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This article discusses the order of the Boletín Oficial del Estado de España (Official Bulletin of the State of Spain) of September 1, 2018, regarding the Acuerdo del Consejo de Ministros (Agreement of the Council of Ministers) on reforms to the criminal code in relation to gender. The author comments on the relation of constitutional rights and feminism as addressed by these reforms.

Cultural and religious practices are critical to explaining Afghanistan's dreadful reputation concerning the preservation, protection, and promotion of women's rights. Those advocating misogynistic practices assert that the calls for reforms challenge their religion and culture, while also claiming that many women's issues exist within the private realm. Accordingly, they assert that re forms that aim at addressing disempowerment are not vital to the state and go beyond the established limits of state authority. Building on feminist legal theory, which distinguishes between the public and private spheres, I argue in Afghanistan misogynistic and discriminatory practices stem from contrived cultural and religious norms. Using the notion of state strength, this Paper advances the idea that the discourses countering the lack of official action in ending discrimination must emphasize that unless women's role in contemporary Afghan society is strengthened, the state will continue to remain weak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at debates over a proposed uniform civil code (UCC) for all Indian citizens, with a particular focus on feminist critiques of the UCC. The author examines the relationship between individual rights and the rights of minorities as codified in the UCC. Topic discussed the concept of uniformity, the Hindu Nationalist political party the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), heteronormativity, and women's property rights.

Professor Ann Scales began her distinguished career by taking feminism and reproductive justice seriously. She became a leading feminist voice and influence on a number of topics. In later years, she returned to concerns about reproductive justice by presciently emphasizing the need to preserve women's access to abortions. This Essay discusses Professor Scales's concerns and feminist method and then turns to reproductive justice. The Essay notes that, with Scales, a fight to abortion is foundational for reproductive justice. The Essay then examines the increasing narrowing of access to abortion through law. The Essay next examines a current crisis over access to contraception, including arguments that some contraceptives are abortifacients and therefore should not be available and the debate over insurance coverage for contraception under the Affordable Care Act. The Essay concludes with an examination of what reproductive justice advocates can do to stop what appears to be a steady undermining of rights to abortion and contraception, drawing in part on Professor Scales's concern with always examining women's voices and using political as well as litigation strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides analysis of the US Supreme Court decision of Gonzales v. Carhart and unpacks issues pertinent to the production and deployment of certain concepts and discourses in different camps on the abortion rights issue in the US. The author employs perspectives inspired by feminist jurisprudence and gender studies, and explores the ideologies reflected in the discourses and knowledge production, and the possible interpretations and changes that could be made in the wake of this decision. Concepts such as fetus, woman/mother, respect for the dignity of human life, and the related world views and the potential implications for the pursuit of women's rights are also examined in the article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author revisits Carol Smart's 1989 publication Feminism and the power of law. She engages with Smart's main claims by way of a number of other thinkers. Following Marianne Constable's description of contemporary American legal thought as socio-legal, the author tentatively considers if it could be argued that some strains in contemporary legal feminism that adopted a sociological method resulted in a similar absence of justice that concerns Constable. Smart's caution against the development of a feminist jurisprudence is critically analysed with the benefit of hindsight. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari, Foucault and Goodrich, the author tentatively considers the becoming of a feminist jurisprudence as a minor jurisprudence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Essay describes the evolution of feminist legal scholarship, using six articles published by the California Law Review as exemplars. This short history provides a window on the most important contributions of feminist scholarship to understandings about gender and law. It explores alternative formulations of equality, and the competing assumptions, ideals, and implications of these formulations. It describes frameworks of thought intended to compensate for the limitations of equality doctrine, including critical legal feminism, different voice theory, and nonsubordination theory, and the relationships between these frameworks. Finally, it identifies feminist legal scholarship that has crossed the disciplinary boundaries of law. Among its conclusions, the Essay points out that as feminist scholarship has become more mainstream, its assumptions and methods are less distinct. It observes that even as feminist legal scholarship has generated important, insightful critiques of equality doctrine, it remains committed to the concept of equality, as continually revised and refined. The Essay also highlights the importance of feminist activism and practice in sharpening and refining feminist legal scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers whether Islamic law is compatible with feminist jurisprudence, as well as the repercussions of the inquiry in the Australian context. It traces the origins of the Islamic feminist movement from the Western dominated first and second waves of feminism, through to the reactionary third wave that sought to refute the universalisation of Western experience. It considers that to have any meaning, Islamic feminists must espouse theories that harmonize its two components. In considering the feminist component, this article argues that contrary to post-modernist thinking, concepts contain core meanings regardless of context, and that for feminism, this includes an acceptance of gender equality. The article then turns towards the Islamic component, and highlights in particular the issue of whether a literal interpretation of the Qur’an is an immutable aspect of Islam. Ultimately Islam’s capacity to embrace feminist interpretations is a matter of choice, both for Muslims and non-Muslims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work aims to show the evolution of measures that tend to establish equality between men and women in Spain. At first, legal reforms seeking the elimination of gender discrimination under law predominated. Subsequently, policies were adopted aiming not only to abolish legal discrimation that still existed, but mostly to reach effective equality. This article describes some measures adopted during these two periods making it possible to identify the legal-historical context that contributed to the adoption of many Spanish recent and polemic laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the legal concept of equality. It explores the meaning and provisions of equality, and relates the importance of improving ways in understanding the notion of equality through physical performance. It explores the collaborative experience of the scholars in trying to determine the impact of the law through physical theater. It explores various contemporary debates on equality, and examines the link between feminist methodology and feminist critique. It also mentions the efforts of feminist legal scholars in analyzing the ways on how the jurisprudence of equality has changed through the years.

