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Feminist Voices in the Debate over Single-Sex Schooling: Finding Common Ground
This article examines the deep divide within feminist ranks with an eye toward proposing a constructive and essential role for feminist understandings as single-sex schooling inches its way toward legal acceptability and into the mainstream of educational reform. In doing so, the forces that have shaped competing perspectives on women's equality are examined, especially disagreements over sameness and difference. In the end the article looks to the Court's decision in United States v. Virginia as a road map for feminists to follow in reaching common ground on the approach, despite seemingly profound ideological differences among them.Copyright Infringement, Sex Trafficking, and Defamation in the Fictional Life of a Geisha
Memoirs of a Geisha has sold and made millions for Arthur Golden since 1997. This is his first novel, and it has earned him worldwide acclaim. A feature film version directed by Steven Spielberg is in the works. The book is translated into more than twenty languages. This article uses the book and the legal controversy that ensued after its publication to ask, and hopefully answer, two questions: First, is the geisha tradition as described by Golden in his fictional biography a variant of sex trafficking and sexual slavery which, despite possible cultural justifications, should be abolished by law? Second, did Iwasaki's lawsuit have any merit? To answer these questions, this article will proceed in accordance with structuralist and post-structuralist literary critical traditions by looking first at the text itself and then its context, subtext, and post-text in order to explain the plaintiffs pre-text for suing. The article will analyze the narrative structures and style of the text; the legal and historic context of the novel; the legal issues hidden in the subtext which include sex trafficking, feminist legal theory, and the role of cultural relativism as a justification for the geisha tradition; the post-text which are the merits, if any, of Iwasaki's legal claims; and finally, the pre-text, or why the real geisha sued Arthur Golden and his publishers.Advocacy in Whispers: The Impact of the Unsaid Global Gag Rule Upon Free Speech and Free Association in the Context of Abortion Law Reform in Three East African Countries
In 2001, President George W. Bush restricted the participation in democratic processes for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) abroad by reinstating a policy restricting family planning funding granted by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The restriction sharply curtailed the ability to speak and to associate freely for organizations working to preserve women's health and lives. For this reason, I refer to the restriction as the Global Gag Rule (GGR). Organizations in Uganda, Ethiopia, and Kenya had begun to identify the problems associated with their countries' restrictive abortion laws. In these three countries, as elsewhere in the world, illegal abortions are unsafe and a major cause of the high rates of maternal mortality and morbidity. By 2001, efforts toward abortion law reform were underway. In 2002, with the institutional support of the Center for Reproductive Rights, I traveled to east Africa to study the effect of the GGR upon the free speech and free association of advocates of access to safe abortion. Uganda, Ethiopia, and Kenya were selected because, in all three countries, stakeholders in the reproductive health of women were working to bring information to lawmakers about the detrimental impact of a restrictive abortion law. Additionally, prior to my departure, I had access to information about stakeholders in these countries. In Uganda, Ethiopia, and Kenya, the ability of stakeholders to communicate with lawmakers is restricted by the GGR.The Marriage Dower: Essential Guarantor of Women’s Rights in the West Bank and Gaza Strip
This Article evaluates the impact that eliminating or reducing the marriage dower would have on the well-being of Muslim women in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Although Palestinian women's rights organizations seek to eliminate dower on the grounds that it is a "burdensome custom" that is "inconsistent with the intifada's stated goal of improving women's status," in fact, the interaction between dower and other laws relating to marriage and divorce is such that the majority of women would be materially harmed by its discontinuance. Therefore, while the movement to eliminate dower may benefit the financially secure upper class women at its vanguard, it results in financial insecurity and impoverishment for poor and particularly, rural women. This Article, therefore, recommends that women's movements in Palestine take greater heed of the class-differentiated effects of dower, and protect the right of poor and rural women to their only means of financial security.From Presumed Fathers to Lesbian Mothers: Sex Discrimination and the Legal Construction of Parenthood
In Part I of this article, Dalton briefly reviews the way legal scholars commonly define sex-based discrimination, particularly as it pertains to issues of reproduction. Part II is a brief historical review of legal constructions of parenthood. In Part III, Dalton examines two legal concepts: retroactive legitimation and presumed fatherhood. Both concepts were introduced in 1872 and each independently encouraged judges to think of fatherhood as consisting of two distinct spheres, the biological and the social. She then traces the legal development of these concepts through a series of presumed father, retroactive legitimation, and putative father cases. In Part IV Dalton extends the analysis to include legal constructions of motherhood by introducing lesbian co-mother and female surrogacy cases into the mix. This allows the author to directly compare legal constructions of motherhood to legal constructions of fatherhood. In Part V Dalton discusses gendered aspects of the legal institution of marriage and the complicated role marriage plays in legal constructions of parenthood. In Part VI she delves into several recent lesbian co-mother and surrogacy cases to explore how some judges are attempting to expand legal constructions of motherhood in ways that would bring them more on par with legal constructions of fatherhood. And finally, in Part VII, Dalton offers final remarks and concludes that judges' inability to conceive of a gender neutral subject, at least when considering issues related to human reproduction, creates serious legal disadvantages for virtually all women. As the analysis below makes clear, the resulting discrimination is grounded in gendered constructions of parenthood and not, as many courts conclude, in the biological differences between men and women.Covering Women and Violence: Media Treatment of VAWA’s Civil Rights Remedy
This Article analyzes how newspapers described and characterized the civil rights provision over the past decade and shaped the public discourse about the law. The author examines how lower federal courts, and eventually the Supreme Court, categorized the VAWA remedy when deciding whether Congress had acted within its commerce powers. After considering why there may have been resistance in the press and in the courts to VAWA's categorization of violence against women as a civil rights issue, the author concludes by examining the remedies that have been introduced at the state and local level for victims of gender-motivated violence, and discusses the public debate that has surrounded these remedies thus far.Is Marriage Obsolete?
Is legal marriage obsolete? Wardle thinks not. In order to understand why not, it is necessary first to grasp the significance of the focus of the discussion on the legal status of marriage. As this Introduction suggests, lack of legal marriage status does not prevent families and communities from treating couples as married nor does the law forbid couples from voluntarily providing each other "marital benefits." Nevertheless, whether marriage is obsolete at the beginning of the twenty-first century is an important question. This article analyzes four dimensions of that question.Marriage Law: Obsolete or Cutting Edge?
Over the past hundred years, social and cultural expectations surrounding various forms of committed relationships have changed dramatically, and contemporary legal systems have struggled to adapt. The result has been an extraordinary opportunity to test fundamental assumptions about law, about the cultural understandings that are enforced through state power, and about the mechanisms that drive law's evolution. The Michigan Journal of Gender & Law has drawn together an exceptional group of panelists who will discuss these questions throughout the day.In the Supreme Court of the United States Barbara Grutter, Petitioner, v. Lee Bollinger, et al., Respondents. On Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
Brief of the University of Michigan Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, the University of Michigan Black Law Students' Alliance, the University of Michigan Latino Law Students Association, and the University of Michigan Native American Law Students Association as Amici Curiae in Support of RespondentsEditorial Introduction
Editorial Introduction and Biographies of Student Contributors