Nicastro on Redefining Women's Subjectivity Between Law and Revolution: A Foucauldian Analysis of Olympe de Gouges' 1791 Declaration of the Rights of Woman and Female Citizen @alessia_ncs @GVAGrad

Alessia Nicastro, Geneva Graduate Institute, has published Redefining Women's Subjectivity Between Law and Revolution: A Foucauldian Analysis of Olympe de Gouges' 1791 Declaration of The Rights of Woman and Female Citizen. This paper has been accepted and presented by the author at the 11th International Conference on Gender and Women's Studies held on 13th July 2024 online, organized by the University of Mumbai, the International Center for Research and Development (ICRD), and Unique Conferences Canada. Here is the abstract.

This contribution investigates how Olympe de Gouges' "Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen” (1791) contributed to reshape women’s subjectivity in international law and to advance a feminist vision of this field. Drawing upon Foucault's notions of subject, power, and resistance, this paper analyses how De Gouges' Declaration functioned as a political and discursive tool that disrupted the dominant gender relations of power embedded in legal discourses of the time. By claiming women's equality and citizenship, de Gouges’ work paved the way to the recognition of women as both political and legal subjects. The author concludes that de Gouges' Declaration was pivotal for revealing the androcentric character of the embryonic human rights law (which were only les droits de l'homme) and for highlighting the inherent contradictions in the Revolutionary ideals of equality, citizenship, and freedom.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Allen on The Emotional Woman @alenamallen @UARKLaw @NCLRev

Alena M. Allen, University of Arkansas School of Law, is publishing The Emotional Woman in the North Carolina Law Review. Here is the abstract.

The emotional woman is nonexistent in the common law, but the reasonable man is an indelible figure. Conceptions of reasonableness permeate nearly every aspect of the law while emotion is largely absent. The reasonable man determines negligence. Reasonable minds determine whether a contract has been formed. Reasonable doubt stands between freedom and incarceration. The primacy of reason in American jurisprudence is so engrained that it is rarely questioned or critiqued. Although it seems axiomatic to equate socially desirable conduct with reasonableness, this Article dissects how reasonableness became a central tenet of American law and argues that continued adherence to reasonableness as the optimal standard for evaluating conduct entrenches value-laden androcentric norms. It further argues that, in practice, reasonableness is an ill-defined construct masquerading as an objective standard. As such, instead of arguing for a reasonable woman standard of care, this Article departs from the standard feminist critique and argues that reasonableness itself is inherently androcentric. Thus, it argues that reasonableness is not the optimal standard for evaluating tortious or criminal conduct. Using current social science research, this Article argues that emotion is crucial to sound decision-making and proffers the emotional woman standard as a superior alternative to the reasonable man. Lastly, this Article discusses implications for how the emotional woman standard furthers existing paradigms of feminist discourse.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Deadline Extended to November 30, 2019: Call For Papers For General Issue Australian Feminist Law Journal @austfem

Deadline extended:

AUSTRALIAN FEMINIST LAW JOURNAL

A Critical Legal Journal

CALL FOR PAPERS FOR GENERAL ISSUE

Volume 46.1, June 2020

 

Deadline EXTENDED – 30 November 2019

 

The Australian Feminist Law Journal is seeking articles for publication for the next General Issue of the Journal, namely Volume 46.1 (June 2020). The journal focuses upon scholarly research using critical feminist approaches to law and justice, broadly conceived. As an international Critical Legal Journal we publish research informed by critical theory, cultural and literary theory, jurisprudential, postcolonial and psychoanalytic approaches, amongst other critical research practices. The length of an article should be from 8,000 to 12,000 words, although shorter articles are welcome. We particularly wish to encourage interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary writing focusing on law.  Prospective authors are encouraged to submit a proposed abstract to the Managing Editors at an early stage before final submission.

Articles should be submitted electronically to the Managing Editors at: aflj@griffith.edu.au and should include an abstract (300 words), and a brief separate statement regarding their use of critical research methodologies or critical theory.

Refereeing of Articles

The Australian Feminist Law Journal referees all manuscripts submitted for publication as an article and follows the double-blind refereeing procedure. Referees will be selected with expertise in the author’s area of scholarship. Authors are requested to place their name and affiliation on a separate page, and eliminate any self-identifying citation of one’s own work. The journal will not accept manuscripts for consideration that are already under consideration by another journal. The AFLJ has Green Open Access status within national research funding policy.

