The Legal Tender of Gender: Paradigms of Equality & Realities of Inequality in Gender & the Law

Undergraduate / Graduate

This course will provide an introduction to the concrete legal contexts in which issues of gender and sexuality have been articulated and contested. Students will be asked to think critically about the intersections of law, society, and gender while considering both the potential and the limitations of our legal system. Students will explore how gender constructs law, and how law constructs gender. Through engaging with readings that span law and society, feminist legal theory, constitutional scholarship, and case law, students will be able to identify, situate, and debate some of the basic premises of what constitutes justice and equality in a liberal democracy. Readings will draw from primary and secondary resources related to gender & law in the US. While some court cases/case law will be read, our focus is on the broader relationship between law and society (no technical legal knowledge is required). We will study the evolution of our legal system's stance on topics including marriage/divorce, violence, discrimination, contraception/abortion, sexual orientation, privacy, Title IX, and more. Students will be invited to bring to bear a variety of feminist, queer, critical race, and intersectional tools on our discussions of the historical evolution of these issues and their current trends. Students will develop an original research paper, which will be workshopped throughout the quarter and will culminate in a symposium of students' original research on gender & law.