Tributes to Family Law Scholars Who Helped Us Find Our Path

At some point after the virus struck, I had the idea that it would be appropriate and interesting to ask a number of experienced family law teachers to write a tribute about a more senior family law scholar whose work inspired them when they were beginning their careers. I mentioned this idea to some other long-term members of the professoriate, and they agreed that this could be a good project. So I reached out to some colleagues and asked them to participate. Many agreed to join the team. Some suggested other potential contributors, and some of these suggested faculty members also agreed to submit a tribute. The authors have written about a diverse group of distinguished scholars in the area of family law. We have included 12 scholars who have contributed substantially to the field, and they have also influenced those who have written about them here. The honored scholars and the tribute authors are as follows (organized alphabetically by the honoree): Homer H. Clark Jr. (1918-2015), by Ann Laquer Estin Cooper Davis, by Melissa MurrayPeggy Mary Ann Glendon, by June Carbone Herma Hill Kay (1934-2017), by Barbara A. Atwood Robert Levy, by Paul M. Kurtz Marygold (Margo) Shire Melli (1926-2018), by J. Thomas Oldham & Bruce M. Smyth Martha Minow, by Brian H. Bix Robert Mnookin, by Elizabeth S. Scott Twila Perry, by R.A. Lenhardt Dorothy E. Roberts, by Jessica Dixon Weaver Carol Sanger, by Solangel Maldonado Barbara Bennett Woodhouse, by Sacha M. Coupet Each colleague who participated in this project chose the scholar whose work he or she would celebrate. So, the list of those honored here is subjective and, to a certain extent, serendipitous. This Article is part of a Family Law Quarterly issue that also honors other pioneering contributors to the family law field. We hope to make this a continuing project and to have future opportunities to recognize the many scholars who have had a profound impact on their students – and on all of us – in addition to having an important impact on the development of the law. I trust the reader will find these tributes of interest

Challenging Menstrual Normativity: Nonessentialist Body Politics and Feminist Epistemologies of Health

Guilló-Arakistain examines the ways in which alternative politics of menstruation are challenging the paradigm of sexual dimorphism and heteronormativity. She does this through consideration of discourses which challenge the ideology of menstrual normativity and the rigid, hegemonic, medical, and pathological approaches to the western biomedical vision of menstruation. Guilló-Arakistain links these discourses to specific bodies, incorporating experiences of non-menstruating cisgender women as well as transgender menstruators. It is necessary, she asserts, to dispense with the idea that menstruation is determinative of a very specific gender and social identity and the subsequent normative and reductionist take on menstrual experience (and more generally human experience)

The Semiotic Fractures of Vulnerable Bodies: Resistance to the Gendering of Legal Subjects

While the turn to vulnerability in law responds to a recurrent critique by feminist scholars on the disembodiment of legal personhood, this article suggests that the mobilization of vulnerability in the criminal courts does not necessarily offer female drug mules a direct path to justice. Through an analysis of sentencing appeals of female drug mules in England and Wales, this article presents a feminist critique of the dispositif of the person and its relation to vulnerability. Discourses on drug mules’ vulnerability mobilize the trope of the colonial victim in need of protection, which is often translated into legal mercy. But mercy is rather an expression of biopower which inscribes not only fragility onto the bodies of drug mules by figuring them as exemplar paradigms of colonial subjectivity, but also reinvigorates the dispositif of gender implicit in the legal person. In this set-up, it would appear as if law and politics totalize the registers of life, in this case the contours of vulnerable body. The article suggests we must revisit the image of the wounded body in order to carve out a space for resistance. Drawing on Elaine Scarry and Judith Butler, it suggests vulnerable bodies are marked by a semiotic openness, which renders them subject to appropriation but also able to signify the precarity produced by the law through their resistance to representation