Manuscript Style and Presentation

The journal style should be followed as closely as possible, to eliminate delays at the time of printing where an incorrect style would necessitate changes.
An electronic version of the journal style guide can be found on the AFLJ website:  http://www.griffith.edu.au/criminology-law/australian-feminist-law-journal/contributor-guide.
Academic and subscription enquiries may be forwarded to aflj@griffith.edu.au

Editor-in-Chief

Judith Grbich

Griffith Law School

Managing Editors

Karen Crawley & Laura Griffin

Griffith Law School

Since 2014 the Australian Feminist Law Journal has been published by Routledge, Taylor & Francis. www.tandfonline.com/rfem

Bouclin on Women in Prison Movies as Feminist Jurisprudence @sbouclin @utpjournals

ICYMI:

Suzanne Bouclin, University of Ottawa, Common Law Section, has published Women in Prison Movies as Feminist Jurisprudence, at 21 Canadian Journal of Women and the Law (2010). Here is the abstract.

In comparison to the significant body of research around audience reception and generic conventions of, as well as the progressive or regressive assumptions behind and the legal meaning-making potentialities within, prison movies, women in prison movies (WIPs) have received far less theoretical or critical attention. This is noteworthy from a feminist law and society perspective that aims to link questions of popular culture to broader issues of gendered social stratification and social conflict. On one level, WIPs can be read as an overt critique of the masculinism of the prison genre. In the traditional prison movies, women appear in flashback sequences as supportive wives, girlfriends, mothers, and/or deceitful vixens that coerce, frame, or seduce men into lives of crime. In WIPs, female characters move from the margins of the story to its centre. On another level, WIPs problematize broader legal, economic, and political apparatuses that operate to criminalize women without the well-rehearsed and recognizable markers of social power. They invite viewers to look beyond abstracted statistics about female “criminality” through believable – though not exactly realistic – accounts of the manner in which the law operates to criminalize particular women.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Stewart on Australian Stories of Tax and Fairness: A Feminist Reading of Peter Carey's The Tax Inspector @AusTaxProf

ICYMI:

Miranda Stewart, Australian stories of tax and fairness: a feminist reading of Peter Carey's The Tax Inspector, at 18 Australian Feminist Law Journal 1 (2003) (published online 2015). Here is the abstract.

It was Alistair who said, on national television, that being a Tax Officer was the most pleasant work imaginable, like turning on a tap to bring water to parched country. It felt wonderful to bring money flowing out of multi-national reservoirs into child-care centres and hospitals and social services. He grinned when he said it and his creased-up handsome face creased up some more and he cupped his hands as if cool river water were flowing over his big, farmer's fingers and it was hard to watch him and not smile yourself.… He sold taxation as a public good. It can be seen as a rather perverse notion but I happen to think it's an attractive one: the idea of redistributing wealth. So I'm a writer, and I should be able to make it attractive to the reader. OK, so none of us like paying taxes, but I thought I could at least make readers consider the idea that tax might be a wonderful thing. That's a challenge, of course, an amusing one, so I enjoyed trying. Did I fail or succeed? My opinion varies every time I think about it.

Feminism In London: An October 14-15 Event Sponsored by FiLiA @FiLiA_charity @ThomGiddens

Via Thom Giddens @ThomGiddens:

FiLiA announces a conference at the Institute of Education, London, October 14-15, 2017, on Feminism in London. Some of the panels and workshops include "When Courage Is "Illegal," "Justice For Women," "Prison Doesn't Work," "Feminist Art," "International Activism," "Domestic Abuse and the Family Courts," and Lesbian Line: 40 Years."

There are also a number of interesting events planned, including art exhibitions and some performances and readings. There's also a breakout session on sex robots: I would love to attend that.

This event looks wonderful.

Call For Applications: St. Mary's Unviersity, PhD Fellowship (Studentship), Feminist Legal History or Cultural Legal Studies. Closing Date Feb. 26, 2017 @ThomGiddens @YourStMarys

Via @ThomGiddens

PhD Studentship - Feminist Legal History, or Cultural Legal Studies

St Mary's University, Twickenham - Centre for Law and Culture

Qualification type:	PhD
Location:	Twickenham
Funding for:	UK Students, EU Students
Funding amount:	£13,000
Hours:	Full Time

Placed on:	12th December 2016
Closes:	26th February 2017

School of Management and Social Sciences
Applications are invited for a three-year PhD studentship at the Centre for Law and Culture, St Mary’s University, Twickenham, beginning October 2017, working with Dr Judith Bourne and/or Dr Thomas Giddens.
The Centre for Law and Culture is an interdisciplinary hub for research at the intersections of law, justice, and the humanities. It aims to incubate and promote research crossing and challenging traditional legal boundaries from across critical and cultural legal studies. Visit www.stmarys.ac.uk/law-and-culture
The studentship provides full-time PhD home/EU student fees (£4,020 pa), £13,000 pa bursary, and £300 pa conference attendance budget. Applicants should have a Masters with Distinction, or with Merit and a distinction in the dissertation.
Details of Research Areas
A single PhD Studentship is available in either:

