In 1899, Christopher Langdell of Harvard Law School famously argued that the law is "entirely unfit for the feminine mind." 1 Even at the time, his staunch opposition to providing legal education to women was a minority view among the Harvard Law faculty, and obviously his opinion has been relegated to the dustbin of history where it belongs. 2Yet year after year, scholars and legal educators question why women law students are not yet equal, either in outcome or their experience of law school. 3And it is not simply a question of gender-students who are members of all sorts of historically excluded groups face greater hurdles in law school. 4 Law students are famously stressed, depressed, and more likely than other graduate or professional students to turn to alcohol or engage in other unhealthy coping mechanisms. 5 This Essay argues that the continued failure of law schools to provide equally rewarding legal education to all students is not merely slower progress than other professions or degree programs.Rather, the American system of legal education is

Suppose that a transgender child experiences teasing and harassment from their classmates, whose hostile reactions interrupt the school day. School administrators tell the transgender child that in order to allow educational activities to continue, they must dress in more gender-neutral clothing, ideally consistent with the sex they were assigned at birth. The student’s parents protest, arguing that their child’s clothing is speech that expresses their gender identity. The school points to Tinker v. Des Moines, allowing suppression of student speech where it creates a material disruption, as well as recent legislation characterizing discussion of gender identity as lewd and obscene.This Article is the first analysis to map out and counter both obscenity and material disruption as justifications to limit gender identity speech. Although not all clothing choices by students are symbolic speech, gender presentation is the type of intentional and cognizable message that is protected under the First Amendment. Comprehensive examination of student speech cases demonstrates that current attempts to define gender identity as an inappropriately sexualized topic for children are inconsistent with existing law. Finally, the Article illustrates for the first time how schools can create a heckler’s veto by teaching students that the speech of transgender students is abnormal. The Article proposes an analytical revision that takes the schools’ role into account, reconciles the conflict between the heckler’s veto doctrine and Tinker’s material disruption test, and strengthens protection of all controversial student speech.

This amicus brief was filed in Griffith v. El Paso County, Colorado, case no. 23-1135 (10th Circuit) in support of appellant Darlene Griffith. Amici curiae are legal scholars of sex and gender. They offer expertise in their personal capacities to assist the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in assessing whether the El Paso County Sheriff officials violated Ms. Griffith’s Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection when they refused to house Ms. Griffith, a transgender woman, in the women's unit of the El Paso County Jail as a pretrial detainee.

Picture two men facing the possibility of unwanted fatherhood. One man agreed to go through in vitro fertilization (IVF) with his partner, but years later has changed his mind. Despite the fact that the embryos created through IVF are his partner's last chance to be a genetic parent, a court allows him to block her use of the embryos. By contrast, another couple 's sexual relationship broke the law. The woman was a legal adult, and her partner was a child under the age of eighteen. Their encounter was thus statutory rape. Her crime led to pregnancy, and after she gave birth, she sued the teenager for child support. Despite his protest that he did not consent to the sexual activity that led to the child's birth, the court affirms the child support order. As a practical matter, this inconsistency in treatment of unwanted fatherhood may instinctively make sense, applying two different rules for two very different contexts. A deeper examination of the cases, however, reveals much more going on. This Article uses the frame of masculinities theories to dive further into the inconsistency and uncovers two groundbreaking implications that stretch far beyond the specific circumstances. First, the varying treatment of embryo disposition disputes and the characterization of male victims of statutory rape have one constant: a dismissal and rejection of men 's emotions. Second, exploring the inconsistent treatment of men's consent to become fathers in sexual reproduction versus stored embryos reveals a clear rejection by courts of the personhood concept that embryos are human life. These revelations inform not only how embryo disposition disputes should be resolved, but also fetal personhood and family law 's treatment of fathers.

