Women's Movements & the Law

The National Women's History Alliance has designated the 2024 Women's History Month theme as "Women Who Advocate for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion”, recognizing women who work to “eliminate bias and discrimination entirely from our lives and institutions” and who are “committed to embracing every

The Dee J. Kelly Law Library in conjunction with Texas A&M Law's Women of Color Collective (WOCC) curated a book display honoring Women's History Month. The display, entitled Courageous Voices: Women of Color in Legal Leadership, highlights several women of color who were pioneers in the legal field. From federal and state court judges to legislators and academics, the display chronicles their achievements and features scholarly works from the library's collection detailing their pursuits. From Pauli Murray and Constance Baker Motley to Patsy Takemoto Mink and Sonia Sotomayor among many others, the exhibit celebrates these pioneering legal leaders. Visit the library's Reading Room to view the display now through the end of March.

"This book is a collection of voices that persist in a profession that still lags behind in hearing them. We share these stories because the profession is enriched by the stories and the lawyers who tell them. This book is a form of virtual mentoring to build up the next generation of woman advocates so that they, too, may add their stories. In this book, we provide information about the status of women in the legal profession, and stories about identifying and overcoming bias and the hidden hazards in the practice of law, for men and women, while addressing the business of law. The stories in this book then go on to explain the value of being true to ourselves, establishing unique career paths, and finding guideposts and beacons to help enlighten us along the way to success"--

The Alabama Supreme Court has ruled that frozen embryos created during fertility treatments should be considered children.

The FBI’s “repeated and continued failures, delays and inaction” allowed Jeffrey Epstein to continue his sex trafficking operation for more than 20 years, twelve alleged victims claimed in a lawsuit filed Wednesday.

On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, immediately stripping women of their constitutional right to abortion. The devastating effects of this decision can be seen as states begin to criminalize abortion. Abortion is now illegal in 16 states, and anti-abortion lawmakers in other states are rushing to follow suit, threatening to make abortion inaccessible to an estimated 33 million women across the country. The impact of this decision on women’s health was almost immediate.

"Decades after liberal constitutional democracies ended the laws of patriarchy and committed to gender equality, misogyny still pervades women's lives. Often expressed as hatred and discrimination against women, misogyny is the legal aftermath of patriarchy, which goes beyond attacking and belittling women. After Misogyny reframes misogyny as society's overentitlement to women's forbearance and sacrifices, which continues to be expressed in the law even after patriarchy has been repudiated. Women's contributions, both inside and outside the home, are radically undercompensated and highly beneficial to society-especially the reproductive work of childbearing and childrearing. From antidiscrimination law to abortion bans, the law fails women by keeping the dynamics of social overentitlement and male overempowerment invisible. In recent years, many constitutional democracies have used new processes of constitution-making and constitutional change to reset entitlements and power. After Misogyny shows how movements to reset these baseline entitlements are necessary for constitutional democracies to overcome misogyny"--

"Abortion access has been transformed by medication abortion pills. These pills have made safe abortion possible around the world, even in the most restrictive legal contexts. Abortion Beyond Borders follows these pills as they are moved by feminist activists from India into Ireland, Northern Ireland, Poland and the USA. It explores how medication abortion pills and the activists who supply them have changed abortion access, impacted politics, and catalyzed progressive reforms. Abortion Beyond Borders offers an unprecedented, up-close look into the global self-managed abortion movement"--