The article offers an analysis of Robin West's "Jurisprudence and Gender." It states that the proposed idea of West that people who want to achieve sex equality need to perform both practical, political work and theoretical, and conceptual work. It mentions that the article focuses on the varieties of feminism and on the problems of American women, such as sexual violence, sexual harassment, inadequate support, and unequal employment opportunities. It also provides an analysis of the concept of radical and cultural feminism.

This essay reflects on the short story of Susan Glaspell entitled "Jury of Her Peers." The fictional short story written in 1916 is based on a true court case of an abused wife which strangled her husband to death while he was sleeping. The story is mentioned to ponder on oppression and gender discrimination especially in the justice system, women's awakening and feminine bonding, and promotes feminine thinking and judgment. The article also discussed several films that portray the same feminist ideology seen in Glaspell's novel. The author suggests adding "Jury of Her Peers," into the law-school curriculum, along with other feminist films that are believed to be powerful materials of teaching in the current century.

The article discusses the relationship of the international women's movement to capitalism. According to the author, feminism has been a social force to be reckoned with, and apparently she thought that it would lead to a more just world. However, it does not happen as feminist organizations turned out to be well-suited to the unjust and dangerous corporate capitalist system. Capitalism seemed to be the unspoken reality of American politics such that political parties tend to get rid of corporate capitalism out above politics.

The article focuses on feminist legal scholarship. Feminist legal scholarship has nevertheless sought to go further than reforming the law as it is, either by substituting women for men, or by adding women in. In this article, the author considers how the category woman has imploded within feminist theory and the significance of the implosion for feminism within the legal academy. He then shows how legal feminism, still reeling from this blow, was subjected to a second major assault with the rise of neoliberalism and the market turn. These trends are not discrete but imbricated with each other. Despite the market's universalising tendencies, its chameleon-like morphology simultaneously serves to undermine them. Belying its up-to-the-minute trendiness, neo-liberalism also displays a deep moral conservatism, which is anti-feminist, anti-Aboriginal rights, anti-gay and lesbian rights and, generally, anti-progressive. In view of the devastating effect of the confluence of these trends on the legal academy, he concludes by posing the question as to whether life for feminist legal scholars might be better outside the academy.

The article focuses on legal feminism. In a remarkably short time, feminist legal scholarship in Australia and elsewhere began to have a considerable presence. Several influential books were published in 1990. A review of the literature of the late 1980's and early 1990's shows a steadily growing feminist intervention in areas such as labour law, discrimination law, criminal law, family law and the law of torts as well as a small but significant contribution in areas where the impact of law on women was perhaps less direct, such as constitutional law and corporate laws. Of course the boundaries of different areas of positive law were themselves under challenge by feminist questioning of the structure of social and legal principles such as the public/private dichotomy. From its earliest years, legal feminism had also identified the importance of countering the strongly masculinist traditions in legal education and the legal profession. In other words, it did not take long for feminist legal scholarship to identify many of its enduring concerns, which were well-established by the early 1990's. The past decade has seen some expansion in subject-matter, but more importantly, a very great consolidation of research in those areas originally identified.

This review essay analyzes Gwen Brodsky and Shelagh Day's Canadian Charter Equality Rights for Women: One Step Forward or Two Steps Back? as an example of that strand of Canadian legal feminism which is indebted to Catharine MacKinnon's conception of "inequality as dominance", and which asserts or implies that women have unified, homogeneous "interests". Amy Bartholomew argues that the combination of these two analytical positions manifests itself in a "feminism with no class", i.e., a feminist analysis and politics that is defensive and oriented mainly toward the amelioration of sex discrimination. Thus, despite certain strengths, principally in terms of advocating a feminist politics of litigation in Canada, this sort of legal feminism is too narrow and too defensive for the task of formulating an effective, progressive feminist politics of rights. Rather than relying on essentialist conceptions of "women's interests'' and defensive conceptions of politics, the author calls for rethinking "interests" and identity formation and for formulating counter-hegemonic rights politics in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduces a series of articles on the topic of women's rights, including the future of legal feminism and developments in family law in Canada.

This article examines the premises of the emerging field of feminist jurisprudence and critically reviews some basic works in this field. While feminist legal scholars agree that law, both as an institution and as an academic enterprise, contains an inherent male bias, they differ among themselves in their explanations of how this bias arose and what its effects are. Several of these scholars emphasize gender differences, rather than male domination, in their critiques of law. This article examines the underlying premises characteristic of what it labels "difference jurisprudence." The analysis concludes, first, that difference jurisprudence has no adequate theory of gender difference, and, second, that the existing scholarship rests on premises which are dangerous to sexual equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A review of the article "The Status of Women Under International Law: On Feminist Approaches to International Law," by Huang Jianqiu, in issue 35.1 (January 2008) of "Journal of Shanxi Normal University, Social Science Edition" is presented.