• Feminist legal history, or
• Cultural legal studies

Applications that traverse or combine these areas are also welcome.
Feminist Legal History
Feminist legal history is committed to uncovering women’s legal agency and how women have used the law to change their position. Feminist lawyers and historians have long recognised the contradictions at the heart of efforts to transform the law in ways that serve women’s interests. They demonstrate women’s denial of legal rights, women’s use of law to gain rights, and how, empowered by law, women worked to change gendered legal realities.
Applications are encouraged in (but not limited to) the following areas:

• The development and impact of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919
• The legal networks developed by women before 1919
• Comparative studies of ‘self-publicising’ hearings heard by the Bar Council and Inns of Court, 1919-1940
• The pre-1919 lobbying carried out for women’s admission to the legal profession
• Women ‘outside’ lawyers pre-1919
• The history of the involvement of women in law
• The barriers to women’s promotion in law

Cultural Legal Studies
Emerging from the tradition of studying law and humanities, cultural legal studies is an internationally growing area of legal study. From representations of law and justice in popular culture, to art as a form of jurisprudential knowledge, to the development of innovative jurisprudences based around particular cultural experiences, cultural legal studies is a burgeoning area of study, rich with potential, and ripe for the engagement of new and developing postgraduate researchers interested in engaging critically with law.
Applications are encouraged in, but not limited to, the following areas:

• law, legality, and justice in visual culture and media (including film, comics, games, popular culture, etc)
• the nature of cultural legal studies
• the form of legal knowledge
• legal aesthetics and the visuality of law and its institution

Additional Information
Possible roles include aiding in conference organisation and limited undergraduate teaching; the successful applicant should thus be located within Greater London during their studies.
To Apply
Download and complete a PhD application form and send, with a 3,000-4,000 word research proposal, two academic references, copies of your Master’s qualification(s), a current CV, and a cover letter, to:
Prof Mahendra Raj
School of Management and Social Sciences
St Mary’s University
Twickenham, TW1 4SX
Email: mahendra.raj@stmarys.ac.uk
Tel: 020 82404079
Enquiries
Informal enquiries regarding topic areas:

• Dr Judith Bourne (judith.bourne@stmarys.ac.uk – feminist legal history)
• Dr Thomas Giddens (thomas.giddens@stmarys.ac.uk – cultural legal studies)

Enquiries about application procedures and requirements: Prof Mahendra Raj (mahendra.raj@stmarys.ac.uk)
More here

Rosenbury @UFLawDean on Postmodern Feminist Legal Theory

Laura A. Rosenbury, University of Florida College of Law, is publishing Postmodern Feminist Legal Theory: A Contingent, Contextual Account in Feminist Legal Theory in the United States and Asia: A Dialogue (Cynthia Grant Bowman, ed.; 2016) (Forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

Of all of the existing schools of feminist legal thought, postmodern feminist legal theory is the most difficult to define and categorize. Postmodernism itself is not a fixed concept. Moreover, the various approaches to postmodernism challenge and resist attempts to establish foundational truths or universal meanings. Feminist legal theory rooted in postmodernism therefore necessarily eschews stable understandings of feminism, law, and theory in favor of understandings that are fluid and shifting. If one embraces these principles, any attempt to conceptualize postmodern feminist legal theory immediately becomes contingent and contextual, if not also suspect. This Essay nonetheless analyzes the ways that legal scholars in the United States have developed and deployed postmodern feminist legal theory over the past thirty years. In doing so, the Essay provides one approach to postmodern feminist legal theory rooted in context and time. The Essay also highlights some of the distinctive aspects of postmodern feminist legal theory in this time and location, situating it in relation to other schools of feminist legal thought. Finally, the Essay emphasizes why these distinctions matter by viewing two areas of feminist law reform through this conceptualization of postmodern feminist legal theory.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

A Conference on Feminist Legal Theory and Applied Feminism at the University of Baltimore School of Law, March 30-31, 2017

From the mailbox:

CALL FOR PAPERS

 APPLIED FEMINISM AND INTERSECTIONALITY: 

EXAMINING LAW THROUGH THE LENS OF MULTIPLE IDENTITIES

The Center on Applied Feminism at the University of Baltimore School of Law seeks paper proposals for the Tenth Anniversary of the Feminist Legal Theory Conference.  We hope you will join us for this exciting celebration on March 30-31, 2017.

