Change your links, feeds and bookmarks! We moved to http://feministlawprofessors.com/
February 3rd, 2009http://feministlawprofessors.com/
February 1st, 2009FIND US HERE: http://feministlawprofessors.com/
We Can’t Blog Effectively Without Cuss Words, So We’ve Migrated The Blog Outside South Carolina
January 30th, 2009Ah, the heady allure of free speech and academic freedom!
Visit us at our new location:
http://www.feministlawprofessors.com
There may be a few bugs as we sort this all out, apologies in advance for this. Bridget Crawford is the Funk Goddess Of the Universe, just in case you were wondering.
–Ann Bartow
Democratic Congress, Democratic President, so what’s the deal…
January 29th, 2009With this? Historiann asks: Are women citizens of this republic?
South Carolina State Senator Robert Ford is trying to outlaw lewd language and profanity.
January 29th, 2009Story here. It notes:
We spoke to Debra Gammons with the Charleston School of Law about freedom of speech.
She reminds that the First Amendment is not absolute. You cannot say whatever you want whenever you want to.
Courts will usually look at where the words were said and who heard them. Children are usually protected.
Not an entirely accurate overview of contemporary First Amendment jurisprudence, to put it mildly. I’m tempted to make some snarky remark about the quality of the law faculty at our in-state competitor, but I’ve been misquoted so many times, I will assume that is what happened here.
The text of the bill Ford introduced is accessible here. It says in part:
“Section 16-15-370. (A) It is unlawful for a person in a public forum or place of public accommodation wilfully and knowingly to publish orally or in writing, exhibit, or otherwise make available material containing words, language, or actions of a profane, vulgar, lewd, lascivious, or indecent nature.
(B) A person who violates the provisions of this section is guilty of a felony and, upon conviction, must be fined not more than five thousand dollars or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.”
Maybe I have a Con Law treatise lying around someplace that I can send to Senator Ford. And I’ll try hard not to use the eff word in the gift card I enclose.
–Ann Bartow
ETA: Eugene Volokh has a pretty good take on this bill, I have to admit.
Iceland to Name First Lesbian Prime Minister
January 29th, 2009From Yahoo News:
Iceland’s next leader will be an openly gay former flight attendant who parlayed her experience as a union organizer into a decades-long political career. Both parties forming Iceland’s new coalition government support the appointment of Johanna Sigurdardottir, the island nation’s 66-year-old social affairs minister, as Iceland’s interim prime minister.
Photo from here.
Site Maintenance
January 28th, 2009Beginning today, the site may be running slowly and contributors will not be able to post for approximately 24 hours. We are addressing/fixing/upgrading technical aspects of the blog. Apologies for any inconveniences.
-Bridget Crawford
Great Takedown of Yet Another Stupid, Sexist PETA Ad
January 28th, 2009Here, at Jezebel. Props to post author “Intern Katy.” Via Jen.
43 Alaskan Native Americans File Suit Against Jesuits for Rape, Sexual Assault
January 27th, 2009Heart has the story here.
“Gender, history and biography”
January 27th, 2009Cool post from an even cooler blogger: Historiann!
Oh and while you are over there, also check out A Tale of Two Senators.
Concerns about the draft American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
January 27th, 2009Irasema Garza, President of Legal Momentum, writes:
Today the House Democrats unveiled the near-final version of the economic stimulus package known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, with a vote expected as early as tomorrow. While it contains some powerful measures that will support women and families in these trying economic times, it came up short on two fronts.
First, the bill fails to ensure that women will benefit from the investment in infrastructure and the green economy, in that it avoids setting any types of targets for women’s participation in these heavily male-dominated fields.
Second, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was stripped this afternoon of provisions that would make contraceptives more affordable to working women and families. The move was a concession to House Republicans who had been complaining about the small $200 million subsidy, and it means that many low-income women and couples will struggle to afford the means to act responsibly with regard to their families and health. Playing politics with contraception only serves to hurt those who can least afford it.
Please contact your United States Representative and Senators today and:
- Ask that the stimulus package include a concrete goal of 25 percent participation by women in infrastructure, green economy, and other non-traditional jobs
- Demand that the stimulus package recognize that access to affordable contraception is key to women’s health and economic security, and ask them to reinstate funding for family planning for poor women.
Please call the U.S.Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121. Ask the operator to connect you to your Senators and Representative.
