Category Archives: Equality
Aug 1, 2016 Nick J. SciulloEquality
There are many reasons to like Jayne Huckerby’s most recent article, and many different ways to incorporate this work into your reading and classes. The article has appeal to feminist, international law, national security, and peace studies. There are several things this article does that I like lots. At its most basic level, it’s a helpful reminder of where feminisms stand on or in relation to the complex terrorism and counter-terrorism terrain. Huckerby takes an exhaustive review of the literature, in the best sense of the phrase, presenting scholars with copious notes detailing discussions in law reviews, peer-reviewed journals of allied fields, books, U.N. and U.S. government reports, and the popular press. Anyone eager to learn more about gender, feminisms, and international law, or to write a syllabus, would do well to comb her notes.
Huckerby’s writing is crisp, giving readers gems of legal thought like:
[A] post-9/11 account of women’s victimhood also tends to focus unduly on women’s experiences at the hands of non-State actors (terrorists), rather than to illuminate ways in which State counter-terrorism policies have also undermined women’s rights or to address a more complicated picture of victimhood whereby women often feel squeezed between terror and anti-terror.
(P. 557) (citations omitted). Continue reading "Squeezedness and Feminisms in the Age of Counterterrorism"
Jun 6, 2016 Sonia LawrenceEquality
Lately I’ve been hoping that the sense of impending doom I feel at the lengthening list of things-that-are-worse-than-they-used-to-be might be at least somewhat mitigated if I could only identify the way(s) in which that list could be boiled down to one – okay, maybe two or even three – big thing(s). Neoliberalism lurks as a strong contender, hence a search for articles I like – lots – that trace this approach, whether at the macro, mezzo, or micro level. There are many such articles, but what I’ve chosen to highlight here is from Vol. 77 of Law and Contemporary Problems, a special edition on law and neoliberalism. Guest Editors Jedediah Purdy and David Singh Grewal explain, with charming delicacy, in their introductory essay, “….the term ‘neoliberalism’ may be unfamiliar to some American legal audiences…[but] it is a common part of the scholarly lexicons of many disciplines and is widely used elsewhere in the world, notably in Latin America and Europe.” (Assuming they are right, here is an attempt at Neoliberalism in a Nutshell: In contrast to the more social-liberal approaches many Western governments followed just after World War II, neoliberalism emphasises the withdrawal of the state in favour of laissez-faire, market based organization, with characteristic policies aimed at privatization, deregulation, and elimination of social benefits regimes). Purdy and Grewal go on, step by step, to build the case for legal scholars in the US to pay some attention to neoliberalism as a phenomenon and a zone of scholarship.
The piece I’m talking about here is Samuel Moyn’s A Powerless Companion: Human Rights in the Age of Neoliberalism (it occurs to me that the title might not help you understand why I thought this would assist my sense of impending doom). In this piece, Moyn considers three themes – global capitalism, the human rights paradigm, and rising economic inequality. He describes the simultaneous burgeoning of the first two in the 1970’s, and the relatively more recent availability of empirical data that document the third – all noted by numerous other scholars – before arguing that the “crucial connection” between human rights and neoliberalism “is a missed connection: precisely because the human rights revolution has at its most ambitious dedicated itself to establishing a normative and actual floor for protection, it has failed to respond to—or even allowed for recognizing— neoliberalism’s obliteration of the ceiling on inequality.” (P. 151.) He positions his insights as in between Marxist and mainstream, concluding in part that there is no point berating human rights for this failure to engage – rather, human rights should be encouraged to keep out of this zone, lest it be seen as a collaborator. (Id.) Continue reading "Not Complicit, but Inadequate: Looking at the Concurrent Rise of Human Rights and Neoliberalism"
May 5, 2016 Elaine CraigEquality
Abbe Smith, Representing Rapists: The Cruelty of Cross Examination and Other Challenges for a Feminist Criminal Defense Lawyer, 53 Am. Crim. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2016).
Reading the work of those writing from a different perspective has been productive to the development of my own thinking. Abbe Smith’s forthcoming article, Representing Rapists: The Cruelty of Cross Examination and Other Challenges for a Feminist Criminal Defense Lawyer, is no exception. Like her other scholarship, Representing Rapists is impeccably written, thoughtful, and well reasoned. What makes this work exceptional is its brutal honesty. With its steadfast transparency and willing self-reflection, the article is downright brave.
Abbe Smith, a well known legal ethicist and criminal lawyer, has committed much of her professional attention to theorizing and defending the need for unmitigated zeal in the representation of the criminally accused – including, of course, those accused of sexual offences. With a view to better protecting sexual assault complainants, I have dedicated a lot of scholarly attention in the last few years to developing feminist arguments in support of the ethical limits on defence lawyers who represent clients accused of sexual offences. Where our perspectives likely differ most is with respect to the cross-examination of sexual assault complainants. Continue reading "A Brave and Honest Examination of the Complexity of a Feminist Defence Ethos"
Apr 5, 2016 Ann TweedyEquality
Angela R. Riley & Kristen A. Carpenter,
Owning Red
: A Theory of (Cultural) Appropriation,
Tex. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2016), available at
SSRN.