This year, the conference will explore how intersecting identities inform -- or should inform -- feminist legal theory and justice-oriented legal practice, legal systems, legal policy, and legal activism. Beginning in 1989, Kimberlé Crenshaw identified the need for law to recognize persons as representing multiple intersecting identities, not only one identity (such as female) to the exclusion of another (such as African American). Intersectionality theory unmasks how social systems oppress people in different ways.  While its origins are in exploring the intersection of race and gender, intersectionality theory now encompasses all intersecting identities including religion, ethnicity, citizenship, class, disability, and sexual orientation. Today, intersectionality theory is an important part of the Black Lives Matter and #SayHerName movements. For more information, see https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2015/09/24/why-intersectionality-cant-wait/. 

We seek submissions of papers that focus on the topic of applied feminism and intersecting identities.  This conference aims to explore the following questions: What impact has intersectionality theory had on feminist legal theory?  How has it changed law and social policy? How does intersectionality help us understand and challenge different forms of oppression?  What is its transformative potential? What legal challenges are best suited to an intersectionality approach? How has intersectionality  theory changed over time and where might it go in the future?

We welcome proposals that consider these questions from a variety of substantive disciplines and perspectives. As always, the Center’s conference will serve as a forum for scholars, practitioners and activists to share ideas about applied feminism, focusing on connections between theory and practice to effectuate social change. The conference will be open to the public and will feature a keynote speaker. Past keynote speakers have included Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, Dr. Maya Angelou, Gloria Steinem, Senators Barbara Mikulski and Amy Klobuchar, NOW President Terry O’Neill, EEOC Commissioner Chai Feldblum, and U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner.

To submit a paper proposal, please submit an abstract by Friday October 28, 2016 to ubfeministconference@gmail.com. Your abstract must contain your full contact information and professional affiliation, as well as an email, phone number, and mailing address. In the “Re” line, please state: CAF Conference 2017. Abstracts should be no longer than one page. We will notify presenters of selected papers in November. About half the presenter slots will be reserved for authors who commit to publishing in the annual symposium volume of the University of Baltimore Law Review. Thus, please indicate at the bottom of your abstract whether you are submitting (1) solely to present or (2) to present and publish in the symposium volume. Authors who are interested in publishing in the Law Review will be strongly considered for publication. For all presenters, working drafts of papers will be due no later than March 3, 2017. Presenters are responsible for their own travel costs; the conference will provide a discounted hotel rate as well as meals.

We look forward to your submissions. If you have further questions, please contact Prof. Margaret Johnson at majohnson@ubalt.edu. For additional information about the conference, please visit law.ubalt.edu/caf.

Higdon on Oral Advocacy and Vocal Fry

Michael J. Higdon, University of Tennessee College of Law, is publishing Oral Advocacy and Vocal Fry: The Unseemly, Sexist Side of Nonverbal Persuasion in volume 13 of Legal Communication & Rhetoric: JALWD (2016). Here is the abstract.

In 2015, Naomi Wolf warned that “the most empowered generation of women ever — today’s twentysomethings in North America and Britain — is being hobbled in some important ways by something as basic as a new fashion in how they use their voices.” She was referring to the phenomenon referred to as "vocal fry" — a speech quality in which the speaker lowers her natural pitch and produces a "creaking" sound as she talks. Naomi Wolf is not alone in her warnings; vocal fry has received quite a bit of negative attention recently. Specifically, these critics warn that those who speak in vocal fry are doing themselves great harm by undermining the speakers’ overall perceived effectiveness. In fact, recent studies even lend some support to these arguments, showing that listeners tend to rate those who speak in vocal fry more negatively. The problem, however, is that much of this criticism is directed at young women, and for that reason, some defenders of vocal fry have countered that these criticisms are merely attempts to regulate how women talk. In other words, a preference for speech that does not contain vocal fry is actually motivated by pernicious stereotypes about how women "should" talk. Thus, on the one hand, there are those studies supporting the argument that women who engage in vocal fry are less likely to be perceived positively, yet on the other hand, there exists the very real likelihood that these perceptions are based on gender stereotypes. Accordingly, the question emerges: what should a young woman do? Should she eliminate all instances of vocal fry from her speech so as to maximize her perceived effectiveness as a public speaker if, in so doing, she is reinforcing the very gender stereotypes upon which such preferences are based? Or should she openly confront such stereotypes and employ vocal fry as much as she likes, knowing that, by taking that approach, she is taking the risk that she might be hurting not only herself but also those upon whose behalf she speaks? This essay, by first discussing this background on vocal fry, delves into that very dilemma. It does so specifically in the context of female attorneys given that 1) public speaking is a key component upon which their effectiveness is gauged and 2) to the extent their public speaking is judged to be less than ideal, they are not only harming themselves, but also potentially a client. Finally, in wrestling with this question, these essay hopes to shed light on a bigger concern — specifically, how useful are studies on effective nonverbal behavior when the results of those studies are largely driven by underlying societal prejudice.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Special Issue of Studies in Law, Politics, and Society: Feminist Legal Theory

Clare Huntington, Fordham University School of Law, and Maxine Eichner, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, School of Law, have published an introduction to Studies in Law, Politics, and Society in volume 69 of Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Special issue: Feminist Legal Theory (2016). Here is the abstract.

