Gender and the Law Blog

New Book by Pamela Laufer-Ukeles on "Families, Relational Attachments, and the Law of Collaborative Family-Making"

Pamela Laufer-Ukeles has published a new book with Routledge titled "Families, Relational Attachments, and the Law of Collaborative Family-Making." Available here. 

This book points to a crisis at the heart of modern family law’s treatment of “collaborative family-making”: gamete contributions, surrogate motherhood, adoption, functional parenthood, foster care, and kin caregiving. Born of inequality and anchored by exclusivity and secrecy, the dominant legal framework governing collaborative family-making focuses on the acquisition of collaborative services by legal and intended parents without expecting or fostering any lasting bonds between them. This acquisitional framework is starkly disconnected from empirical accounts of the lived experience of collaborations, which demonstrate complex and ongoing relational attachments that extend beyond a transactional moment. At the intersection of law and sociology, the book challenges the law to account for relational realities that fail to conform to neat legal categories of parent and stranger, asking: How should the law reflect the complex interconnections between families and family-making collaborators? Should collaborators be treated as legal strangers? Who is impacted by the lack of legal status possessed by family-making collaborators? Who benefits and who loses? Ultimately, this is a work of optimism that seeks to facilitate family-making collaborations in more ethical ways by insisting that family law recognize and support family-making collaborators. It introduces a bold new legal framework of interconnection and guides the reader in implementing practical legal and contractual changes that promote human dignity, uphold children’s right to identity, and support ongoing relational attachments with adults who are fundamental to children’s lives. The volume provides deep and accessible insight into families and family law for legal practitioners, academics, students, and laypersons interested in family-making collaboration.

Susan Ayres on "A Crazy Quilt: Infanticide in the United States"

Susan Ayres posted a book chapter on SSRN titled "A Crazy Quilt: Infanticide in the United States." The chapter is from the larger project, 100 Years of the Infanticide Act: Legacy, Impact and Future Directions (Karen Brennan and Emma Milne, eds., Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023). The abstract is here: 

This chapter builds on previous research to present a sampling of cases in the US, primarily in the twenty-first century, in order to show the harshness and disparity in criminal charges, defences and sentences. The broad term ‘infanticide’ is used for child-murder cases, and the more specific term ‘neonaticide’ is used for the killing of a child in the first 24 hours after birth. This chapter also describes the more recent use of genetic genealogy to solve cold cases of neonaticide. It concludes by considering how the absence of an infanticide offence and expanded defences results in an incoherent, unjust and irrational approach that ignores women’s vulnerabilities and fails to acknowledge the patterned nature of these cases.

Invitation to Online Book Launch of Feminist Legislation Project on Sept. 25

Below is an invitation to a book launch of the Feminist Legislation Project from co-editor Becky Batagol. More information about the book project is here:   

Please come to the launch of the Feminist Legislation Project: Rewriting Laws for Gender-Based Justice edited collection created and edited by me, Professor Kate Seear, Assoc Prof Heli Askola and Dr Jamie Walvisch.

This book is the result of 7 years of Monash-led collaborative feminist work across Australia by leading law academics, lawyers, activists and those with lived experience of the problems we identify. We decided to go past the usual academic criticism of law and to actually show what legislation could look like if its concern was to create justice for women and those who experience gender-harm. 

Each chapter contains a short piece of legislation – proposed in order to address a contemporary legal problem from a feminist perspective. These range across criminal law (sexual offences, Indigenous women’s experiences of criminal law, laws in relation to forced marriage, modern slavery, childcare and sentencing), civil law (aged care and housing rights, regulating the gig economy; surrogacy, gender equity in the construction industry) and constitutional law (human rights legislation, reimagining parliaments where laws are made for the benefit of women). The proposed laws are, moreover, drafted with feedback from a senior parliamentary draftsperson (providing guidance to contributors in a personal capacity), to ensure conformity with legislative rigour, as well as accompanied by an explanation of their reasons and their aims. Although the legislation is Australian-based, the issues raised by each are recognisably global, and are reflected in the legislation of most other nations.

