Feminist Legal History: Essays on Women and Law

by Tracy A. Thomas (Editor), Tracey Jean Boisseau (Editor)

Overview

Attuned to the social contexts within which laws are created, feminist lawyers, historians, and activists have long recognized the discontinuities and contradictions that lie at the heart of efforts to transform the law in ways that fully serve women’s interests. At its core, the nascent field of feminist legal history is driven by a commitment to uncover women’s legal agency and how women, both historically and currently, use law to obtain individual and societal empowerment.

Feminist Legal History represents feminist legal historians’ efforts to define their field, by showcasing historical research and analysis that demonstrates how women were denied legal rights, how women used the law proactively to gain rights, and how, empowered by law, women worked to alter the law to try to change gendered realities. Encompassing two centuries of American history, thirteen original essays expose the many ways in which legal decisions have hinged upon ideas about women or gender as well as the ways women themselves have intervened in the law, from Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s notion of a legal class of gender to the deeply embedded inequities involved in Ledbetter v. Goodyear, a 2007 Supreme Court pay discrimination case.

Contributors: Carrie N. Baker, Felice Batlan, Tracey Jean Boisseau, Eileen Boris, Richard H. Chused, Lynda Dodd, Jill Hasday, Gwen Hoerr Jordan, Maya Manian, Melissa Murray, Mae C. Quinn, Margo Schlanger, Reva Siegel, Tracy A. Thomas, and Leti Volpp

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814787212
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	04/04/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	285
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Tracy A. Thomas is Professor of Law at The University of Akron School of Law, where she holds the Seiberling Chair of Constitutional Law and directs the Center for Constitutional Law.

Tracey Jean Boisseau is associate professor of gender and cultural history at The University of Akron in Ohio. She is the author of White Queen: The Imperial Origins of American Feminist Identity and co-editor, with Abigail Markwyn, of Gendering the Fair: Histories of Women and Gender at World’s Fairs.

Table of Contents

Foreword Reva Siegel  Preface Tracey Jean Boisseau  Introduction: Law, History, and Feminism  Tracy A. Thomas and Tracey Jean BoisseauPart I: Contradictions in Legalizing Gender 1 Courts and Temperance “Ladies”  Richard H. Chused  2 Women behind the WheelGender and Transportation Law, 1860–1930 Margo Schlanger  3 Expatriation by Marriage The Case of Asian American Women Leti Volpp  4 Made with Men in Mind  Melissa Murray  5 Fighting Women  Jill Elaine Hasday 6 Irrational Women  Maya Manian Part II: Women’s Transformation of the Law 7 Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Notion of a Legal Class of Gender  Tracy A. Thomas  8 “Them Law Wimmin” 156 Gwen Hoerr Jordan  9 Legal Aid, Women Lay Lawyers, and the Rewriting of History 1863–1930 Felice Batlan  10 Sisterhood of Struggle  Lynda Dodd  11 “Feminizing” Courts  Mae C. Quinn  12 Sexual Harassment  Carrie N. Baker  13 Ledbetter’s Continuum  Eileen Boris  Selected Bibliography Contributors  Index