Half a century after the beginning of the second wave, feminist legal theorists are still writing about many of the subjects they addressed early on: money, sex, reproduction, and jobs. What has changed is the way that they talk about these subjects. Specifically, these theorists now posit a more complex and nuanced conception of power. Recent scholarship recognizes the complexities of power in contemporary society, the ways in which these complexities entrench sex inequality, and the role that law can play in reducing inequality and increasing agency. The feminist legal theorists in this volume – Susan Appleton, Katharine Baker, Naomi Cahn, June Carbone, Maxine Eichner, Angela Harris, Jennifer Hendricks, Michelle Oberman, and Susan Stiritz – are emblematic of this effort. They carefully examine the relationship between gender, equality, and power across an array of realms: sex, reproduction, pleasure, work, money. In doing so they identify social, political, economic, developmental, and psychological and somatic forces, operating both internally and externally, that complicate the expression and constraint of power. Finally, they give sophisticated thought to the possibilities for legal interventions in light of these more complex notions of power.

The full text is not available from SSRN. Link to publisher's website.

Call For Papers: Special Issue of "Signs: Journal of Women In Culture and Society"

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society has issued a Call for Papers for a special issue titled "Displacement."

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society invites submissions for a special issue titled “Displacement,” slated for publication in spring 2018.
The current refugee crisis gives new urgency to questions of gendered displacement. The United Nations’ most recent statistics place the number of registered Syrian refugees at 4.7 million, 50.7 percent of whom are women and over half of whom are children under eighteen. During the same period, tens of thousands of Central American women and children have crossed the Rio Grande into the United States. Feminists have already responded to concerns about sexual violence in refugee camps and during refugees’ journeys and to the gendered response to the crisis on the part of receiving states (i.e., demographic concerns surrounding gender ratios of migrants admitted). What are the larger questions of “displacement” that require an interdisciplinary and transnational feminist lens?
This special issue of Signs seeks submissions reflecting multifaceted, innovative, and interdisciplinary approaches to the question of displacement, as well as the potential for attention to displacement to address and transform central questions in feminist theory, including how feminists approach larger questions of space, place, and subjectivity. Feminist scholars have a long history of engagement with the question of displacement; across disciplines, feminist scholars have described, theorized, and critiqued gendered forms of displacement and how these displacements have shaped and reshaped geopolitics, national borders, political discourses, narrative form, and ethnic and racial formations both contemporarily and historically. Questions of place and belonging have long been at the heart of cultural work in literature, theater, visual culture, and the arts. We invite submissions on the theme of displacement widely conceived and at multiple scales—the subjective, the family, the city; regional, national, transnational, and global.  Possible subjects include:

• How humanitarian and state responses to displaced persons depend on, reinforce, or transform gendered, racial, and sexual norms.
• Visual and narrative representations of displacement in relation to gendered and racialized subjectivities.
• Cultural representations of displacement, migration, belonging, and exile. Critical and historical investigations and comparisons of feminist ideas of these subjects.
• Reverberations of historical displacements in the contemporary world.
• Claims to space and place as forms of resistance to displacement or as the basis for social movements (i.e., landless movements, right to the city).
• Dispossession and displacement as central to neoliberalism, capitalist development, colonization, and slavery. How are dispossession and displacement related?
• How experiences of displacement reshape constructions of “home” or the nation.
• Critical assessments of homophobic and gender-based violence as sources of displacement.
• Gendered figurations of internally and externally displaced persons as threats to national sovereignty or borders. The production of new forms of intimacy through displacement or the creation of new social movements through and in response to displacement.
• The way that ethical norms and perspectives ignore or undervalue the importance of gender and gendered perspectives with regard to displacement.

Pieces that critically examine or call into question distinctions between migrants, refugees, and internally displaced persons are also welcome.
Signs particularly encourages transdisciplinary and transnational essays that address large questions, debates, and controversies without employing disciplinary or academic jargon. We welcome essays that make a forceful case for why displacement demands a specific and thoughtfully formulated interdisciplinary feminist analysis and why it demands our attention now.  We seek essays that are forceful, passionate, strongly argued, and willing to take risks.
The deadline for submissions is September 15, 2016. Denise Horn, Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Simmons College, and Serena Parekh, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University, will serve as guest editors of the issue.
Manuscripts may be submitted electronically through Signs’ Editorial Manager system at http://signs.edmgr.com and must conform to the guidelines for submission available at http://signsjournal.org/for-authors/author-guidelines/.