This is the world's first feminist legislation project and we think its methods can be applied worldwide. It also has great potential to lead to law reform as the book contains 16 proposals for law reform, complete with second reading speech and legislative drafting.  It will appeal to scholars of feminist legal studies, gender and the law, gender studies and others studying or working in relevant legal areas.

 

The book launch, which will take place at the Sky Room (Monash Business School), Level 14, at 30 Collins Street in Melbourne's CBD, on Wednesday 25 September, 5-7pm. We will organise Zoom access for those who can't attend in person. The invitation is attached and you can RSVP here by 16 September.

 

The book is open access, meaning it is free, not behind the usual academic paywalls and available to read and download here.

 

New Book Justice Jackson's Autobiography

Kimberly Robinson, Book Review, Justice Jackson had "Wrenching Time" as Big Law Working Mom, reviewing Lovely One by Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson described her return to law firm life after the birth of her first daughter as “wrenching,” saying she “drastically underestimated the challenges of new motherhood.”

“I can honestly say that going back into the office as a new mother, and returning to the cadence and pressures of Big Law, was the stuff of nightmares,” Jackson said in her memoir, “Lovely One,” which was released Tuesday.

She describes the challenges of commuting, breastfeeding, and having to slip out of the office apologetically “at the unspeakably early hour of five P.M. each workday.” And in particular, she details the isolation and lack of motivation she felt of returning to Goodwin Procter after four months of maternity leave.

For “me, there was a hollowness to the corporate law enterprise,” Jackson wrote.

New Book, The Bluestockings: A History of the First Women's Movement

NYT, Book Review, Book Review, The Bluestockings, When Women's Wits Ruled London's Salons

*** Both Woolf and Wollstonecraft argued far more stridently for women’s rights than did Macaulay or her peers, a loosely connected group of 18th-century British women writers and thinkers known — sometimes derogatorily, sometimes affectionately — as the Bluestockings. But as Susannah Gibson argues in her fast-paced and intimate study of the group, the Bluestockings’ feminist revolution lay in their determination to think and write and educate themselves, despite the “pitiless machinations” of British society, which kept single women dependent on their fathers, and married women subordinate to their husbands.

CFP Research Handbook on Gender, History and Law

Call for Contributions for Research Handbook on Gender, History, and Law (Edward Elgar)

As part of Edward Elgar's Research Handbooks in Gender and Law Series edited by Robin West and Alexander Maine, this volume on Gender, History, and Law aims to bring together critical and thought-provoking contributions on the most pressing topics, issues and approaches within legal and gender history. The collection aims to set the agenda in the field and serve as the most important and up-to-date point of reference for researchers as well as students, policy-makers, and lawmakers. 

We are aiming for about 30 essays of 8,000-10,000 words by scholars of legal and gender history on any topic that fits within the book's broad themes, including but not limited to gendered history within legal categories such as family, criminal law and international law, on particular historical periods, on specialist topics such as capitalism and labor, sexuality, race, identity, citizenship, the legal profession and courts, and on sources and methodology. 

The Research Handbook will be published in English, but we seek to provide a broad global perspective. To fulfill its aim of providing cross-cutting scholarship in law and history, each contribution should explore perspectives on what it means to do legal history in the chosen area in the context of the author's own approach.

Manuscripts must be original and not published elsewhere, and are due to the editors by July 1, 2025. Publication is anticipated to be in the summer of 2026.

Please submit abstracts by September 30, 2024. For questions and to submit abstracts, please feel free to reach out to any of us.

Rosemary Auchmuty ([email protected])

Caroline Derry ([email protected])

Danaya Wright ([email protected]) 

New Book, The Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State

Interview with Elizabeth Garner Masarik on her Book, The Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State (Univ. Georgia Press 2024)

I got the chance to speak with historian Elizabeth Garner Masarik about her new book The Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State. An assistant professor of history at SUNY Brockport, Elizabeth is a scholar of American women’s history, the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, and the administrative state. Her new project is on American spiritualism, and she was also eager to discuss her findings on women and the history of welfare networks, charity, and maternalist sentiment. Dr. Masarik defines “sentimentalism,” or feelings surrounding motherhood and child-rearing, as one of the chief drivers behind the push for women-led public health and social initiatives in the nineteenth century.

