The Politics of Injury: A Review of Robin West’s Caring for Justice by Janet Halley
From online journal Unbound: Harvard Journal of the Legal Left In Caring for Justice, Robin West argues that patriarchy operates by harming women on every conceivable dimension but especially in sexuality and reproduction; that women nevertheless gain access in both domains to an ethic of care that is redemptive for the world; and that bringing that ethic fully to bear as the sublime mode of justice will turn law to the remedy of harm and the promotion of care. West’s aim is to redeploy...
Read MoreSplit Decisions: How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism by Janet Halley
Is it time to take a break from feminism? In this pathbreaking book, Janet Halley reassesses the place of feminism in the law and politics of sexuality. She argues that sexuality involves deeply contested and clashing realities and interests, and that feminism helps us understand only some of them. To see crucial dimensions of sexuality that feminism does not reveal–the interests of gays and lesbians to be sure, but also those of men, and of constituencies and values beyond the realm of...
Read MoreRape in Berlin: Reconsidering the Criminalisation of Rape in the International Law of Armed Conflict by Janet Halley
The specific criminalisation of sexual violence in war has made immense strides in recent years and feminists engaged with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Rwanda and the Rome Statute processes have proposed– and often won– a wide range of new legal rules and prosecutorial practices. This essay briefly describes some of these feminist achievements, in particular the reframing of rape and other sexual...
Read MoreRape at Rome: Feminist Interventions in the Criminalization of Sex-Related Violence in Positive International Criminal Law by Janet Halley
This Article examined the work of organized feminism in the formation of the new international criminal tribunals over the course of the 1990s. It focuses on the statues establishing the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, (ICTR), and the International Criminal Court (ICC). It offers a descriptions of their reform agenda read against the outcomes in each court establishing statute. At each stage, the Article counts up...
Read MoreThe meaning of the purchase: desire, demand, and the commerce of sex by Elizabeth Bernstein
Feminists and other scholars have debated theoretically what exactly is being purchased in the prostitution transaction and whether sex can be “a service like any other”, but they have scarcely tackled these questions empirically. This article draws upon field observations of and interviews with male clients of commercial sex-workers and state agents entrusted with regulating them to probe the meanings given to different types of commercial sexual exchange. Manifested by client...
Read MoreUsing human rights to improve maternal and neonatal health: history, connections and a proposed practical approach by Mindy Jane Roseman
We describe the historical development of how maternal and neonatal mortality in the developing world came to be seen as a public-health concern, a human rights concern, and ultimately as both, leading to the development of approaches using human rights concepts and methods to advance maternal and neonatal health. We describe the different contributions of the international community, women’s health advocates and human rights activists. We briefly present a recent effort, developed by WHO...
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