Handbook 1996 : Faculty of Law (Volume 3 page 217)
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Optional Law subject.
Availability: Not offered in 1996.
Prerequisite: Torts and the Process of Law; History and Philosophy of Law.
Contact: 2 hours per week or 4 hours per week
Timetable: Both semesters
Objectives:
Students completing this subject should be able to: understand a substantial body of recent legal writing which takes a feminist standpoint on legal theory and practice; analyse the ways inequalities between men and women are, in part, structured by law; cross doctrinal boundaries both within law and outside it. That is, they should perceive the linkages between various legal doctrines and practices which have contributed to the inequality between men and women, and have some understanding of feminist sociological, philosophical and psychological writings which bear on an understanding of law and legal theory. Further specific objectives are included in the following subject descriptions.
Content:
Why Law and Feminism? A preliminary exploration of feminist engagement with legal doctrine and practice, focusing in particular on feminism in law schools. By the end of this part, students should have a notion of the broad array of doctrinal areas covered and challenged by a feminist theoretical standpoint and understand that a feminist legal analysis can be used in areas beyond those traditionally identified as women's issues.Divisions, Dichotomies, Difference and Epistemology. The central part of the course, covering the theoretical questions and frameworks feminist legal scholars have developed to understand the legal process and its impact on women. Thematic issues: public/private dichotomy - how it has been created in legal doctrine and its impact on women; the contested meaning of equality between women and men, the notion of difference between women and men and differences amongst women; and feminist epistemology or methodology - the development of a specifically feminist methodology and the challenge posed to traditional legal methods of knowledge gathering and analysis. At the end of this part, students should have a theoretical framework for analysing the specific doctrinal areas raised in the rest of the course and for analysing the process of law from a feminist standpoint. The following sections of the course allow students to apply the theoretical approaches to concrete legal issues.
Sources of women's access to money: work, men and the state. Work: the construction in labour law of a male model of work and the worker; the nature of woman's work and the valuation of women's work. Dependence on Men: an examination of the traditional legal disabilities consequent on marriage, the law's intervention in ongoing marital relationships and the response of law on the breakdown of marriage. The question whether it is possible to develop a feminist response to the issues of property distribution and maintenance responsibilities on divorce. Dependence on the state: the tax/transfer system including consideration of the appropriate unit for state financial concern, the household or the individual, and the construction of women's financial dependence through state financial arrangements. At the end of this part, students should have an understanding of the law's role in the construction of women's financial (in)dependence and be able to use the theoretical constructs from part two to understand this financial status.
Women and Connection. The connections women have with their children and foetuses and the construction of these forms of connection by legal discourse. We examine notions of the good wife and the good mother in doctrinal areas beyond family law, as well as within that body of legal doctrine. The recent attempts by feminist legal theorists to reconstruct this form of connection. Doctrinal areas examined include nervous shock, wrongful birth, custody and legal responses to women's decision to mother or not to mother through abortion law, surrogacy and medical treatment of foetuses. At the end of this part, students should have an awareness of the pervasive legal construction of women's connection with others and a knowledge of new feminist legal writing on women and connection, and be able to analyse critically traditional doctrines concerning women's control over their reproductive decisions.
Injuries to women. The notion of gendered or social injury is used to explore the way women are distinctively harmed and the law's response to these harms. Traditionally recognised forms of harm including rape are examined and we explore the development of legal responses to domestic violence, or male violence against women. Harms that have been less easily recognised as unlawful, including medical abuses, sexual harassment, pornography and media vilification of women are also explored. At the end of this part, students should understand the connections between various forms of injury to women and the array of legal response to these harms, and be able to use the theoretical constructs developed earlier in the course to analyse the law's role in harming and alleviating harm done to women.
Feminist strategies in law. An overview focusing on the responsiveness of law to a feminist challenge, drawing on material already covered and further theoretical writing, including critiques of the adversary system and mediation as a form of dispute resolution. Feminist attempts to use the criminal and civil law to respond to injuries like pornography and we assess the success or otherwise of feminist engagement with law.
At the end of this part, students should have a critical understanding of the effect of attempts to use the law progressively in the interests of women.
Assessment:
Research Assignment 7,000 words (70 per cent) and Take Home Examination (30 per cent). Students are also expected to participate actively in class.
Prescribed texts:
Law subject : Next:730-386 | Prev:730-313 | Search | Help
Handbook 1996 : Faculty of Law (Volume 3 page 217)
Status: Official 1996 Date created: Oct 9 1995 Last modified: Oct 9 1995 Authorised by: Academic Registrar Email enquiries: Course_Information@registrar.unimelb.edu.au
Maintained by: Faculty of Law.
Copyright © University of Melbourne 1995,1996.