Your new book is a fascinating examination of the intersection of women’s state-building and the politics of domesticity. Can you talk a little bit about the origins of the book? Was it part of your dissertation? What new directions did you go in as you wrote?

Yes, this book came out of my dissertation. I took a women’s history course with sexuality, gender and sports scholar Susan Cahn during the first semester of my MA program and was hooked. I really latched on to the U.S. maternalist movement of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries and dove headfirst into learning about the early formation of the U.S. welfare state. Additionally, the primary sources I found where women were speaking about, and grieving over, the death of their infants and young children just hit me; after becoming a mother myself, I couldn’t fathom being able to go on with life if one of my children died. And so, in a way, examining child and infant mortality became a kind of masochistic way for me to study history while also feeling this immense empathy for my subjects. I didn’t set out to focus on infant and child death at the beginning, but the connections between emotions and state-building became so glaringly obvious that I couldn’t look away. It was a subject that spoke to me as a mother and as a recipient of welfare. It felt very personal. When I revised the dissertation into book form I focused more heavily on sentimentalism as a cultural phenomenon of the nineteenth century and how I found that bleeding into the twentieth century.

Revisiting the Legacy of a Feminist Icon, Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Deborah Brake, Gender and the Law: Revisiting the Legacy of a Feminist Icon, Ch. 1 in THE JURISPRUDENTIAL LEGACY OF JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG (Ryan Vacca & Ann Bartow, eds., NYU Press 2023)

Justice Ginsburg attained celebrity status in her later years as the voice of feminism from the bench, but her influence on law and gender was not always so venerated. For much of her career, feminist scholarly criticism of her gender jurisprudence was sharp. Critics called the approach “formal equality,” pointing out that it benefited those women most similarly situated to men. The criticism echoed that leveled against her strategy as a litigator representing male plaintiffs. In recent years, Justice Ginsburg’s legacy has been burnished by a fresh interpretation crediting it with a more robust vision of gender equality than previously appreciated. This chapter contends that, while far from radical, the Justice’s gender jurisprudence is a product of a jurist committed to minimizing the role of gender as a site of social and economic oppression.

Although Justice Ginsburg’s impact on gender equality can fill a book on its own, this chapter focuses on identifying and explaining three core themes: an antipathy toward gender stereotypes embedded in the law; a vision of gender equality that transcends formal equality; and a recognition of the centrality of reproductive freedom to women’s equality. Each of these themes has been advanced, albeit imperfectly, by Justice Ginsburg’s career as a litigator and a jurist.

New Book, Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America

Wash Post, Book Review, Understanding the Real Impact of Abortion Bans, One Woman at a Time, reviewing Shefali Luthra, Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America

For those brave enough to delve into this maelstrom, first-time author and veteran journalist Shefali Luthra’s “Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America” provides a superbly reported account of the past two years. Grounded in conversations with a diverse range of people across the United States, “Undue Burden” showcases Luthra’s expertise in covering health-care policy and abortion rights. But the politics and policies that have created what she calls a “public health crisis” are not her primary topic. “Undue Burden” focuses on the stories of those who are attempting to navigate an unraveling health-care system while pregnant. Luthra brings their voices to life, and she locates her subjects in their larger contexts — socioeconomic, political, religious, historical — thereby exposing how abortion bans disproportionately harm the most vulnerable, including women of color and undocumented women and girls.

 

Jamie R. Abrams Publishes Book on "Inclusive Socratic Teaching" with UC Press

I am excited to share with blog readers that I have published a new book on Inclusive Socratic Teaching: Why Law Schools Need it and How to Achieve It with the University of California Press. The book's synopsis is pasted below. Of particular note to readers is the way in which the book draws upon the sustained and impactful contributions of Feminist Legal Theorists naming and documenting critiques of problematic Socratic performances for over a half of a century. It then maps a set of implementable techniques to adapt and modernize the Socratic method to be more inclusive, effective, and equitable.   

