than officially reported. There are some 27 million people, who are living lives as slaves today around the world. It is widely believed that there are at least 2 million children used as slaves in the commercial sex industry worldwide. Prices for these modern day slaves are at an all time low, while profits remain high, leading some to believe the problem is worse now than during the days of legalized slavery.
See also Change.org.
–Ann Bartow
In this column Nicholas Kristof briefly discusses intersections of gender and religion. It made me think back to this Pandagon post and the associated comments thread. Generalizing about “religion” is deeply problematic.
–Ann Bartow
Today was the “No Pants! Subway Ride” in New York and other cities. It’s now an annual tradition — “organized” by Improv Everywhere, a group devoted to creating “scenes of chaos and joy in public places.” The group’s history of the “No Pants!” ride is here.
This afternoon, I encountered several pants-less riders at the Jay Street subway station in Brooklyn. I asked permission of two of the female participants and then snapped their photo (at left).
I must admit that the riders’ pant-less state was not what first attracted my attention. I was focused on the socks worn by the woman at the far left, mentally noting the similarity of her look with the look of the Brooklyn Cyclones cheerleaders (blogged here). Then I noticed that her shorts were significantly shorter than the cheerleaders’ shorts. Oh, wait….She didn’t have on any pants at all!
When the A train arrived, the passengers crowded on but the pants-less remained on the platform, likely waiting for the next train. Once inside the train car, I overheard one man ask the other, “What’s that about?” “I don’t know, but I like it,” answered the second man.
I’d be interested in hearing about the experiences of the pants-less riders. I’m guessing that HappyFeminist said it well in this tweet:
Re: No pants subway ride: Ladies, if you want to go, go. Creepo’s [sic] will bug you on the subway anyway, pants or sans pants.
That’s why there are sites like HollabackNYC , where women can post cell phone photos of men who harass them on the streets and subways.
-Bridget Crawford
The federal trial regarding the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8 is set to begin tomorrow. The district court judge who will be presiding over the trial has decided to have the trial broadcast live at several other federal courthouses and to post the entire proceedings on YouTube on a delayed basis. The Ninth Circuit rejected an appeal by the supporters of Proposition 8 to keep cameras out of the courtroom. Now, the supporters of Proposition 8 filed an emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the lower courts’ decisions and to keep the proceedings from being televised.
The supporters of Proposition 8 oppose having cameras in the courtroom in part because the witnesses would be intimidated by having to speak in front of a potentially large, televised audience–even though many of the witnesses are academics who are accustomed to speaking in front of groups. Even more amazingly, the supporters of Proposition 8 have argued that the trial should not be televised because they fear harassment. The Advocate story on the emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court contains the following quote:
The trial”has the potential to become a media circus,”attorney Charles Cooper wrote in the emergency appeal to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.”The record is already replete with evidence showing that any publicizing of support for Prop. 8 has inevitably led to harassment, economic reprisal, threats, and even physical violence. In this atmosphere, witnesses are understandably quite distressed at the prospect of their testimony being broadcast worldwide on YouTube.”
This is only the latest example of oppressors rhetorically morphing themselves into victims. In a country where it is legal in the majority of states to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation–that is, to fire someone from their employment or refuse to rent or sell property to them because they are lesbian or gay–and where bias crimes motivated by the victim’s sexual orientation are on the rise (see here and here), it is truly disingenuous for those who perpetuate, facilitate, or contribute to an environment that fosters such discrimination and violence to throw themselves on the mercy of others because they fear harassment.
Update: According to The Advocate, the Supreme Court has allowed cameras into the courtroom for the trial, but it has blocked the posting of the trial on YouTube, at least for the first few days of trial while it takes more time to consider the issue.
-Tony Infanti
There have been a number of articles in the New York Times this week highlighting diversity challenges in law schools, and the lack of legal representation among low and middle income individuals who cannot afford it.
In one article, Law School Admissions Lag Among Minorities, the Times reports on a Columbia Law School study showing that the number of African-American and Mexican-American law students declined between 1993 and 2008. One key reason cited is the concern over US News & World Report rankings. The associate dean of Thomas M Cooley Law School is quoted, saying "[a] big part of it is that many schools base their admissions criteria not on whether students have a reasonable chance of success, but how those L.S.A.T. numbers are going to affect their rankings in the U.S. News & World Report." So even though the grades and and LSAT scores of African-Americans and Mexicans have improved over time, they are increasingly being shut out of law schools. Instead of law schools complaining about and feeling held hostage by U.S. News & World Report, I wonder whether law school deans would come together to boycott U.S. News by refusing to share any information with them. I know this would be risky, but it may be worth thinking about.
Another key factor in law school diversity, not discussed in the article, is the cost of a legal education. The cost is sufficiently steep to price many people out of the market. I recently had a conversation with the parent of a college senior who was relieved that her son decided to pursue a Ph.D. instead of a law degree because he will actually receive financial assistance to pursue his Ph.D. If he had chosen law school, his parents would have paid tens of thousands of dollars in tuition. While no one has come up with a magical solution to this problem, there are discussions out there about finding alternative ways to finance law school education.
Another article, an op-ed piece by two judges, A Nation of Do-It-Yourself Lawyers, talks about the increased number of people going to court pro se because they cannot afford legal representation. These individuals are not just low income earners, but also include, middle income folks and small business owners. Often there are significant issues at stake like child custody and foreclosure, and lives are being dramatically impacted with no legal assistance. In Courts Seek More Lawyers to Help the Poor, the Times highlights a new program in New York designed to bring in retired attorneys to help represent some of these people.
