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Can Families Be Efficient? A Feminist Appraisal
This Article examines the convergence of feminist and law and economics theory on family law questions, particularly issues of marriage and divorce. Both feminist legal theory and law and economics analysis have come to occupy a significant place in the American legal academy, demonstrated by growing numbers of conferences, journals, casebooks and monographs, and electronic mail lists in each area. Not surprisingly, as the two fields have grown, they have begun to touch, to overlap, and occasionally to come into conflict. This process has been evident in the extensive literature on sex discrimination in employment and is increasingly apparent in writing on family law issues.U.S. Ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
The purpose of this article is to highlight the need for ratification of the Convention by the United States, and to address arguments against ratification. Various concerns have been raised with respect to CEAFDAW, both specific to the United States and more international in scope. Some problems pertain to United States ratification generally, other issues concern potential conflicts between specific articles of the Convention and U.S. law, and broader problems have been raised with respect to international implementation. Most of these issues are not uncommon in international agreements, and may therefore be remedied through conventional mechanisms, including implementing legislation, reservations, clarifying statements, participation in the monitoring body created by the Convention, and active involvement within the United Nations system and other international organizations involved in the creation of international laws and principles.Political Lawyering, One Person at a Time: The Challenge of Legal Work Against Domestic Violence for the Impact Litigation/Client Service Debate
The premise of this Article is that, in his assertion that client service work is political lawyering, Ralph Reed is right. Indeed, Gary Bellow made a similar point about the political content of both impact litigation and client service work in a classic article written almost twenty years ago. Of course, Reed and Bellow are hardly ideological soulmates. Reed disapproves of the political content of service work, while Bellow heartily endorses it. On that point, this Article sides with Bellow. It employs the example of domestic violence lawyering to demonstrate why Bellow and Reed are correct that client service work has political content, and why Bellow is right that such political content is central to providing legal services to poor people. This Article situates the impact litigation/client service debate as one of three dichotomies which privilege detachment over connection in legal practice. The other dichotomies in this trio divide the professional from the personal and the public from the private.A Feminist Theory of Malebashing
The concern about feminist "malebashing" is increasingly common, inside the university and out, but unfortunately, because of the emotions involved, most discussions of malebashing generate more confusion than understanding. When feminists say negative things about men, they often speak in anger and perhaps fear. When men respond, they are often angry, defensive, and perhaps hurt. While this confusion may be understandable, it is still counter-productive. The dialogue is plagued by a failure to answer with precision or rigor the most basic questions about this subject: What is "malebashing," i.e., illegitimate negative statements about men, and how is it different from legitimate negative statements about men? Are feminists in general or feminists of some particular kind necessarily committed to malebashing because of the assumptions of their own positions? This Article will attempt to address these questions, to consider the justifiability of negative statements about men within feminism. It is not, however, about the justifiability of feminism itself. We assume the general themes of feminism: women deserve equal status, rights, and opportunities; political activism may legitimately seek to advance the interests of women; and legal reform is one legitimate path to improve the lot of women. We do not mean to respond to global criticisms of the feminist project as a whole. We assess only the use, or abuse, of a particular rhetorical strategy within that project.Second-Parent Adoption: Overcoming Barriers to Lesbian Family Rights
Part I of this Article will discuss some of the legal difficulties associated with co-parenting and why lesbian couples have sought second-parent adoptions. Part II will examine the particular statutory obstacles to second-parent adoptions and then analyze the various ways courts in several states have overcome these obstacles. Finally, Part III will discuss the implications of these decisions in terms of their creation of legal and social norms.Granting Political Asylum to Potential Victims of Female Circumcision
Part I of this article examines two cases. In one case, a United States immigration court allowed female circumcision as a defense to deportation. In another case, the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board granted political asylum after recognizing female circumcision as a form of persecution. Part II assesses the extent of protections currently provided for potential victims of female circumcision under U.S. asylum law and analyzes the factors that a court should consider when making asylum determinations. Part III recommends that gender should be added to the enumerated grounds for persecution under U.S. asylum law. This section provides a hypothetical that demonstrates how claims of asylum based on female circumcision should be analyzed as gender-based persecution.Innocent Spouses, Reasonable Women and Divorce: The Gap Between Reality and the Internal Revenue Code
This Article asks whether the "reasonable woman" should become the standard for women seeking relief from tax liabilities under the innocent spouse provision of the I.R.C. and whether an even more specific standard should be adopted for women who are also going through divorce or are in similar situations.“What’s so Magic[al] About Black Women?” Peremptory Challenges at the Intersection of Race and Gender
This Article addresses the evolving constitutional restraints on the exercise of peremptory challenges in jury selection. Approximately ten years ago, in the landmark case of Batson v. Kentucky, the United States Supreme Court held that the Equal Protection Clause forbids prosecutors to exercise race-based peremptory challenges, at least when the excluded jurors and the defendant share the same race. Over the next ten years, the Court extended Batson's reach.Succeeding in Law School: A Comparison of Women’s Experiences at Brooklyn Law School and the University of Pennsylvania
This Article reports our findings from a replication of the Penn research conducted at Brooklyn Law School in order to test the experience-performance link reported by the Penn researchers. Brooklyn Law School offers an ideal setting for a test of the Penn research because it already has adopted most of the reforms that the Penn researchers believe would reduce women's alienation from the learning environment and thus improve their academic performance. First, Brooklyn Law School, as compared to other American law schools, has a large proportion of women faculty. During the 1994-95 academic year, thirty-seven percent of its tenured and tenure-track faculty and forty-five percent of its full faculty were women. Second, Brooklyn has already adopted most of the Penn researchers' recommendations regarding curricular restructuring in the first year. Although Brooklyn retains the traditional, large class for much of its first-year curriculum, each student also is enrolled in a small (fifteen to seventeen students) legal writing class and a somewhat larger (thirty-one to thirty-four students) "seminar section" for one of the standard, substantive first-year courses. Grading in the seminar section is not exclusively exam-based and faculty members who teach these courses use varied teaching techniques, including cooperative approaches, to provide a counterweight to the more traditional approach of the larger first-year classes. Even within the larger classes, faculty surveys suggest that the Socratic method is by no means the exclusive approach or even, in some classes, the dominant one; many faculty members teaching first-year classes use problems, simulations, "gaming" techniques, negotiation, and other non-Socratic teaching methods as key features of their pedagogy.Husband and Wife are One – Him: Bennis v. Michigan as the Resurrection of Coverture
Although the legal fictions of coverture and guilty property have been repudiated by statutes and the Court respectively, the Supreme Court implicitly resurrected and fused the coverture and guilty property myths in Bennis v. Michigan. In that decision, the Court approved the forfeiture of Ms. Bennis' interest in a car in which her husband engaged in sexual activity with a prostitute. This Article explores that resurrected conglomerate in three parts. Part I is a concise review of the feudal doctrine of coverture and the disabilities it imposed on married women. Part II focuses almost entirely on the decision in Austin, in which the Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment's Excessive Fines Clause applies to in rem forfeiture proceedings. Part III begins with a summary of the Bennis decision and ends with an expose of Bennis as the resurrection and fusion of both the guilty property and coverture fictions.