For more than fifty years, scholars have documented and critiqued the marginalizing effects of the Socratic teaching techniques that dominate law school classrooms. In spite of this, law school budgets, staffing models, and course requirements still center Socratic classrooms as the curricular core of legal education. In this clear-eyed book, law professor Jamie R. Abrams catalogs both the harms of the Socratic method and the deteriorating well-being of modern law students and lawyers, concluding that there is nothing to lose and so much to gain by reimagining Socratic teaching. Recognizing that these traditional classrooms are still necessary sites to fortify and catalyze other innovations and values in legal education, Inclusive Socratic Teaching provides concrete tips and strategies to dismantle the autocratic power and inequality that so often characterize these classrooms. A galvanizing call to action, this hands-on guide equips educators and administrators with an inclusive teaching model that reframes the Socratic classroom around teaching techniques that are student centered, skills centered, client centered, and community centered.

New Book, Fair Shake: Women and the Fight to Build a Fair Economy

Naomi Cahn, June Carbone & Nancy Levit, Fair Shake: Women and the Fight to Build a Fair Economy (Simon & Schuster 2024)

In an era of supposed great equality, women are still falling behind in the workplace. Even with more women in the workforce than in decades past, wage gaps continue to increase. It is the most educated women who have fallen the furthest behind. Blue-collar women hold the most insecure and badly paid jobs in our economy. And even as we celebrate high-profile representation—women on the board of Fortune 500 companies and our first female vice president—women have limited recourse when they experience harassment and discrimination.

Fair Shake: Women and the Fight to Build a Just Economy explains that the system that governs our economy—a winner-take-all economy—is the root cause of these myriad problems. The WTA economy self-selects for aggressive, cutthroat business tactics, which creates a feedback loop that sidelines women. The authors, three legal scholars, call this feedback loop “the triple bind”: if women don’t compete on the same terms as men, they lose; if women do compete on the same terms as men, they’re punished more harshly for their sharp elbows or actual misdeeds; and when women see that they can’t win on the same terms as men, they take themselves out of the game (if they haven’t been pushed out already). With odds like these stacked against them, it’s no wonder women feel like, no matter how hard they work, they can’t get ahead.

Fair Shake is not a “fix the woman” book; it’s a “fix the system” book. It not only diagnoses the problem of what's wrong with the modern economy, but shows how, with awareness and collective action, we can build a truly just economy for all.

New Book, Father Time, How and Why Men are Biologically Transformed When They Care for Babies

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Father Time: A Natural History of Men and Babies

A sweeping account of male nurturing, explaining how and why men are biologically transformed when they care for babies

It has long seemed self-evident that women care for babies and men do other things. Hasn’t it always been so? When evolutionary science came along, it rubber-stamped this venerable division of labor: mammalian males evolved to compete for status and mates, while females were purpose-built to gestate, suckle, and otherwise nurture the victors’ offspring. But come the twenty-first century, increasing numbers of men are tending babies, sometimes right from birth. How can this be happening? Puzzled and dazzled by the tender expertise of new fathers around the world—several in her own family—celebrated evolutionary anthropologist and primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy set out to trace the deep history of male nurturing and explain a surprising departure from everything she had assumed to be “normal.”

In Father Time, Hrdy draws on a wealth of research to argue that this ongoing transformation in men is not only cultural, but profoundly biological. Men in prolonged intimate contact with babies exhibit responses nearly identical to those in the bodies and brains of mothers. They develop caring potential few realized men possessed. In her quest to explain how men came to nurture babies, Hrdy travels back through millions of years of human, primate, and mammalian evolution, then back further still to the earliest vertebrates—all while taking into account recent economic and social trends and technological innovations and incorporating new findings from neuroscience, genetics, endocrinology, and more. The result is a masterful synthesis of evolutionary and historical perspectives that expands our understanding of what it means to be a man—and what the implications might be for society and our species.