In my opinion, all three articles are related. A more diverse student body will produce more diverse attorneys, some of whom will go into communities that lack sufficient legal representation and help alleviate the problem of "do-it-yourself lawyers."
-Barbara L. Atwell
The topic of surrogacy seems to elicit strong and sometimes conflicted reactions. In particular, it has been the subject of some less than favorable discussion in posts on this blog (see here and here, both cross-posts from other blogs) and elsewhere. However, many opinions about, and objections to, surrogacy seem to be fueled by impression or speculation (as opposed to factual evidence) or the cherry-picking of individual cases (in the case of the NY Times article linked to above, a few horror stories) and reading them as representative of every (or at least many or most) surrogacy arrangement(s). For this reason, I would highly recommend reading Revisiting The Handmaid’s Tale: Feminist Theory Meets Empirical Research on Surrogate Mothers by Karen Busby and Delaney Vun. Busby is on the law faculty at the University of Manitoba and Vun was formerly a student there and is now a practicing lawyer. In their piece, they analyze feminist objections to surrogacy and examine them in light of empirical studies on surrogacy in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. It is an excellent read and important work for anyone considering writing on the topic of surrogacy. (Please note that the paper is not on SSRN, but is only available for now on Busby’s web page, which I have linked to above.)
-Tony Infanti
The New Jersey Senate just voted down a bill that would have extended the right to marry to same-sex couples. The vote was 20 against and 14 in favor of the bill, with several of the forty senators apparently choosing not to vote. This was a last-ditch effort before the new governor, who opposes same-sex marriage, is sworn in on January 19th. Having failed in the legislature and facing a hostile executive, proponents of same-sex marriage in New Jersey have indicated that they will now head back to court to seek the right to marry.
After a rocky 2009 in the battle for same-sex marriage, 2010 is not getting off to an auspicious start.
-Tony Infanti
For the socially conscious LGBT shopper, the Human Rights Campaign has now released its “Buy4Equality” app for the iPhone. Before you buy a company’s product, you can now check how the company fares on HRC’s corporate equality index. Companies are color-coded: green (businesses to support), yellow (businesses that could do better), and red (businesses to avoid or who have failed to respond to HRC surveys). You can either search by brand name alphabetically or by category (e.g., household products or insurance). And in case you don’t have an iPhone, you can text HRC (see the link above for details) with the name of the brand and they’ll text you back with its rating. The app is free. I’m not sure whether I’ll use it, but who knows? It may come in handy some time, like that NYC subway map app that I downloaded (I live in Pittsburgh, but I did work in NYC before I started teaching so I downloaded it mainly for the nostalgia value!).
-Tony Infanti
For an essay I’m writing on the political economy of feminist legal theory, I’m interested in knowing about ongoing institutional support in law schools for developing and disseminating feminist legal theory, whether aimed at students, faculty or practitioners. I’m particularly interested in any organized centers or institutes for feminist legal theory. Martha Fineman‘s excellent work in nurturing the longstanding Feminism and Legal Theory Project (Emory) is of course a leading example; and I know that University of Baltimore Law has the Center on Applied Feminism, and that more specialized centers exist such as the Worklife Law Center at UC Hastings. What others are out there? What kinds of resources do they get and offer: Fellowships for faculty or students? Conference funding? Research funding? Full time administrative support? Training for lawyers, judges, policymakers? Support for disseminating research?
I’m particularly interested in contrasting the pervasiveness, reach, and resources of law and economics centers with those focusing on feminist legal theory – and also the extent to which women and feminism are largely absent from those law and economics centers.
Please contact me at mcclusk@buffalo.edu.
-Martha McCluskey
The BBC reports here that the French parliament is considering criminal penalties against those who psychologically or verbally abuse their spouse or live-in partner. The BBC article highlights the French-language TV ad below, which portrays a man verbally abusing his wife [trigger warning].
Here is how the BBC describes it:
Last year the French government launched a TV campaign to increase awareness of psychological violence. The campaign featured a 30-second spot produced by a film director, Jacques Audiard. It shows a man who denigrates and insults his wife. It also links physical violence with mental abuse.
On average, almost three women die each week in France after being assaulted by a partner or ex-partner.
The government says if the authorities can deal with psychological violence, physical violence can be prevented or reduced. But many members of the public have misgivings about how a law would work in practice.
Parliament is almost certain to pass this controversial bill on psychological violence. It is backed by Prime Minister Francois Fillon and key members of the governing party.
The French government maintains a website (here) to promote its anti-abuse message, which targets workplace abuse, female genital mutilation, and forced marriages, in addition to verbal abuse and all forms of domestic violence.
The proposed French legislation recognizes that verbal abuse can cause as much harm as physical domestic violence. In my article, Sticks and Stones May Break Your Bones but Words Can Really Hurt You: The Case for Criminalizing Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress, I note that the criminal law lags behind the scientific academy, which has concluded that one can experience physical pain in response to a tone or particular set of words.
To the extent that one agrees that words hurt, the proposed French law is of value in that it equates emotionally stinging verbiage with a slap or punch, by recognizing that the words,”you are a lazy, incompetent idiot”when meted out by a spouse, can carry the same sting as a kick in the shin. The proposed law’s greatest value, however, lies in the deterrent effect it may have in preventing more violence. Studies confirm that over 80% of physical domestic violence is preceded by verbal abuse. The proposed ban would allow the government to intervene upon notice of mental abuse before it turns to physical violence.