"The story of the National Organization for Women-its structures, trials, and revolutionary mission-told through the work of three extraordinary, little-known members"--;In the summer of 1966, crammed into a D.C. hotel suite, twenty-eight women devised a revolutionary plan. Betty Friedan, the well-known author of The Feminine Mystique, and Pauli Murray, a lawyer at the front lines of the civil rights movement, had called this renegade meeting from attendees at the annual conference of state women's commissions. Fed up with waiting for government action and trying to work with a broken system, they laid out a vision for an organization to unite all women and fight for their rights. Alternately skeptical and energized, they debated the idea late into the night. In less than twenty-four hours, the National Organization for Women was born. In The Women of NOW, the historian Katherine Turk chronicles the growth and enduring influence of this foundational group through three lesser-known members who became leaders: Aileen Hernandez, a federal official of Jamaican American heritage; Mary Jean Collins, a working-class union organizer and Chicago Catholic; and Patricia Hill Burnett, a Michigan Republican, artist, and former beauty queen. From its bold inception through the tumultuous training ground of the 1970s, NOW's feminism flooded the nation, permanently shifted American culture and politics, and clashed with conservative forces, presaging our fractured national landscape. These women built an organization that was radical in its time but flexible and expansive enough to become a mainstream fixture. This is the story of how they built it--and built it to last.

"Analyzing sex offense laws and false claims, this book shows that laws based on vengeance rather than justice or evidence create new forms of harm while failing to address the real and pervasive problem of sexual violence"--;"In this timely and extensively researched book, sociologist Emily Horowitz shows how current sex offense policies in the United States create new forms of harm and prevent those who have caused harm from the process of constructive repentance or contributing to society after punishment. Horowitz also illustrates the failure of criminal justice responses to social problems. Sharing detailed narratives from the experiences of those on registries and their loved ones, Horowitz reveals the social impact and cycle of violence that results from dehumanizing and banishing those who have already been held accountable.From Rage to Reason offers a new perspective on how and why false claims about sex offenses became so pervasive and how these myths fostered ineffective policies that have little to do with the reality of most sexual abuse. It argues that to truly prevent sexual abuse, we must unearth the sources of these misunderstandings, debunk these claims in a systematic way, and have frank and genuine discussions about the limits of legal responses to complex social problems"--

Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled to federally decriminalize abortion on Wednesday, finding that the current ban on the procedure is unconstitutional.

"This edited volume brings together expert legal scholars to identify and critique jurisprudential themes running through Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's opinions during her tenure as a jurist, including opinions relating to gender equality, voting rights, copyright law, civil and criminal procedure, immigration law, environmental law, bankruptcy, and more"--

The Arizona Supreme Court has agreed to consider the petition of an anti-abortion doctor who argues that a near-total abortion ban from 1864 should be the law of the land

Planned Parenthood asks court to reconsider South Carolina's 'heartbeat' abortion ban Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers on Thursday asked South Carolina's top court to reconsider its Wednesday ruling upholding the state's recent ban on abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected.In its petition, Planned Parenthood said that the South Carolina Supreme Court had left undecided whether fetal cardiac activity refers to the first regu…

If the court had its way, the clock would turn back to 2016.

In the 14 months since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, advocacy groups have sought to protect abortion rights through state constitutional amendments.

Women in Texas with complicated pregnancies will be exempted from a state abortion ban under a temporary injunction issued on Friday.

Special Operations vet Jeff Tiegs runs Skull Games, where evangelical Christians use internet surveillance to locate and bust sex workers.

"Shaking up New York and national politics by becoming the first African American congresswoman and, later, the first Black major-party presidential candidate, Shirley Chisholm left an indelible mark as an 'unbought and unbossed' firebrand and a leader in politics for meaningful change. Anastasia C. Curwood interweaves Chisholm's public image, political commitments, and private experiences to create a definitive account of a consequential life"--

"Over its half-century of public life, Roe v. Wade took on meanings that extended far beyond its original purpose of protecting the privacy of the doctor-patient relationship. At various times, it forced us to confront hard questions about judicial activism and restraint, the believability of science, racial justice, the suppression of religion, and much more. Mary Ziegler explores the transformations of meaning that have kept abortion on the front lines of our political and social battles"--

More than fifty years of civil rights legislation and movements have not ended employment discrimination. This book reframes the discourse about the "glass ceiling" that women face with respect to workplace inequality. It explores the unspoken, societally held beliefs that underlie and engender workplace behaviour and failures of the law, policy, and human nature that contribute "panes" and ("pains") to the "glass ceiling." Each chapter identifies an "unspoken belief" and connects it with failures of law, policy, and human nature. It then describes the resulting harm and shows how this belief is not imagined or operating in a vacuum, but is pervasive throughout popular culture and society. By giving voice to previously unvoiced - even taboo - beliefs, we can better address and confront them and the problems they cause.

