This Special Report explores strategies for maximising inclusion and diversity in the legal profession both in-house and in private practice. The second edition has been fully updated to take into account the pandemic and the adverse impact this has had on diversity and inclusion, along with other developments. Each of the report's nine chapters has been written by an expert with direct experience and knowledge in their specialist field. New chapters featured in this edition include: Belief; Ageism; Mental health; and Intersectionality. This new edition will provide essential reading for all organisations committed to inclusion and diversity across the modern workplace.

Winner of the 2022 Association for the Rhetoric of Science, Technology, and Medicine (ARSTM) Book Award Winner of the 2022 Winifred Bryan Horner Outstanding Book Award from the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition What It Feels Like interrogates an underexamined reason for our failure to abolish rape in the United States: the way we communicate about it. Using affective and feminist materialist approaches to rhetorical criticism, Stephanie Larson examines how discourses about rape and sexual assault rely on strategies of containment, denying the felt experiences of victims and ultimately stalling broader claims for justice. Investigating anti-pornography debates from the 1980s, Violence Against Women Act advocacy materials, sexual assault forensic kits, public performances, and the #MeToo movement, Larson reveals how our language privileges male perspectives and, more deeply, how it is shaped by systems of power-patriarchy, white supremacy, ableism, and heteronormativity. Interrogating how these systems work to propagate masculine commitments to "science" and "hard evidence," Larson finds that US culture holds a general mistrust of testimony by women, stereotyping it as "emotional." But she also gives us hope for change, arguing that testimonies grounded in the bodily, material expression of violation are necessary for giving voice to victims of sexual violence and presenting, accurately, the scale of these crimes. Larson makes a case for visceral rhetorics, theorizing them as powerful forms of communication and persuasion. Demonstrating the communicative power of bodily feeling, Larson challenges the long-held commitment to detached, distant, rationalized discourses of sexual harassment and rape. Timely and poignant, the book offers a much-needed corrective to our legal and political discourses.

An RCMP sting caught Nicole Doucet (Ryan) trying to hire a hitman to kill her ex-husband. It was supposed to be an open-and-shut case. It wasn't. No Legal Way Out details the process, the media coverage, and the legal implications of R v Ryan, all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. The outcome of the case limited the legal options for women seeking to escape abuse and had a damaging impact on public perceptions of domestic violence. This unabashedly feminist analysis explains why the court, the police, and the media let down all women trapped by intimate partner terrorism.

Law and Gender in Modern Ireland: Critique and Reform is the first generalist text to tackle the intersection of law and gender in this jurisdiction for over two decades. As such, it could hardly have come at a more opportune moment. The topic of law and gender, perhaps more so than at any other time in Irish history, has assumed a dominant place in political and academic debate. Among scholars and policy-makers alike, the regulation of gendered bodies, and the legal status of sexual and gendered identities, is now a highly visible fault line in public discourse. Debates over reproductive justice (exemplified by the recent referendum to remove the '8th Amendment'), increased rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons (including the public-sanctioned introduction of same-sex marriage) and the historic mistreatment of women and young girls have re-shaped Irish public and political life, and encouraged Irish society to re-examine long-unchallenged gender norms. While many traditional flashpoints remain such as abortion and prostitution/sex work, there are also new questions, including surrogacy and the gendered experience of asylum frameworks, which have emerged. As policy-makers seek to enact reforms, they face a population with increasingly polarised perceptions of gender and a legal structure ill-equipped for modern realities. This edited volume directly addresses modern Irish debates on law and gender. Providing an overview of the existing rules and standards, as well as exploring possible options for reform, the collection stands as an important statement on the law in this jurisdiction, and as an invaluable resource for pursuing gendered social change. While the edited collection applies a doctrinal methodology to explain current statutes, case law and administrative practices, the contributors also invoke critical gender, queer and race perspectives to identify and problematise existing (and potential) challenges. This edited collection is essential reading for all who are interested in law, gender and processes of social change in modern Ireland.