-Leslie Yalof Garfield
From the Commentary Editor of the student-run Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice
The Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice is currently accepting submissions for a piece to be published in the Commentary section of our upcoming issue. We are hoping to publish a 5-10 page piece, but are flexible with regard to length. In addition to law journal articles and notes, Commentary welcomes submissions that incorporate narrative and other non-traditional methods of legal writing.
Here is the journal’s mandate:
Our mandate is to publish research, analysis, narrative, theory, and commentary that address the lives and struggles of underrepresented women. We believe that excellence in feminist legal scholarship requires critical examination of the intersection of gender with one or more other axes of subordination including, but not limited to, race, class, sexual orientation, and disability. Therefore, discussions of ‘women’s issues’ that treat women as a monolithic group do not fall within our mandate. Because conditions of inequality are continually changing our mandate is continually evolving.
Please forward all submissions to bglj.commentary@gmail.com. The deadline is January 16, 2010.
-Posted by Bridget Crawford
I know I’ve been pretty much absent here for the past several months, and unfortunately I will continue to be for another couple of months as I finish up two big projects.
But in the meantime, I’d like to survey the feminist law profs out there (and other law profs who read this) about research assistant pay. Here at Drexel Law, we pay $10 an hour to our research assistants. That doesn’t sit very well with me, as that is exactly what I was paid as a research assistant when I was in law school . . . 15 years ago.
I’ve found out that this isn’t a University-wide rate and that we can change that rate as the law school (or even as individual faculty, but that is discouraged for administrative reasons). So I’m asking you for input for comparison — what do you pay your research assistant? Is it a law school set rate or set by individual profs?
Thanks for the help!
– David S. Cohen
44 WAKE FOREST LAW REVIEW, NO. 4, WINTER, 2009.
Third Restatement of Torts: Issue One. 44 Wake Forest L. Rev. 877-1107 (2009).
Cardi, W. Jonathan. A pluralistic analysis of the therapist/physician duty to warn third parties. 44 Wake Forest L. Rev. 877-897 (2009).
Geistfeld, Mark A. Social value as a policy-based limitation of the ordinary duty to exercise reasonable care. 44 Wake Forest L. Rev. 899-922 (2009).
Schwartz, Victor E., Phil Goldberg and Christopher E. Appel. Can governments impose a new tort duty to prevent external risks? The “no-fault” theories behind today’s high-stakes government recoupment suits. 44 Wake Forest L. Rev. 923-961 (2009).
Abraham, Kenneth S. Stable divisions of authority. 44 Wake Forest L. Rev. 963-977 (2009).
Porat, Ariel. Expanding liability for negligence per se. 44 Wake Forest L. Rev. 979-996 (2009).
Twerski, Aaron D. Negligence per se and res ipsa loquitur: kissing cousins. 44 Wake Forest L. Rev. 997-1005 (2009).
Robertson, David W. Causation in the Restatement (Third) of Torts: three arguable mistakes. 44 Wake Forest L. Rev. 1007-1028 (2009).
Sanders, Joseph. The controversial comment c: factual causation in toxic-substance and disease cases. 44 Wake Forest L. Rev. 1029-1048 (2009).
Hylton, Keith N. Tort duties of landowners: a positive theory. 44 Wake Forest L. Rev. 1049-1069 (2009).
Henderson, James A., Jr. The status of trespassers on land. 44 Wake Forest L. Rev. 1071-1078 (2009).
Sugarman, Stephen D. Land-possessor liability in the Restatement (Third) of Torts: too much and too little. 44 Wake Forest L. Rev. 1079-1092 (2009).
Green, Meredith E. Comment. Who knows where the love grows?: unmarried cohabitants and bystander recovery for negligent infliction of emotional distress. 44 Wake Forest L. Rev. 1093-1107 (2009).
[NB: The lone comment was authored by a woman law student. But none of the articles were penned by women, despite the fact that lots of women legal scholars write about Torts.]
–Ann Bartow
From my mailbox, an announcement that Jeannie Suk, an assistant professor at Harvard Law School, has published At Home in the Law: How the Domestic Violence Revolution Is Transforming Privacy (Yale University Press). Here’s a description of the book from the flyer.
In the past forty years, the idea of home, which is central to how the law conceives of crime, punishment, and privacy, has changed radically. Legal scholar Jeannie Suk shows how the legitimate goal of legal feminists to protect women from domestic abuse has led to a new and unexpected set of legal practices.
Suk examines case studies of major legal developments in contemporary American law pertaining to domestic violence, self-defense, privacy, sexual autonomy, and property in order to illuminate the changing relation between home and the law. She argues that the growing legal vision that has led to the breakdown of traditional boundaries between public and private space is resulting in a substantial reduction of autonomy and privacy for both women and men.
The book is available on the YUP website and at bookstores.
image source: harvardsquarelibrary.org
From the National Catholic Reporter:
Mary Daly, radical feminist theologian and a mother of modern feminist theology, died Jan. 3 at the age of 81. She was one of the most influential voices of the radical feminist movement through the later 20th century.
Daly taught courses in theology, feminist ethics and patriarchy at Boston College for 33 years. Her first book, “The Church and the Second Sex,” published in 1968, got her fired, briefly, from her teaching position there, but as a result of support from the (then all-male) student body and the general public, she was ultimately granted tenure.
The full obituary is here.
-Bridget Crawford
I’ve been so sad about Ed Baker’s death that my usual goofball humor emotional survival technique has been mostly muted. But today I found a web page in which Ed is remembered by someone at the school in Beijing where he taught last summer, Communication University of China. It is primarily a rendering in both English and Chinese of this Penn Law announcement. I ran it through the automated Google translator, which was somewhat inept, to put it mildly. Here’s what happened:
*************
December 13
Penn Professor C. Edwin Baker passed away
“The media, market and democracy,” an author of the book, Penn Law Faculty, Professor C. Edwin Baker on December 8 when the accident died in a train, the old man returned to class this past summer before our last class.
freedom of speech in commemoration of the United States’s most famous scholar, Professor C. Edwin Baker
Alex Kreit: “He was as fine a teacher as he was a scholar.”
