Mar 29, 2024  
2008-2009 Law Catalog 
    
2008-2009 Law Catalog [ARCHIVED BULLETIN]

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LAW 3839 - Feminist Jurisprudence


This course examines feminist jurisprudence as a distinct project, exploring how feminist legal theorists have considered gender in understanding and critiquing our legal system and its norms. It involves a number of debates within feminist jurisprudence, how feminist scholars attempt to resolve those debates, and how they bring feminist analysis to bear on a number of contemporary issues of law and public policy. The course offers a general introduction to feminist jurisprudence by considering several prominent approaches, including Critical Race feminism, liberal feminism, radical (or dominance) feminism, postmodern feminism, relational feminism, and forms of outsider jurisprudence with links to feminism such as queer theory. We assess debates within feminist jurisprudence concerning how best to understand the ideal of sex equality, the bearing of the issue of sameness and difference between women and men upon achieving that ideal, and the question whether, in view of differences among women based on class, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation and the like, it is desirable or possible to speak about women as a meaningful category. We also consider some feminist work in disciplines other than law. Specific practical applications of feminist jurisprudence to law and policy include, for example, legal regulation of sexuality; reproduction and the family; the reconstruction of marriage (including same-sex marriage); employment discrimination (including sexual harassment); pornography; poverty and social welfare policy; violence against women; and international human rights.

The format of the course is a combination of lecture and discussion. The course requirement may be satisfied either by a research paper (which satisfies Writing Requirement I), several shorter papers (which satisfy Writing Requirement II) or by a final examination.

Credits: 3





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