Inauguration Memories
January 27th, 2009I am back from DC (yes, there is still snow in Chicago) and I have to tell you the inauguration was indescribable. Yes, I made it inside. Security was tight and the zoo at security in the colored zones (blue, silver, purple) was apparently beyond inept. Friends who scored tickets with the blue zone (VIPs who got to sit down) never made it inside. There is something to be said for joining the huddled masses on the mall. We were huddled and definitely masses, but I wouldn’t have traded a seat in the VIP section (well maybe where there was a chair) for the incredible experience of being with the masses on the mall. I am still celebrating (and still trying to warm up from the 6 hours plus standing on the mall for the ceremonies). Despite the frigid temperatures and the long wait for the inaugural address, it was a six hour party out there. My sister and I got to the mall by 6:30 am. Yes, if you do the math, I actually got up at 4:20 and was in the kiss and park to catch the metro downtown by 4:40 am. (Who knew an alarm clock actually worked at that crazy hour?) That shows you how much I wanted to be there; how crazy the crowds were and how slooooow Metro was (Over an hour 20 from West Falls Church metro on the orange line, for those of you that know the system). When people said they were afraid the DC subway system couldn’t survive the crunch on inauguration day, they weren’t kidding. I thought I was the early bird, but by 6:30am, when we made it past the phalanx of military and police, the first public area on the mall was already filled.
I’m sure you all saw me on the screen when they flashed the mall. That was me, in the green hooded jacket, standing in the second full section on the left hand side, cheering like crazy. Security was tighter than I have ever seen it. There were snipers on the roof tops, military helicopters both buzzing the area and hovering near the stand, soldiers and police lining the perimeters. Access to the mall was limited to the 14th street when I arrived, and it was a relatively narrow funnel. Can you identify all the forms of security uniform? I can’t, but on our way in we got a great review, local police, park police, we marched passed different types of police, military (they were the guys in camouflage outfits with guns) and some guys in dark outfits whose affiliation I don’t even want to begin to guess at.
People were celebrating from the minute we got there. Shivering, stamping our feet, trying to score some hot chocolate, we were freezing our [insert part of anatomy here] off. But that didn’t make the celebration any less heartfelt. People weren’t complaining about the cold, because the warmth of the moment itself was enough to keep you going. I saw plenty of inaugurals in my days in Washington, but I never saw so many people on the mall. By the end we were so jammed in, we were elbow to elbow. The Post had suggested the night before that you would have 2 meters of space. I think they were being optimistic. Is it two meters when you are standing shoulder to shoulder and nose to back? And photos on TV don’t do the crowd justice because the JumboTron scans showed us jam packed all the way back PAST the Washington Monument. People were watching the ceremonies from along the Lincoln Memorial. It was incredible. Got to be over 2 million easy.
Despite the narrow spaces, we were rocking to the Lincoln Memorial concert that was being broadcast before the inaugural events started. We were singing and dancing (frankly, you had to do something to keep the blood flowing), sharing hopes, and just plain old partying down. The warmth of the crowd kept you going. The talk back during the speech, the spontaneous applause, by different parts of the crowd at different times, showed that it was an historic moment, shared by an incredibly diverse crowd. Young, old, African American, white, latino, Asian, everybody was there, from all walks of life. Even one group of Canadians to the right of us, waiving a Canadian flag. It is a memory I will keep with me forever.
People were snapping pictures like crazy during the swearing in ceremony. But around me, once the inaugural address started, people took one photo and then put their cameras down to listen. 2 million people falling silent to listen and react to a speech is an amazing experience to be a part of. Of course, thanks to my sister, who was there with me, the drama continued after the inauguration. Just as President Obama (let me type that again, President Obama) finished his inaugural address, she collapsed from the cold, and I got a close up look at the first aid abilities of the military, the Park Rangers, and the Public Health Service officers that helped her. To my unending disappointment, I missed a perfect photo opportunity as four soldiers (three newly back from Iraq), put her on a stretcher and carried her down the length of the mall to the First Aid tent. She’s fine (thank, God) but the tents were full as a lot of people succumbed to the cold. From asthma attacks, to frostbitten limbs, to one poor women who was hooked up to an IV for dehydration plus frost bite, lots of people succumbed to the cold.