Laguna Pueblo writer and critic Paula Gunn Allen has argued that “[t]he American Indian poet is particularly bereft of listeners.” This is due to the fact that she “has difficulty locating readers/listeners who can comprehend the significance of her work, even when she is being as clear and direct as she can be, because . . . differences in experience and meaning assigned to events create an almost impossible barrier.” It occurred to me in reading and Angela Riley and Kristen Carpenter’s “Owning Red: A Theory of (Cultural) Appropriation,” that Indians face similar problems in telling the story of the harms caused by cultural appropriation, particularly those harms relating to intangible aspects of Native identity.
To non-Indians raised on tales of Wild West cowboy and Indian skirmishes and myths of generous Pilgrims who shared their bounty with Indians during the first Thanksgiving—and particularly to white Americans cloaked in racial privilege—fashion designers’ appropriation of Native dress and beer companies’ use of the names of deceased Indian heroes may seem innocuous—or even—as is sometimes argued—like genuine homage. Professors Carpenter and Riley provide the backstory needed to comprehend and contextualize these harms. They also offer compelling ideas for a solution. Most importantly, they show how contemporary appropriations of Native identities are part and parcel of a history of disrespect of Native property rights, including the right to cultural identity—and further that It is because of this colonial history of never-ending loss that non-Indian Americans so often fail to perceive the losses caused by appropriation. And conversely, it is precisely because of this history that the losses caused by appropriation are so devastating to Native peoples and individuals. Continue reading "Contextualizing the Harms Caused by Appropriation of Indians’ Intangible Cultural Property"
Feb 9, 2016 Margaret DaviesEquality
Manifesto for Living in the Anthropocene is notable for two reasons – it is published under a creative commons license with a publisher committed to innovation, and it is an optimistic book that attempts to prefigure a world in which life and research are undertaken more sustainably. (And it contains an actual manifesto!)
The first thing to like about this book, therefore, is its publisher, in particular its business model and its ethos. Punctum texts are freely available on the internet – readers can make a donation before accessing a title, but can also access them for free. Hard copies can also be ordered. The objective of punctum books is to challenge scholarly norms – its motto is ‘spontaneous acts of scholarly combustion’ and it describes itself as ‘dedicated to radically creative modes of intellectual inquiry and writing across a whimsical para-humanities assemblage. We specialize in neo-traditional and non-conventional scholarly work that productively twists and/or ignores academic norms.’ As academics become more critical about certain trends in traditional scholarly endeavor with its formalities and many constraints, there is a huge potential for new forms of more open-ended and innovative scholarship. Books published by punctum are short – novella length – making them ideal for conveying creative interventions succinctly, without getting bogged down in detail. Continue reading "Thinking for the Future"
Jan 13, 2016 Davina CooperEquality
One intervention that has stayed with me from my first Law & Society Association meeting (Amsterdam, 1991) involved a British scholar who, midway through the conference’s feminist stream, spoke out against the assumed divide between academic and activist work. Scholarship, she commented, could be politically engaged work also. I was reminded of her words reading Michal Osterweil’s timely article on public anthropology and politics in which she explores how anthropological work might extend and enrich its political practice through both the engaged scholarship it carries out and by expanding the sites it recognises as theory-producing.
Osterweil starts by challenging the division in anthropology between activist research and cultural critique; she describes the former as working with and on behalf of marginalised communities, while the latter addresses politics in the realm of text and theory. Arguing that both are important as scholarly political practices, Osterweil challenges the presuppositions about action and politics underpinning the distinction between them. What gets counted and recognised as action or political also underlies a further, perhaps more fundamental, division, namely between academic and activist practices, as these get posited as two fundamentally different and separate spheres. As Osterweil puts it, there is a working assumption that academia comments upon the world it observes but remains steadfastly apart from. Imagining other worlds thus gets relegated to the academic sphere of intellectual imagining; outside practice, and so never able to flourish, or take hold, within it. Continue reading "Challenging the Academic/Activist Divide"
Dec 1, 2015 Robert LeckeyEquality
Arguments in equality litigation, speech in parliamentary hearings, and campaigns to sway public opinion need a simple, punchy message. We’re just like you. Marriage is about love and we love too. Mariage pour tous. As I have observed elsewhere, the end of litigation and political lobbying may open space for research of a particular character. Research unconnected to an immediate political imperative such as the push for equal marriage may have the luxury of asking more questions than it answers. It may challenge or complicate assumptions about what would best deliver equality to a group. With the media spotlight aimed elsewhere, one may even acknowledge a group’s internal diversity and potential fractures – and ask how solidly it hangs together.