Long before I taught law students the intricacies of statutes, I taught junior high school students sex education. It was a part-time job while I was in college in Los Angeles, through a program with Planned Parenthood that provided a two-week curriculum in public junior high schools. Today I joke that it gave me my unflappable nature in the classroom—if you can tell preteens about syphilis, nothing that happens in a law school classroom will break your concentration—but it also gave me an indelible memory of how far sex ed in America has to go. During our training, one of my fellow teachers referred in passing to how annoying it was to change her tampon every time she had to urinate. She was a bright college student and engaged with reproductive work enough that she successfully applied to work at Planned Parenthood. Yet, she didn’t know that the vagina and urethra were different anatomical structures.

In recent years, claims brought by transgender students requesting accommodations from a public school have been framed under Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any educational program or activity that receives federal funding. Given the changing interpretation of Title IX from the Obama to Trump administrations, both statutory and constitutional arguments supporting the right of public school students to express their gender in any manner contrary to traditional gendered norms have renewed vitality. In the decades since Stonewall, students facing school discipline for nonconforming gender presentation that violated school dress codes have attempted to challenge the dress codes as violating their First Amendment free expression rights. Tracing these arguments is not only helpful as a historical exercise, but also to present alternative arguments under an unsympathetic presidential administration and Supreme Court. In today's world in which the Trump administration targets transgender students, employees, and service members, one strategy is to embrace gender nonconformity for cisgender, transgender, and nonbinary students all at once, in the hopes that thinking about the expression rights of students will be a more fruitful approach than just relying on Title IX.

A woman alleges that she was raped by a police officer while in police custody. The police officer acknowledges that he had sexual intercourse with the woman but argues that she consented to the interaction. Despite the clear power imbalance and troubling context of the sexual activity, in a majority of U.S. states, if the police officer convinces even one member of a jury that their activity was consensual, then the officer cannot be convicted. Consent is a defense to allegations of sexual assault-even when the alleged assault occurs while the victim is in the custody of the perpetrator. Allegations that police officers have committed sexual assault while on duty are shockingly prevalent and surprisingly underanalyzed. Police sexual violence (PSV) is situated at the intersection of two vital national conversations about police brutality and sexual violence and harassment. This Article addresses PSV as the product of both issues and recommends systemic solutions sounding in both debates. The immediate problem PSV presents is that it is not made clearly illegal by state law and police department regulation. The deeper problem is that PSV is a symptom of broader cultural problems within police departments that can be helpfully parsed through the lens of masculinities theories. PSV springs from issues both with how police officers relate to the communities they patrol, especially men in those communities, and with how police officers and police culture treat women. The famous "blue wall of silence," ensuring loyalty even among police officers who commit misconduct, magnifies these issues. Any attempt to meaningfully address PSV must take all of these factors into account to work both a legal and a cultural change. This Article offers such solutions, addressing substantive and procedural prohibitions of PSV and broader cultural changes to police departments to combat PSV at its roots.

Since the inauguration of President Trump, most of his Administration’s actions have been sharply conservative: notably, his efforts to ban transgender Americans from military service. There have been exceptions, however, such as proposals to create support for paid parental leave, an issue previously championed by Democrats. This seeming contradiction of progressive and regressive policies can be reconciled by viewing the Trump Administration through the lens of masculinities theory. Hegemonic masculinity depends upon sharp differentiation between “real” men and everyone else, the latter occupying places in a hierarchy far below men. In this reading, Trump’s version of parental support makes sense: it focuses support solely on women, who in the view of hegemonic masculinity are the only proper caregivers for children. Similarly, masculinities analysis helps to explain targeting transgender Americans, as this group directly challenges a central tenet of hegemonic masculinity — that gender is binary and immutable. Masculinities thus explains arguably contradictory policies and reveals that both policies reflect the Trump Administration’s hostility to principles of diversity and antidiscrimination. The Administration is not against antidiscrimination in all forms — only those that challenge the hegemonic ideals of masculinities.

This chapter explores the various legal understandings attached to the notion of Irish fatherhood in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and the ramifications these frameworks have created for men wanting to be active parents to their children. Parenthood for much of the twentieth century was synonymous with motherhood according to the Irish courts, based on the perception that a biological mother’s right to be her child’s guardian was a natural product of her genetic link with her child, excluding any rights for fathers wanting to participate in the parenting process. Purvis argues that the Irish legal system has been one of the last bastions for outmoded beliefs about men, fatherhood and the role some parents wish to have in their children’s lives.