Alex Kreit: “He was as good as his knowledge of the teachers”
First Amendment Center: “Ed was a modern-day gadfly, albeit one who wore wide-rimmed glasses that allowed him to see things that many of the rest of us could not.”
The First Amendment Center: “Despite the wide-frame with the eye so that he saw many of us do not see things, Ed is still a modern gadfly.”
Legal Theory: “Ed was a significant contributor to fundamental debates in constitutional theory for decades.”
Legal Theory: “Ed number of decades the area of the core constitutional debates, has made tremendous contributions to”
Balkinization: “The finest media law scholar of his generation.”
Balkinization: “He is the best of his time who the media law”
Balkinization (2): “I’ve never seen the influence of the ‘marketplace of ideas’ on the Supreme Court documented or criticized as thoroughly as Baker does it.”
Balkinization (2): “I have never seen who is deeply, “the concept of market theory,” the impact of the Supreme Court’s ruling or criticism, as penetrating as Mr. Baker.”
Feminist Law Professors: “He was brilliant, funny, kind and fiercely invested in building a more just world.”
Feminist Law Professors: “In building a more just world in the process of his remarkable achievements, fun, goodness and vitality.”
Daily Pennsylvanian: “He loved the underdog.”
Daily Pennsylvanian: “He loved living on the lower level people.”
C. Edwin Baker, the Nicholas F. Gallicchio Professor of Law and Communication at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a leading scholar in the fields of constitutional law, communications law and free speech, died suddenly on Dec. 8 in New York City, where he had lived the past 20 years. He was 62. He collapsed while exercising and could not be revived.
C. Edwin Baker, University of Pennsylvania Law School, Nicholas F. Gallicchio Professor of Law and Communication, excellent constitution, law and freedom of speech communication, Christianity, (2009) December 8 in New York City, that is, that he lived past 20 years, where a sudden death. He only lived for 62 years. Physical exercise, when he came crashing down, has had no resurrection.
Professor Baker was considered one of the country’s foremost authorities on the First Amendment and on mass media policy. Most recently, he focused his work on the economics of the news business, political philosophy, and jurisprudential questions concerning the egalitarian and libertarian bases of constitutional theory.
First Amendment to the Constitution and the mass media policy areas, Baker, Mr. Professor of the United States, one of the most authoritative. Most recently, his research interests focus on journalism, political philosophy and constitutional theory and the basis of equality and liberalism-related legal issues.
“Ed Baker was a brilliant scholar, a dedicated teacher and a wonderful friend,”said Penn Law Dean Michael A. Fitts.”Generations of students and lawyers benefited from his insights, his high expectations and his caring approach to everyone around him. His death is a great loss for the Penn Law community as well as for the larger community of academicians and practitioners focused on free speech, the media and human rights.”
“Ed Baker is a distinguished scholar, a dedicated teacher and mentor,” the University of Pennsylvania Law School Dean Michael A. Fitts said. “There at his side several generations of students and lawyers, are to benefit from his insight, his vision and his concerns. His death is a Pennsylvania law within the community and the wider concern about freedom of expression, media and human rights scholars and practitioners a great loss.”
His work was read and respected by policy makers and students in the United States and internationally. Just this past summer, he taught a course on communication policy, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press at Communication University of China in Beijing. Earlier this year, Professor Baker told a Congressional subcommittee that “huge actual layoffs of journalists as well as threatened closures of towns’ only daily are a major threat to democracy. When people are reading newspapers, corruption goes down.” In January, he wrote an essay calling for a targeted federal tax credit to help newspapers hire more journalists, instead of laying them off. His work was read and respected by policy makers and students in the United States and internationally.
Outside the United States and the United States policy makers and students to read and love his work. Just this past summer, he also traveled to Beijing, China Communication University of China, the Education and by the dissemination of policies, freedom of expression and freedom of the media programs. Earlier this year, when, Baker will give the Congress a special committee member said: “The large-scale dismissals of journalists and closures of towns the only daily newspaper” approach, is a huge threat to democracy. This year in January, he was attacked for a federal tax policy, wrote an article calling for the federal government to help newspapers hire more reporters, rather than fire them.
“It is always a pleasure to read Ed Baker’s work, but it is a pleasure tinged by envy, for I inevitably come away thinking, ‘I wish I were that good a scholar,'”said Seth Kreimer, the Kenneth W. Gemmill Professor at Penn Law.”Some of my colleagues are outstanding lawyers, some are insightful social scientists, and Ed was both. Rather than deploying a single social science paradigm to illuminate a legal problem, he deployed two or three, with the result brilliantly illuminating the discourse of practicing lawyers and judges.”
“Reading Ed Baker’s article is accompanied by a very pleasant but faint jealousy thing, because when I read always think that if I was a great scholar like him, be nice.” In the University of Pennsylvania Law School the work of Kenneth W. Gemmill Professor Seth Kreimer said Mr. “My colleagues have distinguished jurists, social scientists are insightful, while at the same time both the two, Mr. Ed Baker. He was not a single social science paradigm to clarify certain legal issues, he used two or even three. Naturally, the outcome is, he brilliantly expounded the practitioners practicing lawyers and judges all.”