The EU has slowly but surely developed a solid body of equality law that prohibits different facets of discrimination. While the Union had initially developed anti-discrimination norms that served only the commercial rationale of the common market, focusing on nationality (of a Member State) and gender as protected grounds, the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997) supplied five additional prohibited grounds of discrimination to the EU legislative palette, in line with a much broader egalitarian rationale. In 2000, two EU Equality Directives followed, one focusing on race and ethnic origin, the other covering the remaining four grounds introduced by the Treaty of Amsterdam, namely religion, sexual orientation, disabilities and age. Eighteen years after the adoption of the watershed Equality Directives, it seems timely to dedicate a book to their limits and prospects, to look at the progress made, and to revisit the rise of EU anti-discrimination law beyond gender. This volume sets out to capture the striking developments and shortcomings that have taken place in the interpretation of relevant EU secondary law. Firstly, the book unfolds an up-to-date systematic reappraisal of the five 'newer' grounds of discrimination, which have so far received mostly fragmented coverage. Secondly, and more generally, the volume captures how and to what extent the Equality Directives have enabled or, at times, prevented the Court of Justice of the European Union from developing even broader and more refined anti-discrimination jurisprudence. Thus, the book offers a glimpse into the past, present and - it is hoped - future of EU anti-discrimination law as, despite all the flaws in the Union's 'Garden of Earthly Delights', it offers one of the highest standards of protection in comparative anti-discrimination law.

Women's Legal Landmarks commemorates the centenary of women's admission in 1919 to the legal profession in the UK and Ireland by identifying key legal landmarks in women's legal history. Over 80 authors write about landmarks that represent a significant achievement or turning point in women's engagement with law and law reform. The landmarks cover a wide range of topics, including matrimonial property, the right to vote, prostitution, surrogacy and assisted reproduction, rape, domestic violence, FGM, equal pay, abortion, image-based sexual abuse, and the ordination of women bishops, as well as the life stories of women who were the first to undertake key legal roles and positions. Together the landmarks offer a scholarly intervention in the recovery of women's lost history and in the development of methodology of feminist legal history as well as a demonstration of women's agency and activism in the achievement of law reform and justice.

At what age do girls gain the maturity to make sexual choices? This question provokes especially vexed debates in India, where early marriage is a widespread practice. India has served as a focal problem site in NGO campaigns and intergovernmental conferences setting age standards for sexual maturity. Over the last century, the country shifted the legal age of marriage from twelve, among the lowest in the world, to eighteen, at the high end of the global spectrum. Ashwini Tambe illuminates the ideas that shaped such shifts: how the concept of adolescence as a sheltered phase led to delaying both marriage and legal adulthood; how the imperative of population control influenced laws on marriage age; and how imperial moral hierarchies between nations provoked defensive postures within India. Tambe's transnational feminist approach to legal history shows how intergovernmental debates influenced Indian laws and how expert discourses in India changed UN terminology about girls. Ultimately, the well-meaning focus on child marriage became tethered less to the well-being of girls themselves and more to parents' interests, population control targets, and the preservation of national reputation.

Indigenous women continue to be overrepresented in Canadian prisons; research demonstrates how their overincarceration and often extensive experiences of victimization are interconnected with and through ongoing processes of colonization. Implicating the System: Judicial Discourses in the Sentencing of Indigenous Women explores how judges navigate these issues in sentencing by examining related discourses in selected judgments from a review of 175 decisions.The feminist theory of the victimization-criminalization continuum informs Elspeth Kaiser-Derrick's work. She examines its overlap with the Gladue analysis, foregrounding decisions that effectively integrate gendered understandings of Indigenous women's victimization histories, and problematizing those with less contextualized reasoning. Ultimately, she contends that judicial use of the victimization-criminalization continuum deepens the Gladue analysis and augments its capacity to further its objectives of alternatives to incarceration.Kaiser-Derrick discusses how judicial discourses about victimization intersect with those about rehabilitation and treatment, and suggests associated problems, particularly where prison is characterized as a place of healing. Finally, she shows how recent incursions into judicial discretion, through legislative changes to the conditional sentencing regime that restrict the availability of alternatives to incarceration, are particularly concerning for Indigenous women in the system.