The party didn’t stop or the feeling that security is designed to make each person’s life as difficult as possible after the playing of Hail to Chief. Seeking warm shelter in the few open museums, along with millions of others of exhausted people, before making the long trek back to Virginia, we kept running into the inaugural parade because you couldn’t even cross Constitution Avenue. That left those of us (2 million people?) who were trying to go home left to travel through two metro stations (yes, two, the others were closed for security reasons): L’Enfant Plaza and Federal Center Southwest on the other side of the mall. Have I used the word “zoo” yet to describe the scene? We waited in line one hour and a half just to get inside the metro station. Let’s not talk about how long it took to get on a train. Anyone who has been in Tokyo during rush hour will have some concept of the sensation as we crunched together into the cars. If anyone was feeling lonely, you wouldn’t be after that cozy ride. Despite the cold and the delays, though, people on the whole weren’t pushing or crowding. We were all still jazzed about the day’s events. The glow lasted the entire way home.
Still celebrating,
Doris Estelle Long
Yasmeen Hassan, “A War on Pakistan’s Schoolgirls”
January 27th, 2009I have such fond childhood memories of summer holidays in the Swat Valley in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province, a place well known among Pakistanis for its breathtaking views, cool summer climate and lush fruit orchards. But today the Swat Valley is experiencing heartbreaking pressures, as the Taliban strike with disconcerting regularity and, among other atrocities, impose a ban on the education of girls.
Even before this ban was put in place on Jan. 15, more than 100 schools for girls in Swat, as well as more than 150 such schools in the greater Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), had been shut down, many after being bombed or torched, leaving approximately 100,000 girls out of school. Radio announcements warned girls that they could be attacked with acid if they dared to attend school, and teachers have been threatened and killed. Last Monday, five more Swat Valley schools were bombed.
The attacks and threats have not been confined to schoolgirls. Women and girls have been ordered to wear full veils. Directives have been issued requiring that women be accompanied by male family members in public places and forbidding women from carrying compulsory government identification cards displaying their photographs. About a dozen women have been shot for “immoral activities,” including Bakht Zeba, a 45-year-old social worker committed to advancing girls’ education. The area seems to be in competition with Afghanistan over which will establish the worst record on women’s rights.
The Pakistani and Afghan governments have responded similarly to the Taliban’s penchant for terrorizing the population. A few months ago, Afghanistan sought to enter into negotiations with the Taliban, a precondition of which would be the imposition of sharia (Islamic law). While those talks have not yet gone forward, Pakistan seems to be on the brink of accepting enforcement of sharia in the FATA territories. Reports indicate that more than 70 Taliban courts already operate in the Swat Valley, a first step toward implementation of the Taliban’s interpretation of sharia. That the government is open to negotiating on this issue shows that it has no regard for what such a move would mean for Pakistani women.
EQUALITY NOW CALLS ON THE UNITED STATES TO CONDITION AID TO PAKISTAN ON MEASURES TAKEN BY THE PAKISTANI GOVERNMENT TO PROTECT GIRLS AND ENSURE THEIR RIGHT TO EDUCATION
January 27th, 2009From Equality Now:
On 20 January 2009 Equality Now issued a News Alert calling on the Government of Pakistan to protect girls and ensure their right to education following growing fundamentalist pressure in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and in Swat in Pakistan, where the Taliban have imposed a ban on girls’ education from 15 January 2009 forward and where there has been an alarming increase in violence and discrimination against women and girls. Please click here for further information.
The Obama administration has pledged to triple non-military aid to Pakistan via the passage of the Biden-Lugar Bill of 2008 (which is likely to be reintroduced in the Senate in 2009 by Senators Kerry and Lugar). This bill contains a package of $7.5 billion in non-military aid to Pakistan over the next five years ($1.5 billion a year).
Equality Now would like to urge its Women’s Action Network members in the United States to contact the following officials and draw their attention to the growing extent of violence and discrimination against women and girls by the Taliban in FATA and Swat in Pakistan, and in particular to the ban imposed on girls’ education by the Taliban through the use of force and threats. Ask that aid to Pakistan be conditioned explicitly on the Pakistani government taking active steps to uphold and protect the rights of women and girls, including effectively countering the Taliban’s ban on girls’ education by ensuring girls safe access to education.
