By Judith A. Baer
ISBN-10: 0691033161
ISBN-13: 9780691033167
ISBN-10: 1400810876
ISBN-13: 9781400810871
According to Judith Baer, feminist felony scholarship at the present time doesn't successfully deal with the tough realities of women's lives. Feminists have marginalized themselves, she argues, through chickening out from mainstream highbrow discourse. In Our Lives sooner than the Law, Baer therefore provides the framework for a brand new feminist jurisprudence--one that will go back feminism to relevance via connecting it in clean and artistic methods with liberalism.
Baer starts off from the normal feminist premise that the felony procedure has a male bias and needs to do extra to aid ladies strive against violence and conquer political, monetary, and social negative aspects. She argues, even if, that feminist scholarship has over-corrected for this bias. via emphasizing the ways that the method fails ladies, feminists have overlooked the way it can be utilized to advertise women's pursuits and feature made it effortless for traditional students to disregard valid feminist issues. specifically, feminists have wrongly associated the true flaws of traditional felony concept to its foundation in liberalism, arguing that liberalism focuses too seriously on person freedom and never sufficient on person accountability. in reality, Baer contends, liberalism rests on a presumption of private accountability and will be used as a robust highbrow beginning for containing males and male associations extra liable for their activities.
The conventional feminist method, Baer writes, has ended in never-ending debates approximately such summary concerns as personality modifications among women and men, and has didn't deal sufficiently with concrete issues of the felony procedure. She therefore constructs a brand new feminist interpretation of 3 primary parts of traditional theory--equality, rights, and responsibility--through research of such urgent felony concerns as constitutional interpretation, reproductive selection, and fetal security. Baer concludes by way of proposing the description of what she calls "feminist post-liberalism": an method of jurisprudence that not just values person freedoms but in addition acknowledges our accountability for addressing participants' wishes, even if assorted these will be for males and women.
Powerfully and passionately written, Our Lives ahead of the Law may have a huge impression at the destiny process feminist criminal scholarship.
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Additional resources for Our Lives Before the Law
Example text
As Chapter 3 will show, this feminist theory has received extensive criticism. But it is hard to avoid the conclusion that theory based on power is more plausible, on its face, than theory based on difference. The dominance approach appeals to the student of politics for another reason: it directs our attention outward rather than inward. One cannot discuss women’s subjection and exploitation without discussing who and what subjects and exploits women. Instead of concentrating on women’s character, dominance theory concentrates on women in relation to society.
As Chapter 3 will show, this feminist theory has received extensive criticism. But it is hard to avoid the conclusion that theory based on power is more plausible, on its face, than theory based on difference. The dominance approach appeals to the student of politics for another reason: it directs our attention outward rather than inward. One cannot discuss women’s subjection and exploitation without discussing who and what subjects and exploits women. Instead of concentrating on women’s character, dominance theory concentrates on women in relation to society.
What is plausible is also demonstrable. Feminist scholars have shown that Nancy Hartsock’s insight about one Western political theory holds for Western jurisprudence in general. 1 Feminist scholars reason from the organizing premise of male bias to two related propositions. First, reality is so distinctively gendered—so different for men and women—that theory developed by men is ill adapted to women. 2 This derivative premise implies that the male bias of traditional thought has affected not only what we think but how: that it drives epistemology as it does ideology.