Professor Baker was scheduled to participate in the upcoming fifth international human rights workshop on the subject of”Private Power and Human Rights”in Israel, and he was working on his fifth book at the time of his death. His first book, Human Liberty and Freedom of Speech, published by Oxford University Press in 1989, defends interpreting First Amendment freedom of speech as concerned primarily with individual freedom and autonomy rather than the more traditional understanding of it being about a marketplace of ideas. Advertising and a Democratic Press (Princeton University Press, 1994) became a leading critique of the impact of advertising on media’s non-advertising content and Media, Markets, and Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2002) explores why the free market predictably fails to provide the media that consumers want or citizens need. His most recent book, Media Concentration and Democracy: Why Ownership Matters (Cambridge, 2007), evaluates economic and democratic reason to oppose media concentration.
Professor Baker plans to attend the forthcoming 15th session held in Israel, “private rights and human rights,” international human rights workshops in the occasion of his death, he is working on his fifth of this monograph. His first masterpiece, that was published in 1989 by Oxford University’s “human freedom and freedom of expression”, from the most important personal freedom and autonomy to defend the First Amendment protection of freedom of speech, rather than from the more traditional concept of market theory to understand. “Advertising and the media democracy,” (Princeton University Press published in 1994), on the advertisement on the media impact of non-advertising content is given the most important comments. “Media, markets and democracy” (University of Cambridge, published in 2002) to explore the free market can not be provided for the consumer or the market they want the media causes. His latest book, that is, “Media Concentration and Democracy: Why Ownership is essential” (Cambridge, 2007), the assessment against the media focus on the economic and democratic grounds.
Professor Baker joined Penn Law in 1981 and focused his teaching on constitutional law, mass media law, the First Amendment, and jurisprudence. Since 2007, he has held a joint appointment in the Annenberg School for Communication at Penn. During his career he served as a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union and he held teaching positions at several universities prior to joining Penn Law. Professor Baker joined Penn Law in 1981 and focused his teaching on constitutional law, mass media law, the First Amendment, and jurisprudence. Since 2007, he has held a joint appointment in the Annenberg School for Communication at Penn. During his career he served as a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union and he held teaching positions at several universities prior to joining Penn Law.
Professor Baker joined the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1981 and is committed to constitutional law, media law, First Amendment and the constitutional jurisprudence teaching. Since 2007, he concurrently served as the College of Communication from the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg teaching. In his career, he was the American Civil Liberties Union, Legal Services Commissioner. Prior to joining Penn, he has worked at several universities teaching.
“There was no scholar so committed, passionate, disciplined and wise in thinking through the relationship between the media and the political system,”said Monroe Price, the director of the Center for Global Communication Studies at Penn’s Annenberg School.”He was a quiet and persistent missionary for his own very exacting and compelling view of the First Amendment and international norms of free speech.”
“The relationship between the media and political system of thought, nobody is more determined than Professor Baker, more earnest, more rigorous, more wisdom,” Penn Annenberg School of Communication Research Center, director of global communications, said Monroe Price. “He was a calm and tenacious missionaries, dedicated to the dissemination of his own refined and compelling point of view the First Amendment of the Constitution, as well as international norms of freedom of expression.”
Professor Baker received his law degree from Yale University and his bachelor’s degree from Stanford University. He had been a fellow at Harvard on three occasions, most recently as a Radcliff Fellow in 2006.
Professor Baker graduated from Stanford University and a law degree at Yale University. He has three period of time, most recently in 2006 with Radcliffe in his capacity as a researcher at Harvard University’s visit to school.
A memorial service is being planned for Jan. 31, 2010, in New York City. Contributions in his memory should be made to the ACLU, the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, Oxfam, or any other charity honoring his commitment to human rights and free speech.
January 31, 2010, in New York City, organized the memorial service. In his contribution on the ceremony should be donated to the American Civil Liberties Union, the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief, and any appreciation for their contribution of human rights and freedom of expression and other charitable organizations.
Professor Baker is survived by his sister, Nancy Baker, of El Granada, Calif., who is on the faculty of Fielding Graduate University; her spouse, Cathy Hauer; and seven first cousins with whom he was very close. He was predeceased by his parents, Falcon O. Baker, Jr. and Ernestine Magagna Baker.
Professor Baker left behind by the death of his sister Nancy Baker, she lived in California, El Granada, is the Fielding Graduate School teachers, her spouse Cathy Hauer; and seven with his first generation of close cousins. His parents Falcon O. Baker, and Ernestine Magagna Baker has already begun to him forever.
**********************
“Naturally, the outcome is, he brilliantly expounded the practitioners practicing lawyers and judges all” indeed. I know Ed had a terrific time in China, and he will be missed by the friends he made there.
–Ann Bartow
Here. She is retiring, she has not passed away thank goodness. A short clip:
Now, when people ask what are you going to do next, I am tempted to co-opt Susan Stamberg’s one-word answer when she left her anchor post at NPR:”Less.”
Didn’t always agree with Goodman but respected the hell out of her. I hope she continues writing.
