FEMINISM(S) AND THE LAW. OLD LEGACIES AND NEW CHALLENGES (original) (raw)
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2014
This paper seeks to introduce and reflect upon the debates within legal feminism in both the western and non-western world. These debates are centred around the issue of feminism adding women’s experiences of law through political struggle, which contains the recognition of feminism’s normative and transformative aspirations. It thus asks three key questions: Can law fully express women’s experiences? Can law improve women’s lives? Can feminist law reform help advance women’s project? The author proposes a theoretical interpretation by relating feminist legal claims with the broader political struggle for gender justice. It then analyses the tensions within legal feminism, defines feminist struggle as a feminist legal strategy that is contingent and subject to changing social contexts, and finally proposes a particular perspective for feminist legal theorizing and activism in the post-colonial context. Key Words: legal feminism (or feminist legal theory), legal subject Woman, women’...
What Can Legal Feminism Do? —The Theoretical Reflections on Gender, Law and Social Transformation
2004
This paper seeks to introduce and reflect upon the debates within legal feminism in both the western and non-western world. These debates are centred around the issue of feminism adding women's experiences of law through political struggle, which contains the recognition of feminism's normative and transformative aspirations. It thus asks three key questions: Can law fully express women's experiences? Can
Feminist legal theory manifests through writing and speaking about 'law' and 'women,' in an effort to promote and improve understanding about justice. Feminist legal theory is a set of ideas, an activity engaged in by thinkers in and outside academia, and an intellectual and political movement. Developments in feminist legal theory emerged through engagement with problems rooted in inequalities, experienced by individuals and communities, at the hands of people, corporations, or the state. This article draws out key areas of tension within the field of feminist legal theory, focusing on English-language feminist legal theory and spanning the field of national jurisdictions and international human rights.
Reassessing the Feminist Theoretical Project in Law
Social Science Research Network, 2001
This article seeks to address the current state of theoretical debate within feminist legal studies in the United Kingdom and beyond. It is part map, part critique of dominant theoretical trends-an attempt to identify and explore a range of questions about feminist scholarly engagement in law, including the relationship between academic feminism and political activism, the distinction (if any) betweeǹ feminist' analyses and broader engagements with law and gender, and the normative underpinnings of feminist legal scholarship. The author makes no pretence to neutrality on these issues, questioning the perceived`drift' between political and academic feminism, and arguing strongly for the recognition and realization of feminism's normative and transformative aspirations. Similarly, she challenges the emergence of an`anti-essentialist' norm in feminist discourse, and reaffirms the value of`women-centred' feminist approaches. Finally, this article is also a personal venture, a`stock-taking' exercise which seeks to interrogate the author's own understanding of what feminist legal work entails.
De-centralising the Feminist Agitation -Post Modern Feminist Jurisprudence
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The current advocacy for feminism which encapsulates the totality of the philosophy, vision and mission of women emancipation, equity and equality in modern societies has put the question of women position in the front burner of politics and economies of all modern states in contemporary times. The feminist agitation, beyond seeking the 'equality of the sexes' has evolved into a branch of law ie Feminist jurisprudence, a dynamic flow which encapsulates the unique experiences and peculiarities of the female sex to ensure a balanced view and application of law. This ensures the achievement a certain 'sensitivity' which takes proper cognisance of the normalcy of female experiences despite same not being experienced by the opposite sex. This paper therefore analyses the various streams of feminist jurisprudence and how the various categories intersect with gender, the jurisprudential schools of thought, and the importance of postmodern feminism in achieving the de-centralisation of the feminist agitation into mainstream practice of law applicable to all humans. It also highlights the criticisms of feminist jurisprudence. It concludes that feminism is not about replacing all the male values with female values but rather about being inclusive of women, and of all people who differ from the norms of the law as it is today.
The Common Law as a Terrain of Feminist Struggle
2019
Many feminists have written off the common law because it is slow moving and tends to be conservative.It does not yield the kind of dramatic outcomes and reversals of precedent that federal or state constitutional cases do. Nevertheless, at the heart of it, the common law protects vital negative liberties which prevent the state from intruding into the lives of women. In engaging with the work of Professor Anita Bernstein's The Common Law Inside the Female Body, I focus on three specific points. First, I examine the scope of the common law’s protection to underscore the point that this protection is not uniformly available. It is predicated on legal personhood and by bracketing that threshold requirement, many people, mostly minorities, are left without recourse to the law. Second, I take up the uses and limits of property as an analogy to women’s bodies. I argue that property law is far less helpful when the violator is the state as opposed to a private actor. Finally, I sugges...
Postscript: Feminist Legal Theory in the 21st Century
Laws
This editorial takes the form of a short postscript to a special issue of Laws published in 2019–20. It shows how feminist legal theory (FLT), a corollary of second wave feminism, was initially embraced by law schools but soon subjected to a backlash. FLT was nevertheless able to turn around the negative discourse of post-feminism to show that the “post” can mean not just the end but a new beginning. The Special Issue attests to the resurgence of FLT in the 21st century.
‘We Exist, but Who Are We?’ Feminism and the Power of Sociological Law
Feminist Legal Studies, 2012
In this article the author revisits Carol Smart's 1989 publication Feminism and the power of law. She engages with Smart's main claims by way of a number of other thinkers. Following Marianne Constable's description of contemporary American legal thought as socio-legal, the author tentatively considers if it could be argued that some strains in contemporary legal feminism that adopted a sociological method resulted in a similar absence of justice that concerns Constable. Smart's caution against the development of a feminist jurisprudence is critically analysed with the benefit of hindsight. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari, Foucault and Goodrich, the author tentatively considers the becoming of a feminist jurisprudence as a minor jurisprudence. What we most lack is a belief in the world, we've quite lost the world, it's been taken from us. (Deleuze 1995, 176) Sociology takes social creation to be the whole of what is and will be. (Constable 1994a, 589) Keywords: sociological method; absence of justice; ethics of discomfort; minor jurisprudence and research in women's experience benefited from and also contributed to the development of social-legal approaches to law, and ultimately to law's being socio-legal. However, Constable, in following Nietzsche's description of the 'end of history', draws our attention to what is lost in law's becoming socio-legal: that we are left with a nihilism, the search for justice forgotten. As feminists, we should consider our own response to this nihilism, or what Max Weber has called the 'disenchantment' with the world (Weber 1946). I would also like to reflect on and reconsider Smart's position against the development of a feminist jurisprudence. Taking her insistence on feminists doing work at a conceptual level, I ask whether a feminist jurisprudence would not be doing exactly that, engaging with feminism and the power of law at a conceptual level. My tentative question is the following: if we go along with Constable's claim of modern law amounting to a sociological law, and accept that feminism has become socio-legal to some extent, could more engagement by feminists with a feminist jurisprudence possibly have prevented this? 2 In addition, Smart's understanding of what a feminist jurisprudence could mean should be questioned. For her, a feminist jurisprudence would have amounted to a unified theory of law. I question this claim and consider possibilities for the becoming of a feminist jurisprudence with brief reference to Deleuze and Guattari's (1987) notion of becoming woman/ becoming minor. I also engage the
Feminist Legal Studies: Critical Concepts in Law
2009
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