As members of the fastest-growing demographic group in America, Latinos are increasingly represented in the professional class, but they continue to face significant racism. Everyday Injustice introduces readers to the challenges facing Latino professionals today. Examining the experiences of many of the most privileged members of the largest racial and ethnic community in the United States, Maria Chavez provides important insights into the challenges facing racialized groups, particularly Latinos, in the United States. Her study looks at Latino lawyers in depth, weaving powerful personal stories and interview excerpts with a broader analysis of survey research and focus groups. The book examines racial framing in America, the role of language and culture among Latino professionals, the role of Latinos in the workplace, their level of civic participation, and the important role that education plays in improving their experiences. One chapter discusses the unique challenges that Latinas face in the workplace as both women and people of color. The findings outlined in Everyday Injustice suggest that despite considerable success in overcoming educational, economic, and class barriers, Latino professionals still experience marginalization. A powerful illustration of racism and inequality in America."

The bitter and public court battle waged between Nina and James Walker of Newport, Rhode Island from 1909 to 1916 created a sensation throughout the nation with lurid accounts of-and gossip about-their marital troubles. The ordeal of this high-society couple, who wed as much for status as for love, is one of the prime examples of the growing trend of women seeking divorce during the early twentieth century. Gross Misbehavior and Wickedness-the charges Nina levied at James for his adultery (with the family governess) and extreme cruelty-recounts the protracted legal proceedings in juicy detail. Jean Elson uses court documents, correspondence, journals, and interviews with descendants to recount the salacious case. In the process, she underscores how divorce-in an era when women needed husbands for economic support-was associated with women's aspirations for independence and rights. The Walkers' dispute, replete with plot twists and memorable characters, sheds light on a critical period in the evolution of American culture.

The bitter and public court battle waged between Nina and James Walker of Newport, Rhode Island from 1909 to 1916 created a sensation throughout the nation with lurid accounts of-and gossip about-their marital troubles. The ordeal of this high-society couple, who wed as much for status as for love, is one of the prime examples of the growing trend of women seeking divorce during the early twentieth century. Gross Misbehavior and Wickedness-the charges Nina levied at James for his adultery (with the family governess) and extreme cruelty-recounts the protracted legal proceedings in juicy detail. Jean Elson uses court documents, correspondence, journals, and interviews with descendants to recount the salacious case. In the process, she underscores how divorce-in an era when women needed husbands for economic support-was associated with women's aspirations for independence and rights. The Walkers' dispute, replete with plot twists and memorable characters, sheds light on a critical period in the evolution of American culture.

While an abundance of literature covers the right of states to defend themselves against external aggression, this is the first book dedicated to the right to personal self-defense in international law. Drawing on his extensive experience as a human rights practitioner and scholar, Dr. Hessbruegge sets out in careful detail the strict requirements that human rights impose on defensive force by law enforcement authorities, especially police killings in self-defense. The book also discusses the exceptional application of the right to personal self-defense in military-led operations, notably to contain violent civilians who do not directly participate in hostilities. Human rights also establish parameters on how broad or narrow the laws can be drawn on self-defense between private persons. Setting out the prevailing international standards, the book critically examines the ongoing trend to excessively broaden self-defense laws. It also refutes the claim that there is a human right to possess firearms for self-defense purposes. In extraordinary circumstances, the right to personal self-defence sharpens human rights and allows people to defend themselves against the state. Here the author establishes that international law gives individuals the right to forcibly resist human rights violations that pose a serious risk of significant and irreparable harm. At the same time, he calls into question prevailing state practice, which fails to recognize any collective right to organized armed resistance even when it constitutes the last resort to defend against genocide or other mass atrocities.

How do men's and women's paths to political office differ? Once in office, are women's powers more constrained than those of men? The number of women in executive leadership positions has grown substantially over the past five decades, and women now govern in vastly different contexts around the world. But their climbs to such positions don't necessarily correspond with social status and the existence of gender equity. In Shattered, Cracked, or Firmly Intact? Farida Jalalzai outlines important patterns related to women executive's paths, powers, and potential impacts. In doing so, she combines qualitative and quantitative analysis and explores both contexts in which women successfully gained executive power and those in which they did not. The glass ceiling has truly shattered in Finland (where, to date, three different women have come to executive power), only cracked in the United Kingdom (with Margaret Thatcher as the only example of a female prime minister), and remains firmly intact in the United States. While women appear to have made substantial gains, they still face many obstacles in their pursuit of national executive office. Women, compared to their male counterparts, more often ascend to relatively weak posts and gain offices through appointment as opposed to popular election. When dominant women presidents do rise through popular vote, they still almost always hail from political families and from within unstable systems. Jalalzai asserts the importance of institutional features in contributing positive representational effects for women national leaders. Her analysis offers both a broad understanding of global dynamics of executive power as well as particulars about individual women leaders from every region of the globe over the past fifty years. Viewing gender as embedded within institutions and processes, this book provides an unprecedented and comprehensive view of the complex, contradictory, and multifaceted dimensions of women's national leadership.