Sue Westwood’s lovely paper on wills by older lesbians and gay men occupies this space. With civil partnership around for more than a decade and same-sex marriage enacted in England and Wales (2013), it’s more comfortable to bracket formal equality’s discourse of sameness and ask about difference. Drawn from the wider socio-legal study of Westwood’s doctoral research, the paper presents findings from interviews with 15 older lesbians and gay men. Westwood reports difference between heterosexuals and her research participants and within the latter group. We see distinctions among participants based on class, marital status and family form, and – uncomfortably for those cleaving to the ideal of a single LGBT “community” – sex. A couple of gay respondents admit candidly that their male-centred friendship networks result from avoiding women. Continue reading "Not So Subversive After All: Gay Men’s and Lesbians’ Wills"
Nov 3, 2015 Kim BrooksEquality
There’s a growing body of work that explores the contours of nonhuman animals and law. Just to illustrate, see previous Jotwell posts in Jurisprudence (here and here) and in Legal History. Maneesha Deckha’s article, “Vulnerability, Equality, and Animals”, brings that body of literature squarely into engagement with equality theory.
I read everything Professor Deckha writes: not because I am always on board with where her analysis takes her, but because I’m always left asking questions I hadn’t thought through before. This piece is yet one more illustration of her ability to connect unexpected dots; to press on boundaries that had not been explicitly articulated before; and to draw the reader in. Continue reading "The Turn to Vulnerability"
Oct 12, 2015 Camille NelsonEquality
Michael E. Waterstone, Disability Constitutional Law, 63 Emory L.J. 527 (2014).
Constitutional Law should be harnessed in the service of disability law. That it has not been a central site for the advocacy of the disability rights movement is something that Professor Waterstone bemoans. In this Emory Law Journal article, he traces the seemingly bifurcated trajectories of the LGBT and Disability Rights movements, insofar as their use of constitutional strategy is concerned. Through a careful analysis of these moves, Prof. Waterstone concludes that the Disability Rights movement has suffered setbacks through constitutional law, but the time is ripe to recoup the use of constitutional law to advance the umbrella of disability rights. Harkening to recent victories in LGBT movements, this article seeks to lay a foundation for Disability Constitutional Law.
Prof. Waterstone acknowledges that there likely exists amongst disability rights advocates an understandable reluctance to engage constitutional law stemming from the Cleburne case, and its unfortunate legacy for the disability rights movement. While the holding in Cleburne struck down an ordinance infringing the Equal Protection rights of persons with “mental retardation,” the case has proven less progressive and unsupportive of disability rights broadly speaking. In holding that this disability classification was only entitled to rational basis scrutiny, the decision has become concretized in a way that, for practical purposes, has meant that “the most restrictive aspects” of the majority decision have “stayed frozen in time for people with disabilities.” (P. 529.) Additionally, subsequent Supreme Court decisions have stretched Cleburne’s application to include a “diverse universe of people with disabilities,” thereby casting too long a shadow of rational basis scrutiny in the disability rights arena. (P. 542.) Specifically, in holding that the decision in Cleburne on mental retardation included a vastly expanded category of “the disabled,” the Court in University of Alabama v. Garrett significantly expanded the reach of Cleburne in a way that has proven hard to overcome. Continue reading "Disability Advocacy: Strategizing a Comprehensive and Contextual Path Forward"
Sep 3, 2015 Val NapoleonEquality
Tracey Lindberg,
Birdie (2015).
I have thought about Tracey Lindberg’s novel, Birdie every day since I read it. The novel is an irreverent, evocative, funny, and hard-hitting book that causes me to think and ask questions about Indigenous law in recent history and today through the lives of the women unflinchingly drawn by Lindberg. I propose that Birdie be approached as a Cree law text—as a performance of law with difficult questions expressed and examined through narrative. This jot is an invitation to readers to join me in discerning law through one of the forms of Indigenous pedagogy and precedent, the narrative or story. I propose a brief legal analysis of Birdie based on the Cree law research completed by Hadley Friedland with the Indigenous Law Research Unit, Faculty of Law, University of Victoria.
Cree elder and storyteller, Louie Bird explains that in Cree society, the tasks of both telling and listening to stories are highly intellectual and demanding processes, beyond entertainment. He invites readers to attend to the stories by looking for questions, explanations, and subjects. He constantly challenges the reader to keep thinking by interrupting a story to ask, “So … why does the story say that?” Or, to ask whether a central character was using power properly. Bird’s comment on one story was, “So that is the mystery put into this story to make you think.” Continue reading "Cree Lawfulness and Unlawfulness"