Stanchi, Berger, and Crawford on Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court

Kathryn Stanchi, Temple University School of Law, Linda L. Berger, UNLV School of Law, and Bridget J. Crawford, Pace University School of Law, are publishing Introduction: U.S. Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions of the United States Supreme Court in U.S. Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions of the United States Supreme Court (Kathryn M. Stanchi, Linda L. Berger & Bridget J. Crawford eds.), Cambridge University Press, 2016). Here is the abstract.

What would United States Supreme Court opinions look like if key decisions on gender issues were written with a feminist perspective? To begin to answer this question, we brought together a group of scholars and lawyers to rewrite, using feminist reasoning, the most significant U.S. Supreme Court cases on gender from the 1800s to the present day. While feminist legal theory has developed and even thrived within universities, and feminist activists and lawyers are responsible for major changes in the law, feminist reasoning has had a less clear impact on judicial decision-making. Doctrines of stare decisis and judicial language of neutrality can operate to obscure structural bias in the law, making it difficult to see what feminism could bring to judicial reasoning. The twenty-five opinions in this volume demonstrate that judges with feminist viewpoints could have changed the course of the law. The rewritten decisions show that previously accepted judicial outcomes were not necessary or inevitable and demonstrate that feminist reasoning increases the judicial capacity for justice, not only for women but for many other oppressed groups. The remarkable differences evident in the rewritten opinions also open a path for a long overdue discussion of the real impact that judicial diversity has on law and of the influence that perspective has in judging. Included here are the table of contents for the book, and the introductory chapter to the book.

Download the Introduction from SSRN at the link.

Quéma on M. Nourbese Philip's Zong! and Gregson v. Gilbert

Anne Quéma, Acadia University, has published M. Nourbese Philip's Zong!: Metaphors, Laws, and Fugues of Justice at 43 Journal of Law and Society 85 (2016). Here is the abstract.

Focusing on Gregson v. Gilbert, the article considers colonialism as a historical chain of events with the Middle Passage as a major locus of association among humans, things, the sea, trade, transportation, maritime law, and finance speculation. Out of this assemblage emerged slavery as a racist socius through which the metaphor of the human‐thing circulated. In citing Gregson v. Gilbert, M.N. Philip's poem Zong! seeks to bear responsibility to the reified bodies of the murdered Africans by generating a poetics of relationality that disassembles and reassembles the legal words as sign‐objects on the page. Her gendered address to the law exposes the rape that Africa endured. Bearing witness to this trauma, her poem speaks to and with the dead, recognizing the singularity of the Africans' languages, of which as human‐things they were deprived. Gathering readers and listeners, the poem creates an event through which an ethics of justice might materialize.

The full text is not available from SSRN.

Thomas On The "Radical Conscience" of Nineteenth Century Feminism

Tracy A. Thomas, University of Akron School of Law, has published The 'Radical Conscience' of Nineteenth-Century Feminism as chapter one of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Feminist Foundations of Family Law (New York University Press (2016). Here is the abstract.