This scholarly legal work focuses on the dilemma of prosecuting gender-based crimes under the statutes of the international criminal tribunals with reference to the principle of fair labelling. In this book Hilmi M. Zawati explains how the abstractness and lack of accurate description of gender-based crimes in the statutory laws of the international criminal tribunals and courts infringe the principle of fair labelling, lead to inconsistent verdicts and punishments, and cause inadequate prosecution of these crimes. This inquiry deals with gender-based crimes as a case study, and with fair labelling as a legal principle and a theoretical framework. Critical and timely, this study contributes to existing scholarship in many different ways. It is the first legal analysis to focus on the dilemma of prosecuting and punishing wartime gender-based crimes in the statutory laws of the international criminal tribunals and the ICC in the context of fair labelling. Moreover, it emphasizes that applying fair labelling to wartime gender-based crimes would enable the tribunals and the ICC to deliver fair judgments, eliminate inconsistent prosecution, overcome shortcomings in addressing gender-based crimes within their jurisprudence, while breaking the cycle of impunity for these crimes. Consisting of two parts, this work begins by outlining the central focus and theoretical legal framework of the study. It concentrates on fair labelling as an imperative legal principle and a legal framework, examines its intellectual development, scope and justification, and illustrates its applicability to gender-based crimes. The second part addresses the dilemma of prosecuting gender-based crimes in the international criminal tribunals.

Cultural views of femininity exerted a powerful influence on the courtroom arguments used to defend or condemn notable women on trial in nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century America. By examining the colorful rhetorical strategies employed by lawyers and reporters of women's trials in newspaper articles, trial transcriptions, and popular accounts, A. Cheree Carlson argues that the men in charge of these communication avenues were able to transform their own values and morals into believable narratives that persuaded judges, juries, and the general public of a woman's guilt or innocence. Carlson analyzes the situations of several women of varying historical stature, from the insanity trials of Mary Todd Lincoln and Lizzie Borden's trial for the brutal slaying of her father and stepmother, to lesser-known trials involving insanity, infidelity, murder, abortion, and interracial marriage. The insanity trial of Elizabeth Parsons Ware Packard, the wife of a minister, resulted from her attempts to change her own religion, while a jury acquitted Mary Harris for killing her married lover, suggesting that loss of virginity to an adulterous man was justifiable grounds for homicide. The popular conception of abortion as a "woman's crime" came to the fore in the case of Ann Loman (also known as Madame Restell), who performed abortions in New York both before and after it became a crime. Finally, Alice Rhinelander was sued for fraud by her new husband Leonard for "passing" as white, but the jury was more moved by the notion of Alice being betrayed as a woman by her litigious husband than by the supposed defrauding of Leonard as a white male. Alice won the case, but the image of womanhood as in need of sympathy and protection won out as well. At the heart of these cases, Carlson reveals clearly just how narrow was the line that women had to walk, since the same womanly virtues that were expected of them--passivity, frailty, and purity--could be turned against them at any time. These trials of popular status are especially significant because they reflect the attitudes of the broad audience, indicate which forms of knowledge are easily manipulated, and allow us to analyze how the verdict is argued outside the courtroom in the public and press. With gripping retellings and incisive analysis of these scandalous criminal and civil cases, this book will appeal to historians, rhetoricians, feminist researchers, and anyone who enjoys courtroom drama.