Book Review, Kerri Stone's, Panes of the Glass Ceiling

Rona Kaufman Kitchen, Feminist Legal Theory and Stone's Panes of the Glass Ceiling, 17 FIU L. Rev. 771 (2023).

In her book, Panes of the Glass Ceiling: The Unspoken Beliefs Behind the Law’s Failure to Help Women Achieve Professional Parity, Professor Kerri Lynn Stone explores and deconstructs the many practical reasons why women have been unable to achieve equality in employment. Professor Stone painstakingly deconstructs the belief systems that underlie the American workplace and the path to professional success to reveal many of the nuanced reasons why women, despite their education, skill, and commitment to the workforce, continue to struggle to achieve professional success comparative to men. Stone insightfully explains why women continue to experience irremediable discrimination in employment almost sixty years after Congress outlawed sex discrimination in employment. Stone’s book is a long overdue deconstruction and indictment of the toxic masculinity and seemingly benign social norms that pervade workplace culture and its negative impact on women and equality. Her book is geared toward an audience that wants to understand the problems women face in employment today and solve those problems. While she provides historical context for many of the beliefs that ground the panes of the glass ceiling, her focus is not on theory or history. It is a book about the reality of 2022 and a map for how to shift that reality in 2023 and beyond.

This book review seeks to provide deeper grounding for Stone’s panes of the glass ceiling by placing her work in the broader historical and theoretical context of feminism, the women’s movement, and the history of women in the American labor force. This discussion proceeds in three parts. Part I provides the historical context for discrimination against women in the American workplace and anti-discrimination law by tracing the evolution of the modern women’s movement and the history of women’s participation in the labor force. Part II discusses Professor Kerri Stone’s panes of the glass ceiling and places each pane in theoretical context. Part III concludes with a brief discussion of how Stone’s articulation of the panes or the glass ceiling and her suggestions for reform contribute to the ongoing feminist legal theory discourse.

Book Review, Not Everything is About Gender, Reviewing Judith Butler's New Book

Katha Pollitt, Books: Not Everything is About Gender, Atlantic

udith butler, for many years a professor of rhetoric and comparative literature at UC Berkeley, might be among the most influential intellectuals alive today. Even if you have never heard of them (Butler identifies as nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns), you are living in their world, in which babies are “assigned” male or female at birth, and performativity is, at least on campus, an ordinary English word. Butler’s breakout 1990 book, Gender Trouble, argued that biological sex, like gender, is socially constructed, with its physical manifestations mattering only to the degree society assigns them meaning. The book is required reading in just about every women’s-, gender-, or sexuality-studies department. Butler has won a raft of international honors and been burned in effigy as a witch in Brazil. How many thinkers can say as much? ***

The central idea of Who’s Afraid of Gender? is that fascism is gaining strength around the world, and that its weapon is what Butler calls the “phantasm of gender,” which they describe as a confused and irrational bundle of fears that displaces real dangers onto imaginary ones. Instead of facing up to the problems of, for example, war, declining living standards, environmental damage, and climate change, right-wing leaders whip up hysteria about threats to patriarchy, traditional families, and heterosexuality. And it works, Butler argues: “Circulating the phantasm of ‘gender’ is also one way for existing powers—states, churches, political movements—to frighten people to come back into their ranks, to accept censorship, and to externalize their fear and hatred onto vulnerable communities.” ***

In the United States, this politicized use of the word gender itself has not caught on as it has in much of the world, where, as an English word for which many languages have no equivalent, it is often used to attack feminism and LGBTQ rights as foreign imports. Still, as Butler notes, America’s Christian fundamentalists and far-right Republicans are fervently in the anti-gender vanguard, whether or not these groups actually use the word gender.

