Benevolent Paternalism and Migrant Women: The Case of Migrant Filipina Entertainers in Japan by Rhacel Parrenas
The article examines the migration process of entertainers from the Philippines to Japan. It establishes the conditions of trafficking that leave foreign entertainers in a position of debt bondage and indenture vis-a-vis middleman brokers. Then,it shows how laws established to protect entertainers in the process of migration in fact make prospective migrants vulnerable to trafficking. This is because such protective laws, which are espoused by the culture of benevolent paternalism that...
Read MoreThe 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 MoreAfter Gender: Tools for Progressives in a Shift from Sexual Domination to the Economic Family by Janet Halley
When transnational law looks at sex, gender, and sexuality today, what does it identify as “the problem”? I think it is safe to say that the answer is “male domination, in, through, and as sexuality”—that is, the core idea of Catherine A. MacKinnon’s structuralist sexual-subordination feminism (“SSSF” for purposes of this Essay)—complexified somewhat by some cultural feminist inputs, such as the idea that women’s maternal role gives them access to redemptive strategies that...
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...
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