–Ann Bartow
“Men who buy sex: Who they buy and what they know,” is a research study of 103 men who describe their use of trafficked and non-trafficked women in prostitution, and their awareness of coercion and violence, prepared by Melissa Farley, Julie Bindel and Jacqueline M. Golding, December 2009. Here is a short excerpt from page 15-16:
Fifty per cent of interviewees said that they had used a woman in prostitution who they knew was under the control of a pimp. As one man explained,”It’s like he’s her owner.”As another man put it:”The girl is instructed to do what she needs to do. You can just relax, it’s her job.”One-half of the research participants (51%) said that they had observed a prostituted woman who had a pimp. Nearly one-third of the interviewees (31%), often those who bought sex in the Soho area, used prostituted women who were controlled by women pimps. Twenty-five per cent of the men interviewed had encountered a woman in the sex industry who they believe was forced into a brothel, massage parlour or another type of prostitution. Some of the men described pimps as abusive, controlling, opportunistic, coercive and violent. They described beatings and forced addiction.”Pimps get their money and abuse them. They have no respect for them at all. They treat them virtually like dogs.”One man explained,”Some are really made to or forced – like raped – and they find there is no other hope for them. Some are being held hostage and in a brothel, not all of them but in situations where she is looking to get out. I felt a little bit guilty when I was in saunas and massage parlours.”A number of the men appeared to have a somewhat nuanced if rationalised awareness of the psychological dependence of women on pimps:”It’s a cold relationship from his part. But the woman does it because she’s in love with him and doesn’t want to
lose him.”These men’s awareness of the sexual exploitation, coercion and violence associated with buying sex is confirmed by a significant literature on violence against women in prostitution. Watts and Zimmerman (2002) at the Department of Public Health and Policy of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine noted that trafficking for prostitution and violence against prostitutes was one of the most common and severe forms of violence against women in the world (2002). A study of 240 women prostituted in Leeds, Edinburgh, and Glasgow found that 26% of women in indoor prostitution had experienced some form of serious violence from the men who had bought them in the past six months (Church et al., 2001).
The interviewees were asked about their awareness of deception and trafficking for prostitution. Forty-three per cent of the men said that it was their impression that one-half or fewer of all those in prostitution were fully informed about the nature of prostitution. Of the men interviewed, 55% believed that a majority of women in prostitution were lured, tricked or trafficked. Thirty-six per cent said they thought that the women in prostitution they used had been trafficked to London from another country. Seeming to understand the levels of abuse and vulnerability of most women in prostitution, one man described prostituted women as”orphans or from other countries who are treated like family. But others can be treated like shit if they don’t pay their fees.”Another explained,”The guy at the top normally controls about a dozen brothels and they move them around. Some of the Chinese girls move on after just one week.”An interviewee said that in Amsterdam he assumed a woman was trafficked”because of the way it was set up with a big guy standing outside,”adding that”the woman looked younger than sixteen”and appeared to be”Polish, Russian, Albanian or Romanian.”One man described with some chagrin a prostituted and possibly trafficked woman who had told him that she was going on a holiday. Later he realised”It was against her will. When I went back two weeks later, they were not there. The phone number also did not work. They bring in girls and move them around to different points so she doesn’t know where she is… it’s sick.”Another said that he had seen women with”bruises, cuts and Eastern European accents in locations where lots of trafficked women and girls are.”
Similar estimates were made by an additional 223 men who bought sex in Scotland and the US. Fifty-six per cent of men who bought sex in the US and 63% in Scotland said that they also believed that a majority of all those in prostitution are lured, tricked or trafficked into it. Studies by Anderson and O’Connell Davidson (2003) and Di Nicola et al (2009) report that most men who buy sex are aware of and have witnessed exploitation, coercion and trafficking but this does not affect their decision to buy sex.
(Emphasis added).
Here. Feministing has a fairly wide range of authors and posts. Because Jessica Valenti is one of the contemporary faces of feminism to a certain cohort of people, watching the linked interview is interesting and informative.
–Ann Bartow
image source http://www.adcorp.org
For its weekly “The Boss” column, the New York Times’ Sunday business section profiled Sheena Wright, CEO of the Abyssinian Development Corporation, a non-profit “dedicated to building the human, social and physical capital of Harlem.” Wright is a lawyer by training and now heads this community-based organization that sponsors youth, family and senior programs, housing development and neighborhood revitalization.
From the company’s website:
Prior to joining ADC, Ms. Wright served as the General Counsel and Executive Vice President of Business Development for Crave Technologies, a minority-owned software company based in New York City and Baltimore, Maryland. From 1999 to 2000, she was a Senior Associate at the law firm of Reboul, MacMurray, Hewitt, Maynard and Kristol, specializing in structuring private equity funds and private equity investments. From 1994 to 1999, Ms. Wright was an Associate at the law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz, where she participated in negotiating, structuring and executing complex mergers, acquisitions and securities transactions.
Ms. Wright received a law degree from Columbia Law School in 1994 and was named a Stone Scholar for outstanding academic achievement.
In the New York Times column (“as told to Patricia R. Olsen”), Ms. Wright says:
When I got my law degree, I joined the law firm, which had only a handful of women as associates and a couple of female partners out of about 75. I was the second black woman hired.
I learned a lot about business and negotiating complex transactions during the five years I worked there, but I realized that I wanted to use my skills for the betterment of my community someday. I moved to another law firm and learned more about private equity and other resources that businesses could use to grow and develop.
Ms. Wright’s full profile is here.
Ms. Wright’s description of her corporate law training reminded me of how important so-called “private law” subjects have for lawyers who are interested in doing “public interest” work, whether in law or otherwise. Expertise and training in corporate law, taxation, finance, accounting and related fields can serve as the foundation for launching a very successful public-interest oriented career, too.
-Bridget Crawford
That’s a phrase taken from this interesting post entitled “Sexual Orders” by Mark Liberman at Language Log.
In memoriam–Louis Lowenstein. Tributes by Harvey J. Goldschmid, Kenneth P. Kopelman, Arthur W. Murphy, William Savitt and David M. Schizer. 109 Colum. L. Rev. 1263-1277 (2009).