Book Review, Not Everything is About Gender, Reviewing Judith Butler's New Book

Katha Pollitt, Books: Not Everything is About Gender, Atlantic

udith butler, for many years a professor of rhetoric and comparative literature at UC Berkeley, might be among the most influential intellectuals alive today. Even if you have never heard of them (Butler identifies as nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns), you are living in their world, in which babies are “assigned” male or female at birth, and performativity is, at least on campus, an ordinary English word. Butler’s breakout 1990 book, Gender Trouble, argued that biological sex, like gender, is socially constructed, with its physical manifestations mattering only to the degree society assigns them meaning. The book is required reading in just about every women’s-, gender-, or sexuality-studies department. Butler has won a raft of international honors and been burned in effigy as a witch in Brazil. How many thinkers can say as much? ***

The central idea of Who’s Afraid of Gender? is that fascism is gaining strength around the world, and that its weapon is what Butler calls the “phantasm of gender,” which they describe as a confused and irrational bundle of fears that displaces real dangers onto imaginary ones. Instead of facing up to the problems of, for example, war, declining living standards, environmental damage, and climate change, right-wing leaders whip up hysteria about threats to patriarchy, traditional families, and heterosexuality. And it works, Butler argues: “Circulating the phantasm of ‘gender’ is also one way for existing powers—states, churches, political movements—to frighten people to come back into their ranks, to accept censorship, and to externalize their fear and hatred onto vulnerable communities.” ***

In the United States, this politicized use of the word gender itself has not caught on as it has in much of the world, where, as an English word for which many languages have no equivalent, it is often used to attack feminism and LGBTQ rights as foreign imports. Still, as Butler notes, America’s Christian fundamentalists and far-right Republicans are fervently in the anti-gender vanguard, whether or not these groups actually use the word gender.

Book, Diagnosis Female: How Medical Bias Endangers Women's Health

This week in my Law & Gender seminar, we have been discussing gender discrimination in medical research and treatment. We came across this book that provided a good basis for discussion.

Emily Dwass, Diagnosis Female: How Medical Bias Endangers Women's Health (2019)

Why do so many women have trouble getting effective and compassionate medical treatment? Diagnosis Female examines this widespread problem, with a focus on misdiagnosis and gender bias. The book zeroes in on specialties where women are more likely to encounter particularly troubling roadblocks: cardiology, neurology, chronic diseases and obstetrics/gynecology. All too often, when doctors can’t figure out what is going on, women receive a diagnosis from the “all in her head” column — this pattern is even worse for women of color, who may face significant challenges in medical settings.

Throughout the work, Emily Dwass profiles women whose stories illustrate how medical practitioners often dismiss their claims or disregard their symptoms. Because women were excluded from important medical research for centuries, doctors don’t always recognize that male symptoms and female symptoms can vary from issue to issue. Even today, most diagnostic tests and treatment plans are based on studies done on men. Throughout the book, women state that their voices do not matter, or worse, their concerns are greeted with skepticism or simply ignored when they seek help. The results can be devastating and long-lasting.

Examining the bias inherent in the system, Dwass offers measures women can take to protect their health and receive better care. She offers advice, too, for the medical community in addressing the problem, so that outcomes can improve all around

 

New Book about Bias and Discrimination in Women's Healthcare Published by Mayo Clinic Press: "Sex Cells"

The Mayo Clinic Press has published "Sex Cells: The Fight to Overcome Bias and Discrimination in Women’s Healthcare" by Phyllis E. Greenberger, M.S.W. with Kalia Doner. Here is a description of the book: 

This book gives readers access to the wide world of sex-specific medical issues as they play out in the research labs and doctor’s offices, and how women pay the price, with a close look at the impact that has on minority populations.

It has been challenging to get individual researchers and practitioners to accept this, as well as research and medical institutions, and manufacturers of medications and devices. The journey towards equal treatment and the understanding of sex and gender differences in prevention, diagnosis and treatment is still unfolding. This book is the story of that journey—why it was, and still is, so important to do research specific to women/females.

The story is told by Phyllis Greenberger—the woman who is recognized as the driving force for change over the past 25 years—and her allies in government, NGOs, academia, medical research, the US government, and public health advocacy. The array of experts who have contributed to the book offer an insiders’ up-close view of the battle to have female cells, lab animals and humans brought into medical research, so that women can receive treatment that is appropriate and effective for a wide range of conditions.

Told with humor, ferocity and passion, Sex Cells appeals to anyone interested in health, women’s rights, and public health policy.

