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Liberal Rights and Critical Legal Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

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So much has been written about liberal rights and critical legal theory that many of us begin to find the topic boring. It is with some trepidation that I impose yet one more discussion of rights analysis upon the waiting - but satiated - world.

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Articles
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Copyright © 2011 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

1 See Stone, Should Trees Have Standing? - Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects, 45 S. Cal. L. Rev. 450 (1972).Google Scholar

2 See Lynd, Government Without Rights: The Labor Law Vision of Archibald Cox, 4 Indus. Rel. L.J. 483 (1981); Klare, Labor Law as Ideology: Toward a New Historiography of Collective Bargaining Law, 4 Indus. Rel. L.J. 450 (1981); Kennedy, Critical Labor Law Theory: A Comment, 4 Indus. Rel. L.J. 503 (1981).Google Scholar

3 See H. Clark, The law of Domestic Relations in the United States, s. 7.1, 221-22 (1968); Friedman, L., A History of American Law 186 (1973).Google Scholar

4 See generally, Gabel, The Phenomenology of Rights- Consciousness and the Pact of the Withdrawn Selves, 62 Tx. L. Rev. 1563 (1984) (presenting a more complex and less flawed “bourgeois individualism” critique of rights).Google Scholar

5 See Olsen, Statutory Rape: A Feminist Critique of Rights Analysis, 63 Tx. L. Rev. 387, 393; Olsen, The Family and the Market: A Study of Ideology and Legal Reform, 96 Harv. L. Rev. 1497, 1516-20 (1983); Williams, Alchemical Notes: Reconstructing Ideals from Deconstructed Rights, 22 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 401 (1987).Google Scholar

6 Virginia Woolf used this phrase as a metaphor for autonomy. Woolf suggested that in order to write, a woman must have “a room of her own” - an identity of her own, not merely physical space to herself in V. Woolf, A Room of One's Own (1929).Google Scholar

7 In Hoyt v. Florida, 368 U.S. 57 (1961), the United States Supreme Court upheld a state law that put men on juries unless they qualified for an exemption, but exempted women unless they volunteered. The Court explained that “woman is still regarded as the center of home and family life”. Id., 62. One effect of the law was to reduce women's representation on juries, which can be particularly important in cases involving rape, wife battery, or pornography. More recent cases have recognized this point implicitly. See, e.g., Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522 (1975) (invalidating jury selection system that excluded women as violative of sixth amendment right to jury trial).Google Scholar

8 Although a few people might claim that the right to vote is an abstraction that contributes to women's alienation or false consciousness, this does not distinguish it from men's right to vote.Google Scholar

9 See Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71 (1971); Stanton v. Stanton, 421 U.S. 7 (1975); Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190 (1976).Google Scholar

10 See Freedman, Sex Equality, Sex Differences, and the Supreme Court, 92 Yale L.J. 913 (1983).Google Scholar

11 Taub, & Schneider, , Perspectives on Women's Subordination and the Role of Law, in The Politics of Law 134 (Kairys, D. ed. 1982) (quoting Freeman, Legitimizing Racial Discrimination Through Antidiscrimination Law: A Critical Review of Supreme Court Doctrine, 62 Minn. L. Rev. 1049, 1052 (1978).Google Scholar

12 See Dothard v. Rawlinson, 433 U.S. 321 (1977).Google Scholar

13 Taub, Book Review, 80 Colum. L. Rev. 1686, 1694 (1980)Google Scholar

14 See Geduldig v. Miello, 417 U.S. 484 (1974).Google Scholar

15 For a summary of the “equal treatment/special treatment” debate, see Olsen, From False Paternalism to False Equality: Judicial Assaults on Feminist Community, Illinois 1869-1895, 84 Mich. L. Rev. 1518, 1518-21 (1986).Google Scholar

16 See MacKinnon, C., Sexual Harassment of Working Women (1979). MacKinnon's argument could also be interpreted as more than just an argument for substantive equality, but as a complete departure from rights analysis.Google Scholar

17 MacKinnon, C., supra, note 15, 127.Google Scholar

18 Taub, supra, note 12, 1691.Google Scholar

19 Williams, The Equality Crisis: Some Reflections on Culture, Courts, and Feminism, 8 Women's Rts. L. Rep. 175, 196 (1982).Google Scholar

20 See, e.g., Morehead v. New York ex rel. Tipaldo, 298 U.S. 587 (1936) (invalidating minimum wage law for women based on liberty to contract of employer and employee); Adkins v. Children's Hosp., 261 U.S. 525 (1923) (invalidating minimum wage law for women and children on same basis); Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905) (invalidating law setting maximum hours for bakers based on liberty to contract of employer and employee). But, see West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parish, 300 U.S. 379, 400 (1937) (overruling Adkins). Google Scholar

21 At common law, a woman's property was transferred to her husband upon their marriage. This was changed by statutes (“married women's property act”), not by case law. In fact, some courts invalidated reform statutes when they were first passed. See Friedman, L., supra, note 3, 184-86 (1973).Google Scholar

22 See Taub, & Schneider, , supra, note 11, 122–23. The insulation of the women's sphere conveys an important message: “In our society law is for business and other important things. The fact that the law in general has so little bearing on women's day-to-day concerns reflects and underscores their insignificance”. Id. 123.Google Scholar

23 See Olsen, The Family and the Market: A Study of Ideology and Legal Reform, 96 Harv. L. Rev. 1497, 1501-07 (1983).Google Scholar

24 See Klare, Law-Making as Praxis, Telos 123, 132 n.28(Summer 1979); see also Klare, Judicial Deradicalization of the Wagner Act and the Origins of Modern Legal Consciousness, 1937-1941, 62 Minn. L. Rev. 265, 276-77 (1978) (offering a similar definition). For earlier uses of “liberal legalism”, see Trubek, Complexity and Contradiction in the Legal Order: Balbus and the Challenge of Critical Social Thought About Law, 11 Law & Society Review (Law & Soc'y Rev.) 551- 55 (1977); Trubek, & Galanter, , Scholars in Self-Estrangement: Some Reflections on the Crisis in Law and Development Studies in the United States, Wis. L. Rev. 1062, 1070-1102 (1974).Google Scholar

25 See MacKinnon, C., Feminism, Marxism, Method and the State: Toward Feminist Jurisprudence, 8 Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society 635, 655 (1983); Rifkin, Toward a Theory of Law and Patriarchy, 3 Harv. Women's L. J. 83 (1980); Polan, Toward a Theory of Law and Patriarchy, in The Politics of Law, 302 (Kairys, D. ed. 1982).Google Scholar

26 Polan, supra, note 24, 302.Google Scholar

27 Rifkin, supra, note 24, 88.Google Scholar

28 See Olsen, Feminism, Post-Modernism and Critical Legal Studies, 5 U.C.L. Working Papers 29 (1987).Google Scholar