Miller, Darrell A.H. Guns as smut: defending the home-bound Second Amendment. 109 Colum. L. Rev. 1278-1356 (2009).
Zatz, Noah D. Managing the Macaw: third-party harassers, accommodation, and the disaggregation of discriminatory intent. 109 Colum. L. Rev. 1357-1439 (2009).
Rao, Devi M. Note. “Making medical assistance available”: enforcing the Medicaid Act’s availability provision through Section 1983 litigation. 109 Colum. L. Rev. 1440-1481 (2009).
Salganik, Samuel C. Note. What the unconstitutional conditions doctrine can teach us about ERISA preemption: is it possible to consistently identify “coercive” pay-or-play schemes? 109 Colum. L. Rev. 1482-1530 (2009).
Freeman, Jody and Andrew Guzman. Climate change and U.S. interests. 109 Colum. L. Rev. 1531-1601 (2009).
ARTICLES
The Correspondence of Contract and Promise
By: Jody S. Kraus
Rethinking Free Speech and Civil Liability
By: Daniel J. Solove & Neil M. Richards
ESSAYS & BOOK REVIEWS
Custom, Noncustomary Practice, and Negligence
By: Kenneth S. Abraham
NOTES
Loophole.com: How the FEC’s Failure to Fully Regulate the Internet Undermines Campaign Finance Law
By: Daniel W. Butrymowicz
Rethinking Fannie and Freddie’s New Insolvency Regime
By: Carol J. Perry
ARTICLES
Beyond Protection
By: Philip Hamburger
ESSAYS & BOOK REVIEWS
A Practical Solution to the Reference Class Problem
By: Edward K. Cheng
NOTES
The Illegality of Vertical Patrols
By: Adam Carlis
The “Usual Incidents of Citizenship”: Rethinking When People with Disabilities Must Participate in Public Variance Proceedings
By: Stephen F. Hayes
Yuval Feldman and I have been studying the behavior of individuals in the face of organizational corruption and misconduct. In our recent article, we report on a series of experiments looking at the effect of incentives on the decision to report illegality. The article The Incentives Matrix: A Study of the Comparative Effectiveness of Monetary Rewards as Compliance Systems, forthcoming, Texas Law Review (2010) report on our experimental study of a representative panel of over 2000 employees (we received a generous grant from the ABA Litigation Section Research Fund 2008-2009). The experiment compares the effects of different regulatory mechanisms – monetary rewards, protective rights, positive obligations, and liabilities – on individual motivation and behavior. We look at the comparative advantages of these mechanisms in incentivizing individual whistleblowing. How do women compare to men in our study? We show robust gender differences among whistleblowers, demonstrating that women tend to respond more to protections and duties while men respond more to money. And in general, women in our study respond more ethically and believe that others will behave more ethically in the face of corruption. These findings are consistent with other gender differences in our previous research, such as in our article, Behavioral versus Institutional Antecedents of Decentralized Enforcement in Organizations: An Experimental Approach, Regulation & Governance, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 165-192, 2008, as well as in research from various disciplines and anecdotal evidence about the role of women whistleblowers in recent debacles.
Several other cool findings about the costs and benefits of different regulatory mechanisms: we find inadvertent counterproductive effects of offering monetary rewards in some cases, leading to less, rather than more, reporting of illegality — in line with the behavioral crowding out literature in the psychology of motivation. We also find the existence of a “holier than thou” effect, where basically all of us believe we are much more ethical than average. We also show that people are bad predictors of their own motivations.
–Orly Lobel
From the FLP Mailbox, this notices of a Critical Race Studies Symposium:
4th Annual Critical Race Studies Symposium:
Intersectionality: Challenging Theory, Reframing Politics, Transforming Movements
March 11-13th, 2010
UCLA School of Law
Los Angeles, California
Since the publication of Kimberlé Crenshaw’s formative articles – Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race & Sex (1989), and Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics & Violence Against Women of Color (1994) – the concept of intersectionality has traversed more than a dozen academic disciplines and transnational and popular political discourse, generated multiple conferences, monographs, and anthologies, and animated hundreds of articles and essays. In the twenty years since Crenshaw introduced intersectionality, critiques of identity politics and multiculturalism and, more recently, claims of a “post-racial” era have blossomed.
In 2010, we will re-visit the origins of intersectionality as a theoretical frame and site of legal interventions and consider its still unfolding potential for unmasking subordination and provoking social change. Confirmed participants are listed here.
We are pleased to solicit proposals for individual papers or whole sessions, engaging one or more of our five embedded themes. Key areas of inquiry include:
a) Intersectionality Across Disciplines, with particular emphasis on research methodologies, new applications and comparative analyses;
b) Intersectional Praxis, engaging the integration of theory with advocacy and activism, and concerned with the practical dilemmas entailed in navigating intersections of race, gender, class, age, disability, religion, sexuality, citizenship, ethnicity and/or related dynamics;
c) Intersectionality and Post-racialism, particularly highlighting the contradicting ways that intersectionality has been positioned as both a precursor to post-racialism and as a critique of its symbolic content;
d) Intersectionality and Transnationalism, specifically recognizing the intersecting dynamics of subordination that sustain, transgress or delineate borders and highlighting discourses that disrupt the premises of globalization, imperialism and international law;
e) Intersectionality Embodied, interrogating how intersectionality plays out in the production of legitimate and illegitimate sexualities, the construction of normative, (de)valued, or able bodies, and the challenges in deploying discourses of rights and recognition as interventionist tools.