This book analyzes the feminist and legal thought of Elizabeth Cady Stanton on gender equality in family as to marriage, divorce, marital property, domestic violence, reproductive control, and parenting. It reveals Stanton's comprehensive demand for systemic legal reform that challenges conventional depictions of the limitations of early feminism, of the development of family law, and women's alleged acquiescence in domestic subordination. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the principal feminist thinker, leader, and “radical conscience” of the nineteenth-century woman’s rights movement. Stanton initiated the women’s rights movement on July 19, 1848, in Seneca Falls, New York, where she issued her feminist manifesto, the “Declaration of Sentiments,” demanding women’s right to vote. This is generally all that history has remembered of Stanton. Her Declaration, however, demanded seventeen other rights for political, religious, social, and civil rights equality. These included the right to public office, marital property, divorce, education, employment, reproductive control, and religious autonomy. As Stanton explained, the institutions of government, church, family, and industrial work constituted “a fourfold bondage” of women, with “many cords tightly twisted together, strong for one purpose” of woman’s subordination. They were all intertwined, so that “to attempt to undo one is to loosen all.” As Stanton later explained, to break down this complexity required women to have “bravely untwisted all the strands of the fourfold cord that bound us and demanded equality in the whole round of the circle.” Holistic reform was required to break down the complex system of women’s oppression. The family was one centerpiece of Stanton’s feminist agenda. The family, governed by patriarchal laws and sentimental gender norms, created and perpetuated women’s inferiority. “If the present family life is necessarily based on man’s headship,” Stanton argued, “then we must build a new domestic altar, in which the mother shall have equal dignity, honor and power.” The private sphere of the family was not segregated from the public sphere, as both nineteenth-century suffrage reformers and twentieth-century feminists often argued, but instead was intertwined with the other institutional strands strangling equality. As a result, radical concrete change to the family institution was required in the forms of egalitarian partnerships, economic rights, free divorce, and maternal autonomy. Stanton’s commitment to women’s equality in marriage and the family was longstanding -- from Seneca Falls to her last writings. As Stanton said, she “remained as radical on the marriage question at the age of eighty-six as [she] had been a half a century earlier.” Stanton’s family reforms seem less shocking today because most of them have become law. Her proposals to reconstruct marriage and the family, detailed in this book, are now mainstream. Women have separate and joint marital property rights. Spouses inherit equal shares of estates when one partner dies without a will. Common law marriage is prohibited in most states, and civil marriage requires procedural safeguards. Divorce is available for irreconcilable differences or for misconduct equally applicable to both spouses. The law supports domestic violence protections, reproductive choice, and maternal custody. Recovering Stanton’s feminist thinking on the family reveals the longevity and persistence of women’s demands for family equality. Contrary to popular wisdom, these feminist ideas were not invented in the 1970s, but instead reach back more than a century earlier as part of the original conceptualization of women’s rights. This longer perspective bolsters the truth and credibility of such feminist demands, dispelling their characterization as a modern anomaly and demanding legitimization and consideration in the law. As these issues of family, marriage, work/life balance, pregnancy, and parenting continue to challenge the law and confound feminism, Stanton’s work adds historical evidence of important principles that should be part of the legal equation. Her work shows that feminism and the family have not been historically in opposition, as we usually think. To the contrary, feminists have existed not apart from the family, but within it. Thus, understanding Stanton’s views is critical to understanding both feminism and the family today.

Rethinking Privacy Using Feminism--and Spinoza

Janice Richardson, Monash University Faculty of Law, is publishing Spinoza, Feminism and Privacy: Exploring an Immanent Ethics of Privacy in volume 22 of Feminist Legal Studies (2014). Here is the abstract.

In this article I explore the usefulness of Spinoza’s ethics for feminism by considering ways in which it allows feminists to rethink privacy. I draw upon some of Spinoza’s central ideas to address the following question: when should information be classed as private and when should it be communicated? This is a question that is considered by the common law courts. Attempts to find a moral underpinning for such a tortious action against invasions of privacy have tended to draw upon Kant’s categorical imperative. In contrast, I want to consider how Spinoza provides an immanent ethics that reconfigures how privacy is understood.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Call For Papers: Feminist Legal Theory Collaborative Research Network/Law and Society Association Annual Meeting, June 2-5, 2016

Call for Papers from Jessica Clarke, University of Minnesota Law School

Call for Papers – Friday September 18th Deadline

Feminist Legal Theory Collaborative Research Network

at the Law and Society Association Annual Meeting

New Orleans, June 2-5, 2016

Dear friends and colleagues,

We write to invite you to participate in panels sponsored by the Feminist Legal Theory Collaborative Research Network at the Law and Society Annual Meeting in 2016.

Information about the Law and Society meeting (including registration and hotel information) is at: www.lawandsociety.org/NewOrleans2016/neworleans2016.html.

Within Law & Society, the Feminist Legal Theory CRN seeks to bring together scholars across a range of fields who are interested in feminist legal theory. There is no pre-set theme to which papers must conform. We would be especially happy to see proposals that fit in with the LSA conference theme, which is the role of law and legal institutions in sustaining, creating, interrogating, and ameliorating inequalities. We welcome proposals that would permit us to collaborate with other CRNs, such as the Critical Research on Race and the Law CRN or the Gender, Sexuality and the Law CRN. Also, because the LSA meeting attracts scholars from other disciplines, we welcome multidisciplinary proposals.

Our goal is to stimulate focused discussion of papers on which scholars are currently working. Thus, while proposals may reference work that is well on the way to publication, we are particularly eager to solicit proposals for works-in-progress that are at an earlier stage and will benefit from the discussion that the panels will provide.

A committee of the CRN will assign individual papers to panels based on subject. Our panels will use the LSA format, which requires four papers, but we will continue our custom of assigning a chair for the panel and a commentator for each individual paper. As a condition of participating as a panelist, you must also agree to serve as a chair or commentator for another panel or participant. We will of course take into account your scheduling and topic preferences to the degree possible.