In the landmark Lavallee decision of 1990, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that evidence of "battered woman syndrome" was admissible in establishing self-defence for women accused of killing their abusive partners. This book looks at the trials of eleven battered women, ten of whom killed their partners, in the fifteen years since Lavallee. Drawing extensively on trial transcripts and a rich expanse of interdisciplinary sources, the author looks at the evidence produced at trial and at how self-defence was argued. By illuminating these cases, this book uncovers the practical and legal dilemmas faced by battered women on trial for murder.

Though the number of women elected to the U.S. state legislatures has grown substantially in the last forty years, researchers still struggle to connect women's presence in the legislature to public policy outcomes that affect women. One reason for this struggle is that we lack a complete understanding of how political parties modify the relationship between women legislators' interests in representing women and the creation of public policies affecting women. In How Women Represent Women: Political Parties, Gender and Representation in the State Legislatures, Tracy L. Osborn examines the two avenues through which political parties fundamentally affect the ways in which partisan women legislators pursue women's issues policies. She argues that political parties structure representation in two ways. First, women's party identities shape the types of policy alternatives they offer to solve women's policy problems. Second, parties organize the legislative process by holding majority control, to varying degrees, over agenda setting and policy creation, promoting some women legislators' policy proposals over others. Osborn tests these two avenues of influence by comparing partisan women's legislative behavior toward the creation of women's issues policies across different party environments in the U.S. state legislatures. She uses original election, sponsorship, and roll call data in nearly all ninety-nine state legislative chambers in 1999-2000. She concludes that Republican and Democratic women offer different solutions to women's policy problems based on their party identities. Depending on which party controls the legislative process and how strongly they do so, this party control promotes one set of partisan policy alternatives over the other. Thus, political parties determine which women's issues policies become law. Ultimately, this book demonstrates how essential parties are to understanding how women elected to public office translate their interest in women's issues into substantive public policy.

In States of Passion: Law, Identity and the Social Construction of Desire, Professor Yvonne Zylan explores the role of legal discourse in shaping sexual experience, sexual expression, and sexual identity. The book focuses on three topics: anti-gay hate crime laws, same-sex sexual harassment, and same-sex marriage, examining how sexuality is socially constructed through the institutionally-specific production of legal discourse.
States of Passion argues that law's power to authorize specific discourses and practices of love, desire, hatred, fear, and vulnerability remain grounded in the powerful discourses and institutional practices that mark law as dispassionate, cerebral, and fundamentally procedural. States of Passion contends that those states of passion we experience in our daily lives as particularly significant-to our sense of self, to our collective and social identities, and to our ideas about the body and its dictates-increasingly have as much to do with the state as they do with passion.

Chief Justice John Marshall argued that a constitution "requires that only its great outlines should be marked and] its important objects designated." Ours is "intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs." In recent years, Marshall's great truths have been challenged by proponents of originalism and strict construction. Such legal thinkers as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia argue that the Constitution must be construed and applied as it was when the Framers wrote it.
In Keeping Faith with the Constitution, three legal authorities make the case for Marshall's vision. They describe their approach as "constitutional fidelity"--not to how the Framers would have applied the Constitution, but to the text and principles of the Constitution itself. The original understanding of the text is one source of interpretation, but not the only one; to preserve the meaning and authority of the document, to keep it vital, applications of the Constitution must be shaped by precedent, historical experience, practical consequence, and societal change. The authors range across the history of constitutional interpretation to show how this approach has been the source of our greatest advances, from Brown v. Board of Education to the New Deal, from the Miranda decision to the expansion of women's rights. They delve into the complexities of voting rights, the malapportionment of legislative districts, speech freedoms, civil liberties and the War on Terror, and the evolution of checks and balances.
The Constitution's framers could never have imagined DNA, global warming, or even women's equality. Yet these and many more realities shape our lives and outlook. Our Constitution will remain vital into our changing future, the authors write, if judges remain true to this rich tradition of adaptation and fidelity.

