Gender Justice - L6506

Professor Katherine Franke
Spring 2009
Tuesdays and Thursdays 1:10 - 2:30
Room WJW 103

This course will provide an introduction to the concrete legal contexts in which issues of gender and justice have been articulated, disputed and hesitatingly, if not provisionally, resolved. Readings will cover issues such as Women and the Legal Profession, Sexual Harassment, Sex Role Stereotyping, Work/Family Conflict, Marriage and Alternatives to Marriage, Parenting, Domestic Violence, Reproduction and Pregnancy, Rape, Sex Work & Trafficking. Through these readings we will explore the multiple ways in which the law has contended with sexual difference, gender-based stereotypes, and the meaning of equality in domestic, transnational and international contexts. So too, we will discuss how feminist theorists have thought about sex, gender and sexuality in understanding and critiquing our legal system and its norms.

Class attendance is mandatory. Each student will be required to write two one-page (single spaced) papers engaging the reading for class. Students will be divided into groups with dates assigned when they will write.

Students will be evaluated on class participation, short papers and on a final take-home examination.

Professor Franke's Coordinates:

Office: Room 627
Office Hours: Tuesdays 2:00-3:30 or by appointment
Phone: 854-0061
E-Mail: kfranke@law.columbia.edu
Professor Franke's Assistant: Rachel Jones, 854-7594, rachel.jones@law.columbia.edu

Required texts

• Adler, Crooms, Greenberg, Minow and Roberts, Mary Joe Frug's Women and Law (2008), available at Book Culture (MJF)
• Photocopied material to be distributed during the semester

Additional Resources

• Feminist Legal Theory (Bartlett & Kennedy eds. 1991)
• Critical Race Feminism: A Reader (Wing ed. 1997)
• Martha Chamallas, Introduction to Feminist Legal Theory (2d Ed. 2003)
• Nancy Levit and Robert Verchick, Feminist Legal Theory: A Primer (2006)

Syllabus

• Should Boys and Girls Be Taught Separately, NYT Magazine - available outside the Secretariat on the 7th Floor

• Paradigms of Workplace Equality - MJF pp. 523-554, 581-593

• Limits of Workplace Equality Law - MJF pp. 593-628

• Sexual Harassment - MJF pp. 661-691, 703-718

• Sex Work - MJF pp. 353-377, 394-400, 412-417

• Sex Work - MJF pp. 417-426, 433-453, Gentleman, Picking Up Trash By Hand

• Trafficking - Jordan, Ann. The Annotated Guide to the Complete U.N. Trafficking Protocol. Washington, D.C.: Global Rights, May 2002 (updated August 2002); Landesman, The Girls Next Door, NYT Magazine; Pappu, Off The Record, NY Observer; Weitzer, The Social Construction of Sex Trafficking: Ideology and Institutionalization of a Moral Crusade

• Trafficking - Guest Speaker - Sienna Baskin, Legal Fellow for Sex Workers Project of the Urban Justice Center

IV. Theorizing Sexuality 2.26, 3.3 3.10

• Sexuality and Gender - MJF pp. 295-315, 323-337