The duties of a chair are to organize the panel logistically, including registering it online with the LSA, and moderating the panel. The chair will develop a 100-250 word description for the session and submit the session proposal to LSA before their upcoming deadline on October 15, so that each panelist can submit his or her proposal, using the panel number assigned. Chairs will also be responsible for assigning commentators but may wait to do so until panels have been scheduled later this winter. The duties of a commentator are to read one paper and provide verbal comments as well as brief written (email is fine) comments.

If you would like to present a paper as part of a CRN panel, please email an abstract or summary, along with your name and a title, to Jessica Clarke at jessicaclarke@umn.edu.  There is no need to upload the document to the TWEN site this year. Note that LSA is imposing a new requirement that your summary be at least 1,000 words long.  Although a shorter summary will suffice for our purposes, you will be required to upload a 1,000 word summary in advance of LSA’s deadline on October 15. If you are already planning a LSA session with at least four panelists (and papers) that you would like to see included in the Feminist Legal Theory CRN, please let Jessica know.

In addition to these panels, we may try to use some of the other formats that the LSA provides: the “author meets readers” format, salon, or the roundtable discussion. If you have an idea that you think would work well in one of these formats, please let us know. Please note that for roundtables, organizers are now required to provide a 500 word summary of the topic and the contributions they expect the proposed participants to make. Please also note that LSA rules limit you to participating only once as a paper panelist or roundtable participant.

Please submit all proposals by Friday, September 18. This will permit us to organize panels and submit them prior to the LSA’s deadline on October 15. In the past, we have attempted to accommodate as many panelists as possible, but have been unable to accept all proposals. If we are unable to accept your proposal for the CRN, we will notify you by early October so that you can submit an independent proposal to LSA.

We hope you’ll join us in New Orleans to discuss the scholarship in which we are all engaged and connect with others doing work on feminism and gender.

Best,

LSA Planning Committee

Jessica Clarke

Jill Hasday

Jessica Knouse

Elizabeth Kukura

Seema Mohapatra

Marc Spindelman

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A New Blog Devoted To the History of Women Lawyers

Bari Burke, University of Montana School of Law, has launched a new blog, Montana's Early Women Lawyers: Trail-Blazing, Big Sky Sisters-In-Law.  Each post focuses on an interesting (and unknown) story about a female lawyer from the past, which Professor Burke has unearthed from cases, newspapers, and other publications. Fascinating to see the number of mentions (and the depressing sameness of observations about women attorneys).  From the August 12th, 2015 post, this excerpt from a letter published August 12, 1907:

‘Possibly men are afraid to pay court to a woman lawyer, from the knowledge that she has too many brains for him, and can see further into his subterfuges and little evasions than most women could. It may be that the legal atmosphere is chilling to affection. It may be that women lawyers are too smart to tie themselves down. I do not know. I only cite the facts.
One of the happiest households that I know, is composed of two lawyers, one the husband, and the other the wife. But he was a lawyer and she was not when they got married. She studied under him, and is his legal assistant rather than his partner. Perhaps that is why they get along so happily together.'”

Oh, dear.
[Cross-posted to Feminist Law Professors]

Assessing Feminist Legal Studies: Also Available As a Free Download From Springer Website

Ruth Fletcher's Responding to Submissions and Introducing Issue 23(1), in volume 23 of Feminist Legal Studies (2015), previously blogged here, is also available here as a free download. 

Assessing Feminist Legal Studies (The Journal) After Two Years of a New Board

Ruth Fletcher, Queen Mary University of London, has published Responding to Submissions and Introducing Issue 23(1), in volume 23 of Feminist Legal Studies (2015). Here is the abstract.

Feminist Legal Studies (FLS) has been working with its new Board for 2 years now and we thought it timely to share some further reflections on developments (Lamble 2014). This editorial itself is an experiment as we consider ways of using FLS spaces to encourage distribution of and engagement with feminist insights. From this issue on, we plan to publish open access editorials to introduce readers to new FLS content and to encourage interaction with the journal. Some editorials will highlight Board practices, decisions or ideas that may be of interest to scholars and practitioners in feminist legal studies. Other editorials will provide an opportunity to discuss some topic or approach in feminist legal studies more generally. In this regard we would like to announce that FLS will host an international and interdisciplinary seminar in London, UK, on 30 June and 1 July 2016 to consider the relationship between feminism, legality and knowledge. We hope that the journal, alongside related projects and publications, will go on to address some of the insights that emerge from that seminar. In the meantime, here we provide an updated account of how the FLS Board responds to submissions of various kinds, and introduce the content of this first issue of 2015.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.