American Courts and the Sex Blind Spot: Legitimacy and Representation

We argue the legacy of explicit sex bias and discrimination with relation to political rights and social status begins within government, hewn from state and federal lawmaking. As such, male lawmakers and judges conscribed a woman’s role to her home and defined the scope of her independence in the local community and broader society. Politically and legally, women were legal appendages to men—objects of male power (visà-vis their husbands and fathers). In law, women’s roles included sexual chattel to their spouses, care of the home, and producing offspring. Accordingly, women were essential in the home, as law would have it, but unnecessary, and even harmful and sabotaging, to a participatory democracy. Building from two years of empirical research and examining each federal appeals court’s record on abortion and each judge’s vote on a particular case, this project studies whether women are more likely than their male counterparts to affirm reproductive health rights. We examined 302 cases across each federal appellate circuit, including the District of Columbia and the Federal Circuit. Our findings have both normative and sociological implications. This project tells an important story about the composition of the federal appellate judiciary and the slow climb for women, including women of color, within the elite branches of the courts. This is a story expressed in numbers and it reflects the historical marginalization of women within the law and the problem of homogeneity in the courts

The Free-Market Approach to Adoption: The Value of a Baby

Adoption processes in the United States, once based on the altruistic child welfare model, have morphed to reflect the desires of would-be parents. The author argues that the current adoption model in the United States resembles an unregulated marketplace in children. Whether lawmakers and citizens wish to recognize this marketplace, its existence is demonstrated by frequent financial transactions among adoptive parents, birth mothers, and adoption agencies that resemble payments. The author explores this marketplace and the way in which race, genetic traits, and class are implicated in adoption processes, resulting in higher fees associated with the adoption of children with desirable traits. The author proposes two mechanisms by which the government could regulate the adoption market—price caps and taxation. Ultimately, however, the author advocates greater transparency and information in the adoption process to protect the welfare of children who might otherwise be exploited in an unregulated adoption market

Reproducing Hierarchy in Commercial Intimacy

Roundtable on Regulating Assisted Reproductive Technology 201

Expressive Minimalism and Fuzzy Signals: The Judiciary and the Role of Law

The proper role of courts engenders significant debate. Yet, what seems better settled is the principle that courts are the place at which the common law is developed. Its genesis and modifications evolve out of the juridical process and when that process becomes encumbered or deferred to the legislature the role of the judiciary is called into question. This essay makes the case that expressive minimalism too often governs the common law judicial approach to biotechnology. The cases visited in this domain test our capacity to understand whether life is appropriately described as being beyond the definition of property, as well as the disputed assumptions about life being commodifiable, patentable, destroyable, and conscriptable. There are also the circumstances that demand secondary or third party response depending on judicial expression, including what to do when life is stolen, misappropriated or fraudulently acquired. Goodwin argues that rather than motivating legislative action, or imbuing the bench with greater wisdom or information, expressive minimalism in the context of biotechnology will likely send fuzzy signals. Fuzzy signals will not be clear messages to the legislature. To the contrary, fuzzy signals, like those transmitted across cell phones and televisions, discombobulate messages, distort pictures, and ultimately, are difficult to read

A Few Thoughts on Assisted Reproductive Technology

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Private Ordering and Intimate Spaces: Why the Ability to Negotiate is Non-Negotiable

This review moves beyond a critique of Cherry\u27s study to incorporate a radical new way of thinking about organ commodification as a social justice issue. Part I provides a brief empirical overview of organ demand in the United States, offering an alternative perspective and introducing data illexamined in commodification debates. Part II challenges the notion that private ordering abandons liberal and egalitarian values in favor of individualism over communitarianism. It also acknowledges the limitations of private ordering and addresses how its more problematic features, including the abuse of power, might be avoided. Part III argues for a hybrid system that reorders regulation of intimate spaces. It proposes a system that allows incentives to coincide with altruistic donation. Finally, Part IV contends that the discussion of commodification needs to change in order to incorporate all members of society. Only after we change the discussion from whether or not to commodify to what degree of commodification is socially acceptable will this incorporation happen