"Slavery has not been eradicated. The second edition of Human Trafficking updates the legal, moral and political attempts to contain sex and labor trafficking. The authors bring unique perspectives to these topics. Professor Page, an African American woman all too familiar with the vestiges of slavery, has written and lectured internationally on trafficking. Professor Piatt, a Hispanic law professor and former law school dean, brings his international experience as an educator, author and advocate regarding immigration and human rights matters to bear. The book considers efforts at containment, including controversial topics such as whether prostitution should be legalized. It concludes with specific approaches to eliminate trafficking"--

The modern Republican Party is the party of conservative Christianity and big business-two things so closely identified with the contemporary GOP that we hardly notice the strangeness of the pairing. Legal historian Mary Ziegler traces how the antiabortion movement helped to forge and later upend this alliance. Beginning with the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Buckley V. Valeo, right-to-lifers fought to gain power in the GOP by changing how campaign spending-and the First Amendment-work. The antiabortion movement helped to revolutionize the rules of money in US politics and convinced conservative voters to fixate on the federal courts. Ultimately, the campaign finance landscape that abortion foes created fueled the GOP's embrace of populism and the rise of Donald Trump. Ziegler offers a surprising new view of the slow drift to extremes in American politics-and explains how it had everything to do with campaign spending.

"Fair adjudication of campus sexual assault is one of the most divisive issues facing the United States. Victims contend that schools aren't doing enough to protect them, and accused students complain that they are presumed guilty. Sexual Assault on Campus: Defending Due Process begins by critically assessing the extent of the problem, before explaining why the criminal justice system has been unable to respond adequately. The book discusses the Department of Education's attempts to force schools to take campus assault seriously and uses original data in assessing the fairness of adjudication in the wake of the 2o1 "Dear Colleague Letter." It also includes excerpts from interviews with complainants, accused students, and administrators, which offer readers a first-hand account of these proceedings. Finally, the book provides a critical, in-depth look at the Title IX regulations put in place by the Trump Administration, with detailed recommendations for how they can be improved."

Despite the huge advances women have made in recent decades, their ambitions are still undermined in subtle ways. Parents, teachers, bosses, and institutions all give less encouragement to women than men, and women still grow up believing that they must defer to men in order be seen as feminine. If their ambition does survive into adulthood, too often those ambitions must be downsized or abandoned to accommodate "wifely" duties of household chores and child care. As a result, women--unlike men-continually have to re-shape their goals and expectations. In this groundbreaking work, Anna Fels draws on extensive research and years of her psychiatric practice to offer an original and deeply useful examination of ambition in women's lives. In the process, she illuminates just what is necessary for women to articulate--and fulfill--their dreams.

Women have made impressive strides in college leadership in recent years. They now hold nearly one-third of chief executive positions and represent 48 percent of chief academic officers, according to CUPA-HR's latest data. But women leaders must still contend with the proverbial boys' club and with cultural assumptions about how they should behave -- and look. This Chronicle collection includes must-read articles on the obstacles these women face and the strategies they rely on to advance. Among their essential skills: developing a supportive network,clearly communicating their values, managing conflict, and, as one leader put it, knowing when to focus and when to rely on peripheral vision.

Celeste Burgess pleaded guilty to illegally concealing human remains after using the abortion pill.

Stalking is a social and public health emergency. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Counterman v. Colorado makes things easier for abusers.

Contrary to its critics, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is not illegitimate or lawless. It is a highly consequential but fundamentally ordinary ex

Nearly half of Arizona’s pregnancy related deaths in 2022 were tied to mental health or substance use disorders, with 98% deemed preventable, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services. And communities of color and rural communities see disparate effects and a lack of perinatal care.