Extensive welfare, law, and policy reforms characterized the making and unmaking of Keynesian states in the 20th century. This collection highlights the gendered nature of these regulatory shifts and, specifically, the roles played by women - as reformers, welfare workers, and welfare recipients - in the historical development of welfare states. The contributors are leading feminist socio-legal scholars from a range of disciplines in the US, Canada, and Israel. Collectively, their analyses of women, law, and poverty speak to long-standing and ongoing feminist concerns: the importance of historically informed research, the relevance of women's agency and resistance to the experience of inequality and injustice, the specificity of the experience of poor women and poor mothers, the implications of changes to social policy, and the possibilities for social change. Such analyses are particularly timely as the devastation of neo-liberalism becomes increasingly obvious. The current world crisis of capitalism is a defining moment for liberal states - a global catastrophe that concomitantly creates a window of opportunity for critical scholars and activists to reframe debates about social welfare, work, and equality, and to reinsert the discourse of social justice into the public consciousness and political agenda of liberal democracies. (Series: Onati International Series in Law and Society)

This is the first book to unpack the legal and ethical issues surrounding unauthorised intimate examinations during labour. The book uses feminist, socio-legal and philosophical tools to explore the issues of power, vulnerability and autonomy. The collection challenges the perception that the law adequately addresses different manifestations of unauthorised medical touch through the lens of women's experiences of unauthorised vaginal examinations during labour. The book unearths several broader themes that are of huge significance to lawyers and healthcare professionals such as the legal status of women and their bodies. The book raises questions about women's experiences during childbirth in hospital settings. It explores the status of women's bodies during labour and childbirth where too easily they become objectified, and it raises important issues around consent. The book highlights links to the law on sexual offences and women's loss of power under the medical gaze. Women's Birthing Bodies and the Law includes contributions from leading feminist philosophers, healthcare professionals, and academics in healthcare and law, and offers pioneering analysis relevant to lawyers and healthcare professionals with an interest in medical law and ethics; feminist theory; criminal law; tort law; and human rights law.

This edited collection asks how key New Zealand judgments might read if they were written by a feminist judge. Feminist judging is an emerging critical legal approach that works within the confines of common law legal method to challenge the myth of judicial neutrality and illustrate how the personal experiences and perspectives of judges may influence the reasoning and outcome of their decisions. Uniquely, this book includes a set of cases employing an approach based on mana wahine, the use of Maori values that recognise the complex realities of Maori women's lives. Through these feminist and mana wahine judgments, it opens possibilities of more inclusive judicial decision making for the future. 'This project stops us in our tracks and asks us: how could things have been different? At key moments in our legal history, what difference would it have made if feminist judges had been at the tiller? By doing so, it raises a host of important questions. What does it take to be a feminist judge? Would we want our judges to be feminists and if so why? Is there a uniquely female perspective to judging?' Professor Claudia Geiringer, Faculty of Law, Victoria University of Wellington 'With this book, some of our leading jurists expose the biases and power structures that underpin legal rules and the interpretation of them. Some also give voice to mana wahine perspectives on and about the law that have become invisible over time, perpetuating the impacts of colonialism and patriarchy combined on Maori women. I hope this book will be a catalyst for our nation to better understand and then seek to ameliorate these impacts.' Dr Claire Charters, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Auckland 'The work is highly illuminating and is critical to the development of our legal system ... It is crucial, not only for legal education, so that students of the law open their minds to the different ways legal problems can be conceptualised and decided. It is also crucial if we are going to have a truly just legal system where all the different voices and perspectives are fairly heard.' Professor Mark Henaghan, Dean of the Faculty of Law, University of Otago 'I believe this project is particularly important, as few academics or researchers in New Zealand concentrate on judicial method. I am therefore hopeful that it will provoke thoughtful debate in a critical area for society.' The Honourable Justice Helen Winkelmann, New Zealand Court of Appeal

This book addresses and analyses the rape sentencing regime in India, and demonstrates that despite law reform, the myths and stereotypes about rapists and rape victims that used to be embedded in the positive law of rape and/or in evidence law have, in many cases, merely shifted from the charging and trial stages to the sentencing stage. The book further argues that rape myths and stereotypes influence sentencing, leading to unwarranted disparity. It undertakes a theoretical examination of the purposes of punishment, the fundamentally overlapping nature of the stages of the criminal process, and the meaning of 'disparity'. The book sets forth what the sentencing guidelines for rape in India might provide, discussing factors that should be considered relevant and irrelevant in the sentencing of rape offenders. The underlying theme of the book is to bring the rule of law to criminal sentencing in India.