All proposals should include the session or paper title, a 300-500 word abstract, the names, affiliations, and C.V.s or resumes of all participants, and any audio-visual requests. Session proposals should specify panel, roundtable, or workshop format. Panels integrating practitioners or advocates, including both junior and senior scholars and/or including graduate or law students, are strongly encouraged. The deadline to submit proposals has been extended to January 15, 2010. Please submit questions about the event and proposals to crssymposium@law.ucla.edu
The program has many co-sponsors. For the full list, see here.
-Posted by Bridget Crawford
photo credit: newsobserver.com
Santa walks alone in Raleigh, North Carolina. The head of the merchants’ association that coordinates the local holiday parade says, “[I]t’s confusing for children to see two people in Santa suits.” Story here.
Ummm…from the photo of a previous year’s parade, it doesn’t look like Mrs. Claus was wearing a Santa suit. She wore a gender-differentiated Snuggie-Meets-North-Pole dress.
I wonder whether parade organizers would have been more inclined to admit Mrs. Claus had she been wearing garters and stockings instead?
-Bridget Crawford
Call for Papers
“What Pertains To a Man”?
Transcending Gender Boundaries in Jewish and Israeli Law
Conference to be held at the University of Chicago Law School
Monday March 1, 2010
This small one day conference will be structured around two documentary films, Praying in her Own Voice and Paper Dolls (Bubyot Niyar), each centered on ways in which Israeli law and culture deal with individuals and groups who transcend the gender boundaries of Jewish law. The conference title is taken from Deuteronomy 10:22, which declares it to be an abomination for a woman to put on what pertains to a man and for a man to wear women’s clothing.
The conference will be held Monday March 1, coincident to the feast of Purim, which commemorates Esther’s saving the Jewish people by crossing uninvited from the women’s quarters to the king’s inner court and is traditionally celebrated with masquerades including some cross-dressing. Purim and the megilla of Esther are also important to the subjects of Praying in her Own Voice, the Women of the Wall, whose decades- long quest to pray and read from Torah scrolls wearing tallit at the Western Wall in Jerusalem led them several times to the Israeli Supreme Court.
The conference will juxtapose the Women of the Wall’s attempt to transcend gender boundaries with that of a very different group, the Paper Dolls, a drag performance troupe whose members are transgendered Filipino care workers in Israel. The award-winning Paper Dolls documentary explores the mulitiplicity of ways in which the group negotiates and transcends gender boundaries, as it examines the group members’ interactions with both the elderly orthodox Jewish men they are employed to care for and the gay male Israeli club patrons for whom they audition as performers.
Confirmed speakers for the conference include Aeyal Gross of Tel Aviv University, Pnina Lahav of Boston University, and Martin F. Manalansan IV of the University of Illinois. We will be adding a few additional speakers and to that end seek proposals in the form either of an abstract or draft paper dealing with any aspect of Transcending Gender Boundaries in Jewish or Israeli Law, by no means limited to the subjects of the two films. We welcome papers from all disciplines.
The conference sponsors include the University of Chicago Law School’s Workshop on Regulating Family, Sex and Gender, and the University’s Center for Gender Studies, Program in Jewish Studies and Program in Human Rights.
Please e-mail proposals to Mary Anne Case at macase@law.uchicago.edu. Proposals received before January 6, 2010 will receive full consideration.
-Mary Anne Case
“If we’re going to be thrown under the bus, let’s not be ladylike about it. Kick and scream and make your voice heard.”
:Linda Lowen, About.com/womensissues
I couldn’t agree more with Linda. That’s why I’ve dropped everything else and am working with the Women’s Media Center to raise awareness about what is at stake with the current health care bill over at NotUnderTheBus.com.
We just released a new video to increase the sense of urgency about women’s rights in the health care bill. The fight isn’t over yet, and the next week of conference committee deliberations between the House and Senate will be crucial. We need to be calling Congress and making sure that our rights are not thrown under the bus in the debate on health care, and we need our blogosphere to be heard loud and clear by the media and Congress. One thing for sure, anti-choice forces won’t stop just because it’s Christmas, and neither can we.
View the video here:
If you have a blog, please consider posting it there too. And all tweets and Facebook postings would help so much to keep the activism going during this holiday season when there are so many competing activities. Here’s more about the campaign overall: NotUnderTheBus.com is a comprehensive landing place for anyone looking to know the latest news in the health care debate.
We will continue to update you on the latest from NotUnderTheBus.com so you can share with your friends. And please feel free to post comments on our wall any time, and e-mail to me links to any posts or campaigns you’d like to see featured.
Please join our fan page at Facebook.com/NotUndertheBus and invite your friends. We’re on Twitter @NotUnderTheBus. The hashtag we’ve been promoting is #underthebus. Hope to tweet with you there early and often.
While the short term goal is to keep abortion restrictions out of health care reform, NotUndertheBus.com is a long term project that will be working to move the conversation about health care back to the original problem – the Hyde Amendment, and to change the media narrative to one that centers on women’s human rights.
We don’t have the funds of those opposed to health reform entirely and women’s reproductive rights specifically. But we have the power of word of mouth. By spreading the message virally through our blogs and social media, we can continue building the opposition to these draconian policies. And what could possibly be a better gift to women, including ourselves, during this holiday season?
–Gloria Feldt
From Feminist Law Prof Ruthann Robson, over at Constitutional Law Profs Blog:
Responding to criticisms that the policy treats men and women differently, [Major General Tony] Cucolo [U.S. Army, Commander, 3rd Infantry Division] had this to say:
The men stay in combat, and the women are sent home because they’re pregnant, but both receive the same punishment, unless there are other circumstances. Both receive the same punishment.
Read the rest of Professor Robson’s post here.
-Bridget Crawford