Senator Richard Lugar
306 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510-1401
Tel: (202) 224-4814
Fax: (202) 228-0360
Email: senator_lugar@lugar.senate.gov
Senator John Kerry
Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
304 Russell Bldg.
Third Floor
Washington D.C. 20510
Tel: (202) 224-2742
Fax: (202) 224-8525
Email via website: http://kerry.senate.gov/contact/email.cfm
Please also send copies of your messages to the U.S. Vice President and Secretary of State:
Mr. Joseph Biden
Vice President
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20500
Ms. Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520
Please keep Equality Now updated on your work and send copies of any replies you receive to: info@equalitynow.org
What if you plan on e-mailing your professor?
January 27th, 2009Professor What If has some advice and observations here. Below is an excerpt:
Every time a semester is about to start or has just started, my email box is inundated with “URGENT” pleas from students. Many of the things they are writing about are in fact not urgent at all. Rather, most often the information they seek could be easily found at the campus website. Another common “urgent” type of message relates to the fact they would like to add my class to their schedule AND would like to me to give them special consideration for umpteen different (almost always non-urgent) reasons. So, to those of you out there starting a new semester, before you email your Professors, please consider the following (rather cranky) suggestions:
1. For goodness sake, spell her/his name right! And, on that note, would editing for spelling/grammar kill you?
The conclusion is very trenchant too, and says in pertinent part:
Remember that such correspondence shapes your professor’s impression of you. If you come off as arrogant, demanding, self-centered, selfish, lazy, etc, many professors just might remember this about you. We are, after all, mere mortals.
Yolanda Young, “What Eric Holder’s Tenure at Covington & Burling Says About Blacks and BigLaw”
January 27th, 2009Interview with Lilly Ledbetter
January 27th, 2009Anna Quindlen, “The End of Swagger”
January 26th, 2009Here are the first two paragraphs of Quindlen’s recent Newsweek column:
As Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton begin to use their uncommon authority and intelligence to implement a new American international agenda, it might behoove them to read a speech given some years ago in Beijing. It read in part: “If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights for one and for all. Let us not forget that among those rights are the right to speak freely—and the right to be heard. Women must enjoy the rights to participate fully in the social and political lives of their countries if we want freedom and democracy to thrive and endure.”
Secretary Clinton was first lady when she spoke those words at a United Nations conference on women in 1995. Some of the participants wept to hear an influential American commit to a view of the world so many of them shared: that the way for nations to prosper was to pay attention to women’s rights, women’s welfare and women’s concerns.
What Kind of Rule?: Rape Shield Ruling by the Court of Appeals of Minnesota Raises Question, What Kind of Rule is the Rape Shield Rule?
January 26th, 2009The recent opinion of the Court of Appeals of Minnesota in State v. Bauer, 2009 WL 112842 (Minn.App. 2009), raises an essential question: What kind of rule is the Rape Shield Rule? And I think that Minnesota courts have answered that question correctly.
In Bauer, Jeffrey Bauer appealed from his convictions on two counts of criminal sexual conduct that he allegedly committed against his neighbor, A.E.B., while she was less than sixteen years old. And one of the grounds for his appeal was that the trial court erred by precluding him from presenting evidence that A.E.B. had allegedly made prior false allegations of sexual abuse.
The trial court had deemed this evidence inadmissible pursuant to Minnesota’s Rape Shield Rule, Minnesota Rule of Evidence 412, which states in relevant part that
In a prosecution for acts of criminal sexual conduct, including attempts or any act of criminal sexual predatory conduct, evidence of the victim’s previous sexual conduct should not be admitted nor shall any reference to such conduct be made in the presence of the jury, except by court under the procedure provided in rule 412. Such evidence can be admissible only if the probative value of the evidence is not substantially outweighed by its inflammatory or prejudicial nature and only in [certain] circumstances.
Now, proving prior false allegations of sexual abuse is not one of the enumerated exception/circumstances in Minnesota Rule of Evidence 412, but the Court of Appeals noted that it had previously read such an exception into the rule in prior precedent. See State v. Goldenstein, 505 N.W.2d 332, 340 (Minn.App. 1993). The problem for Bauer, however, was that the Court of Appeals rejected his argument that the trial court improperly placed the burden of proof on him to prove that A.E.B. had in fact made prior false allegations and affirmed the trial court’s ruling that he failed to fulfill his burden. According to the court, “the burden is on a defendant to show that a victim’s sexual history is relevant and should be admitted despite the rape-shield rule.”