Beginning in the 1970s, the Supreme Court heard a series of challenges to family law statutes brought by unwed biological fathers, questioning the constitutionality of laws that treated unwed fathers differently than unwed mothers. The Court’s opinions created a starkly different constitutional status for unwed fathers than for unwed mothers, demanding additional actions and relationships before an unwed father was considered a constitutional father. Although state parentage statutes have progressed beyond their 1970s incarnations, the doctrine created in those family law cases continues to have impact far beyond family law. Transmission of citizenship in the context of immigration law and the inheritance rights of children of unwed parents whose fathers died without a will echo the reasoning of the family law cases, including two unwed father principles giving legal imprimatur to stereotypes about fathers. Across multiple areas of law, therefore, unwed fathers are not constitutional fathers. It is not enough, however, to simply revive past challenges to such statutes: individual criticisms of each line of cases have not prompted reconsideration of the cases purely on their own terms. This paper identifies a new approach, however, using modern precedents to provide a clearer theory of constitutionalizing fathers: Obergefell v. Hodges illustrates a methodology of analyzing claims that involve the unequal application of a fundamental right, and Sessions v. Morales-Santana provides the substantive rejection of gendered parental stereotypes that fills out Obergefell’s framework. The result is an unambiguous argument rooted in the Equal Protection Clause that will constitutionalize fathers across the law.

Journal of Family Theory & ReviewVolume 9, Issue 3 p. 412-416 Book Review Legalizing LGBT Families: How the Law Shapes Parenthood Dara Purvis, Dara Purvis Pennsylvania State UniversitySearch for more papers by this author Dara Purvis, Dara Purvis Pennsylvania State UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: 01 September 2017 https://doi.org/10.1111/jftr.12208Citations: 1Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume9, Issue3September 2017Pages 412-416 RelatedInformation

In recent years, school districts have faced numerous questions surrounding accommodations of transgender students. Strong objections to accommodations have been voiced in public argument and litigation, primarily in the areas of athletics, bathrooms, and dress codes. As younger transgender students express their gender identity at school, however, the existing objections are weakened by considering the context of elementary rather than high school students. Greater numbers of young transgender students will likely encourage accommodation of trans students of all ages, as well as challenge the gender binary unconsciously taught in school.

This article examines a diverse body of laws and regulations speaking to reproductive rights, healthcare, criminal punishment of drug use, termination of parental rights, and more in order to unearth the rules of maternity: guidance provided both obliquely and explicitly by the law’s coercive power telling women both how and who should mother. Rule 1 begins in pregnancy, with the message that “your body is your child’s vessel.” Every choice that a pregnant woman makes becomes a source of potential harm to her child, and thus of potential punishment through both civil and criminal law. Rule 2 explains one way women should attempt to avoid such liability, by following the maxim that “doctor knows best.” To question medical authority or have preferences other than following doctor’s orders is to needlessly risk the health of a pregnancy or a child, and is evidence of bad mothering. After the child’s birth, the mother remains responsible for the people who enter a child’s life, leading to rule 3, “the buck stops with you.” Rule 4 provides examples of the tightropes that mothers must walk: be nurturing, but not too nurturing. Breastfeed, but not for too long. Be protective, but not overprotective. “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” Finally, the rules of maternity create an aspirational maternity, one that excludes women deemed undesirable as mothers, because of class, race, past actions, and so on. Rule 5 specifies that “only some women need apply” for motherhood; women who have already been judged as bad mothers should not be legally permitted to reproduce.

One thread of abortion criticism, arguing that gender equality requires that men be allowed to terminate legal parental status and obligations, has reinforced the stereotype of men as uninterested in fatherhood. As courts facing disputes over stored pre-embryos weigh the equities of allowing implantation of the pre-embryos, this same gender stereotype has been increasingly incorporated into a legal balancing test, leading to troubling implications for ART and family law.