Under Deconstruction
Students, alumni, and more are invited to submit shorter critical notes, book reviews, responses to articles published in BGLJ, responses to recent events and other commentaries. Suggested length is 500 to 1000 words. Submissions should meet our mandate. All work is peer edited and published here on our site. Email submissions to bglj.online@berkeley.edu.
McCoy v. DeSantis: How Modern Litigators are Tapping into the Nineteenth Amendment’s Untapped Potential
Lawyers from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) are currently pursuing a rare Constitutional voting rights claim in federal court, based not just on the Fourteenth and Twenty-Fourth Amendments, but also the Nineteenth…
“Annie Hindle, the husband”: The marriages of a nineteenth century male impersonator
“In 1886, newspapers proclaimed ‘Woman Marries Woman.’ Annie Hindle (1847-1904), a famous performer and impersonator of male characters, had just married Annie Ryan, their dresser…”
From Consumer Protections to Consumers Protecting
“People always think trademark law is about protecting brands,” a supervising attorney said, advising pro bono clients over the summer. “But it’s actually a consumer protection law…”
The Increase in Domestic Violence Cases During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Domestic violence has both increased and escalated during the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.N. has gone so far as to deem violence against women during this time a “shadow pandemic.” There are many reasons for this…
Climate Change and Gender Disparity: Women Suffer More
The current and future harms of climate change disproportionately impact women more than men. As flooding, fires, droughts, and storms continue to occur and intensify, it is apparent that climate change will exacerbate existing gender disparities…
Protecting Tenants’ Rights During COVID: An Interview with Ary Smith
“We don’t classify poverty law as gender law, but it ends up that way” they explained. “It’s not Title IX, it’s not sex discrimination, but it ends up being because of the ways gender and sexuality map onto socioeconomic status . . .”
New Book Minces No Words About Feminism and Mass Incarceration
The Feminist War on Crime minces no words in detailing the history of feminist criminal law reform. Gruber argues that mainstream feminism was not simply swept up by a carceral wave, but rather was—and is—a driving force of mass incarceration . . .
Alison Ash Fogarty and Lily Zheng, Gender Ambiguity in the Workplace: Transgender and Gender-Diverse Discrimination (2018)
Anyone familiar with the issues facing transgender individuals in America knows that trans people face disproportionate levels of violence and discrimination . . .
Editing the Wiktionary Entry for “Female”
This is one in a series of “legal fictions” that I have been publishing in law journals. It concerns the roles that law, art, and language play in the manufacture and destruction of female identity . . .