As I noted above, I think that the court properly placed the burden on the defendant, but it certainly was not a foregone conclusion. Like its federal counterpart, Federal Rule of Evidence 412, Minnesota Rule of Evidence 412 states that an alleged victim’s previous sexual conduct in a criminal case is generally inadmissible unless it meets some exception and passes the Rule 403 balancing test in that its probative value is not substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice that it creates.
The problem that this creates for the court’s conclusion is that Rule 403 is a Rule that presumes the admissibility of evidence and traditionally places the burden of proof on the party opposing its admission. Indeed this point is driven home by the civil exception to the federal Rape Shield Rule, which provides in relevant part that
In a civil case, evidence offered to prove the sexual behavior or sexual predisposition of any alleged victim is admissible if it is otherwise admissible under these rules and its probative value substantially outweighs the danger of harm to any victim and of unfair prejudice to any party.
According to the Advisory Committee’s Note to this Rule,
This test for admitting evidence offered to prove sexual behavior or sexual propensity in civil cases differs in three respects from the general rule governing admissibility set forth in Rule 403. First, it reverses the usual procedure spelled out in Rule 403 by shifting the burden to the proponent to demonstrate admissibility rather than making the opponent justify exclusion of the evidence.
An obvious implication that one could draw from this language is that the burden of proof is on the prosecution in a criminal case to prove that one of the exceptions to the Rape Shield Rule does not apply. But this takes me back to the question that opened this post: What kind of rule is the Rape Shield Rule?
In placing the burden of proof on the defendant in Bauer, the Court of Appeals relied upon its previous opinion in State v. Crims, 540 N.W.2d 860 (Minn.App. 1995), which placed the burden on the defendant because ”evidence of sexual activity with third persons cannot withstand a rule 403 weighing unless special circumstances enhance its probative value.” In other words, Rape Shield Rule rulings are not typical Rule 403 rulings.
And, according to Crims, the reason that they are not typical is because, unlike what some courts have found, Rape Shield Rules are not ”principally…a means of excluding evidence that might embarrass sexual assault victims, essentially forming an exception to the general practice of admitting all relevant evidence.” Instead, they “serve[] to emphasize the general irrelevance of a victim’s sexual history, not to remove relevant evidence from the jury’s consideration.”
Based upon everything I have read about Rape Shield Rules, I agree with the Court of Appeals of Minnesota. Rape Shield Rules are not only in place because we want to prevent the embarassment of alleged victims but also because we have recognized that an individual’s prior sexual acts usually tell us nothing about whether they consented to the sexual act at issue. Now, there are some exceptions to the general rule, but they are just that, exceptions, and the onus should be on the defendant to prove such special circumstances.
-Colin Miller
Vital Juncture for Women’s Rights Policy at the State Department
January 26th, 2009In her confirmation hearing last week Hilary Clinton was asked by 
Barbara Boxer to talk about how she plans to use the office of the Secretary of State to better the “status of women in the world.” She was particularly interested in the problems of violence against women and sex trafficking, making explicit reference to the series of op-eds that Nicholas Kristof has published on these issues.
Not surprisingly, secretary-designate Clinton offered a strong response with respect to her agenda on women’s rights. She told the Senate panel:
I have also read closely Nick Kristof’s articles over the last many months, but in particular the last weeks, on the young women that he has both rescued from prostitution and met who have been enslaved and abused, tortured in every way: physically, emotionally, morally.
And I take very seriously the function of the State Department to lead our government through the Office on Human Trafficking to do all that we can to end this modern form of slavery. We have sex slavery, we have wage slavery, and it is primarily a slavery of girls and women.
So we’re going to have a very active women’s office, a very active office on trafficking. We’re going to be speaking out consistently and strongly against discrimination and oppression of women and slavery in particular, because I think that is in keeping not only with American values, as we all recognize, but American national security interests as well.
While these comments from now-Secretary of State Clinton gained applause from some precincts of the women’s and human rights community, they made some of us sit up in alarm. Not only was Mrs. Clinton misstating frequently repeated “facts” about sex trafficking, her answer to Senator Boxer signaled the continuation of the misguided Bush policies on this issue – policies heavily influenced by a particular camp in the women’s rights community that sees sex in general, and prostitution in particular, as the root of all evil for women. This ideology – one that has been shown all over the world to more often harm rather than help women in precarious situations – threatens to become the official policy of the Obama Administration if we aren’t careful.
- Katherine Franke
