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Hands Off Policy: Equal Protection and the Contact Sports Exemption of Title IX
The disparity between what the Constitution permits of public schools and what Title IX permits of private ones is unquestionably stark. This Article calls this disparity into question. First, it asks under what circumstances, if any, allowance for sex discrimination in athletics may be justified under constitutional standards. Then, it considers the practical relevance of the disparity between how a school may lawfully discriminate under Title IX and how it may do so under the Equal Protection Clause. Finally, it offers a prescription for bringing into balance the gender equity messages sent by Title IX and the Constitution.Global Sex Trafficking and the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000: Legislative Responses to the Problem of Modern Slavery
Human trafficking is becoming the fastest growing criminal activity in the world. Generally, trafficking is defined as the transportation of persons across international borders for labor purposes, by means of force, fraud, or coercion. Commerce directly related to human slavery yields approximately $7-$10 billion a year, trailing only behind drugs and weapons trade for international profit. According to recent congressional findings, over 700,000 human beings are trafficked across international borders each year, including approximately 50,000 women and children into the United States. Women and girl children are the primary targets for sexual exploitation into prostitution, pornography, sex tourism, and other commercial sex activities. Police authorities readily admit that their estimates regarding the volume of victims are conservative. These facts are a stark indication that the problem of human slavery is immediate, large, and local.“Just” Married?: Same-Sex Marriage and a Hustory of Family Plurality
To contribute to a full moral deliberation about same-sex marriage, this Article inquires into the meanings of marriage, sexuality, and family from historical and narrative perspectives that are situated at the intersection of religious and political domains.“Has the Millennium Yet Dawned?”: A History of Attitudes Toward Pregnant Workers in America
This Article will focus on what might be considered the "prehistory" of the PDA in an attempt to shed new light on the equality/difference debate. Beginning as early as the nineteenth century, pregnant workers have been forced into either the equality approach or the difference approach depending mostly on race and class. This Article will show that, at times, both approaches restrained the autonomy of women and even caused harm to individual women and society by contributing to the development of the stereotypes and social attitudes that continue to permit pregnancy discrimination today.Dealing with Hate in the Feminist Classroom: Re-Thinking the Balance
The goals of this essay are two-fold. First, by describing the experience the author had in Law and Feminism, the essay will show how hateful and harassing speech in a seminar devoted to issues of gender, race and sexuality can rob students of important educational experiences. The story of the author’s class is meant to remind legal educators and administrators of the concrete harm, both personal and educational, of hate speech. Too often the hate speech debate focuses on the theoretical and the abstract; participants forget that the principles at stake have demonstrable consequences for real people. Second, while this essay does not endorse university institution of hate speech codes, it does take issue with the absolutist position on free speech. The absolutist view is the source of the administrative policy of non-interference with student speech. In my classroom, this view allowed hate speech that was extremely disruptive to continue. In some ways, the egregious nature of the author’s experience is what makes it instructive; if the speech she describes here cannot be regulated under the absolutist approach, then that approach needs to be rethought. It is the goal of the essay to offer the author’s unfortunate experience as a way to demonstrate the need for a more balanced approach to hate speech and harassment in the law school context.Domestic Violence and the Jewish Community
In Part I of this Article, Guthartz defines the problem of domestic violence as it relates to the Jewish community. Specifically, Jewish texts and history and community understanding and exposure, that contribute to Jewish domestic abuse are examined. In Part II, the author explores Jewish solutions to domestic violence by focusing on religious remedies, community pressure, and the use of civil law. In this Article, it is submitted that it is only through an understanding of the uniqueness of "Jewish" domestic violence by domestic violence and law enforcement organizations, coupled with an understanding about domestic violence within American society by rabbis and Jewish community leaders, that domestic violence in the Jewish community will be eradicated.Restructuring the Marital Bedroom: The Role of the Privacy Doctrine in Advocating the Legalization of Same-Sex Marriage
Part I of this paper examines the reasons underlying queer rights advocates' reluctance to insert privacy arguments into the case for legalizing same-sex marriage. Part II illustrates that, due to such disinclination, advocates transformed notions of privacy into concepts of liberty. Part III argues that, after the Lawrence decision, proponents of same-sex marriage can and should use privacy-based arguments to fortify their claims.Keynote Address: Reproductive Rights Under Siege: Responding to the Anti-Choice Agenda Conference. University of Michigan Law School. March 5, 2004
It is great to be here with a new generation that is advocating for reproductive rights and responding to the extraordinary anti-choice agenda we currently face. I am not going to talk about that agenda directly tonight because I know that you know it. You know about the judicial appointments, you know about the parental consent laws, you know about the denial of funding for low-income women, you know about the global gag rule.The Use of Human Rights Discourse to Secure Women’s Interests: Critical Analysis of the Implications
This article highlights the significant theoretical constraints of universalism, the tendency of human rights advocates to ignore the underlying cause of rights violations, as well as problems associated with the concept of and informal hierarchy between rights. The article suggests that there are certain circumstances in which INGOs that rely primarily on human rights language in their advocacy efforts may wish to supplement their analysis with explicit reference to feminist legal theory in order to more effectively secure women's interests globally. These ideas will be developed with ongoing reference to the recent and successful campaign initiated by Nepali women to have abortion legalized. The campaign was supported by the Center for Reproduction Law and Policy (CRLP) (New York) (now the Center for Reproductive Rights), in partnership with the Forum for Women, Law and Development (FWLD) (Katmandu). CRLP became involved with the domestic campaign to legalize abortion in 2001, largely to draw attention to the massive human rights violations arising out of its continued criminalization. Abortion was legalized by Nepal's legislature in March 2002. The Nepal example will illustrate more concretely the way in which INGOs tend to focus on human rights analysis when advocating for women's rights globally.Sex Determination for Federal Purposes: Is Transsexual Immigration Via Marriage Permissible Under the Defense of Marriage Act?
Part I describes the federal immigration benefits available to spouses of most U.S. citizens and presents the historical and contemporary obstacles that prohibit these benefits from being extended to gays and lesbians. It then addresses DOMA's failure to define "opposite sex," and hence DOMA's failure to indicate whether post-operative transsexuals, or their partners, should be given "spousal status" under current U.S. immigration law. Part II examines traditional and modern notions of sex. It traces state legal approaches to transsexual marriage and ultimately disentangles the formalistic rhetoric that obfuscates the reasoning in those cases. In particular, Part II focuses on a 2002 Kansas case that attempts to make sense of the conflicting positions states have taken with respect to transsexual marriage. That case draws a misleading distinction between sex determination "as a matter of law," and sex determination "as a matter of fact," and hence adds to, rather than detracts from, the confusion. Part II demonstrates that sex determination in the absence of a legislative standard is inherently a mixed question of law and fact." Courts addressing transsexuals must establish sex-determination standards to define as a matter of law what it means to be male or female, and then must determine as a matter of fact whether post-operative transsexuals are male or female under those standards. Part III addresses transsexual immigration via marriage. Looking behind the veil of formalism pierced in Part II. Part III takes a comparative law approach to transsexual sex determination. It examines the positions that federal courts, state courts and legislatures, foreign governments, and the European Court of Human Rights have taken on the underlying determinations that unify the transsexual marriage cases brought forth in Part II.