Forthcoming Book on "The Feminist Legislation Project"

A new book is available for pre-orders now, The Feminist Legislation Project: Rewriting Laws for Gender-Based Justice. The book is edited by Becky Batagol, Kate Seear, Heli Askola, and Jamie Walvisch. It will be released in July 2024. The legislation is Australian-based with global applicability. Here is a summary: 

In this book, leading law academics along with lawyers, activists and others demonstrate what legislation could look like if its concern was to create justice for women.

Each chapter contains a short piece of legislation - proposed in order to address a contemporary legal problem from a feminist perspective. These range across criminal law (sexual offences, Indigenous women's experiences of criminal law, laws in relation to forced marriage, modern slavery, childcare and sentencing), civil law (aged care and housing rights, regulating the gig economy; surrogacy, gender equity in the construction industry) and constitutional law (human rights legislation, reimagining parliaments where laws are made for the benefit of women). The proposed laws are, moreover, drafted with feedback from a senior parliamentary draftsperson (providing guidance to contributors in a personal capacity), to ensure conformity with legislative rigour, as well as accompanied by an explanation of their reasons and their aims. Although the legislation is Australian-based, the issues raised by each are recognisably global, and are reflected in the legislation of most other nations.

This first feminist legislation project will appeal to scholars of feminist legal studies, gender and the law, gender studies and others studying or working in relevant legal areas.

New Book, Social Movements and the Law--Talking About Black Lives Matter and #MeToo

Lolita Buckner Innis & Bridget Crawford, Social Movements and the Law: Talking About Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, 
University of California Press (forthcoming 2024)

Black Lives Matter and #MeToo are two of the most prominent social movements of the U.S. in the twenty-first century. On the ground and on social media, in reality and virtuality, more people have taken an active stance in support of either or both movements than almost any other in the country’s history. Social Movements and the Law brings together the voices of twelve scholars and public intellectuals to explore how Black Lives Matter and #MeToo unfolded—separately and together—and how they enrich, inform, and complicate each other. Structured in dialogues, this book shows—rather than tells—how people with different perspectives can engage with open minds and a generosity of spirit. Each chapter begins with an introduction from the editors and includes informative text boxes, illustrations, and discussion questions. This accessible guide to this increasingly influential area of the law centers a rich intersectional analysis of the two social movements and aids readers in further reflection and conversation. It is especially timely given the heightened public attention—both negative and positive—to the broader scholarly study of human social behavior and interaction.

The dialogue participants are Lolita Buckner Inniss, Bridget J. Crawford, Mehrsa Baradaran, Noa Ben-Asher, Bennett I. Capers, Linda S. Greene, Aya Gruber, Osamudia James, Keisha Lindsay, Ruthann Robson, Kathryn M. Stanchi, and Lua Kamál Yuille.

Included here are a short abstract, the table of contents for the book, and the editors’ introductory chapter. The book will be available for pre-order from the University of California Press in April, 2024.

New Volume of "Feminist Judgments Rewritten" Published in Immigration Law

The "Feminist Judgments Project" has published another volume in its Cambridge University Press series. This volume, titled Feminist Judgments: Immigration Law Opinions Rewritten was edited by Kathleen Kim, Kevin Lapp and Jennifer Lee. Here is the book's description: 

This volume, part of the Feminist Judgment Series, shows how feminist legal theory along with critical race theory and intersectional modes of critique might transform immigration law. Here, a diverse collection of scholars and lawyers bring critical feminist, race, and intersectional insights to Supreme Court opinions. Feminist reasoning values the perspectives of outsiders, exposes the deep-rooted bias in the legal opinions of courts, and illuminates the effects of ostensibly neutral policies that create and maintain oppression and hierarchy. One by one, the chapters reimagine the norms that drive immigration policies and practices. In place of discrimination and subordination, the authors demand welcome and equality. Where current law omits the voice and stories of noncitizens, the authors center their lives and experiences. Collectively, they reveal how a feminist vision of immigration law could center a commitment to equality and justice and foster a country where diverse newcomers readily flourish with dignity.