Feminist legal theory

This book review evaluates Janet Halley's hedonics of critique, a theoretical approach that prioritizes the celebration of pleasure over harm - harm that Halley claims Feminism has not only unduly emphasized but has in many cases created in and for women. This review suggests that this hedonics of critique ignores harm, especially sexual harm, in favor of a quasi-Foucauldian imperative to enjoy.

This two-day symposium explores the relationship between the material, cultural, psychic and symbolic dimensions and effects of dispossession. Building on a range of critical feminisms, the papers, collective discussions and keynote addresses will take forward and build on the rich and dynamic traditions of black, indigenous and post-colonial feminisms, queer theory and materialist feminisms.

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"El feminismo de la gobernanza en la CEDAW: la cuestión sobre el trabajo sexual y la prostitución"
Felipe JARAMILLO RUIZ - Lina-María CÉSPEDES-BÁEZ***
Resumen: A partir del debate sobre el feminismo de la gobernanza, este artículo investiga las recomendaciones generales del Comité de la Convención sobre la Eliminación de Todas las Formas de Discriminación contra la Mujer (CEDAW) y las observaciones finales de los informes de los Estados parte presentadas ante el mismo. El objetivo consiste en analizar el enfoque que este órgano ha incorporado para abordar la comercialización del sexo desde una perspectiva crítica. En este sentido, se encuentra que el Comité de la CEDAW ha promovido un enfoque de descriminalización parcial o abolicionista que pretende penalizar a aquellos que participen en el comercio sexual, salvo a la mujer en prostitución, la cual es considerada primordialmente como una víctima. Así, el artículo provee hallazgos empíricos que permiten entender las aproximaciones a la sexualidad que predominan en la regulación y organismos internacionales y sus posibles implicaciones para el feminismo de la gobernanza.

To what extent does the essentialist Cult of Domesticity still haunt the legal imagination in the United States and elsewhere? This paper scrutinizes the feminist slogan " the personal is political " through a series of reform legal discourses and their repercussions for women and girls in the United States. I question whether feminist demands have actually improved the legal status of cisgender women, trans* and genderqueer people. In my critique of criminal and family court justice, I propose an alternate penal abolitionist path, Ubuntu justice.

The putative crisis of international law, today as well as in other eras, is inseparable from its own production of crisis. That is, traditional approaches to international law generally see it as a means to address, manage, and resolve crises. In this telling, international law does not participate in the production of crisis; it is not the problem, but the solution.
When international law seems unable to respond effectively to crisis, it is often seen as “in crisis.” Our chapter considers this dynamic in the context of feminist approaches to international law. We are particularly interested in the role of these approaches in the production of crisis, in the international legal attempt to manage or resolve crisis, and in the
creation of the sense that international law is in crisis when it fails to do so.

The theme running through this analysis is the medium, rather than the content, is the most important aspect of communication and command.

The paper thinks of law through the lens of communication theory and cybernetics.

Law is perceived as a word describing different social instances with specific social rules, and organised into discrete production formats which shape the dynamics of argument and change in the field.

The paper is published as a book chapter in Backstage Practices of Transnational Law, edited by Lianne Boer and Sofia Stolk.

https://www.routledge.com/Backstage-Practices-of-Transnational-Law/Boer-Stolk/p/book/9780367086572

The aim of this article is to lay the foundations for restoring voice and visibility to some women who made significant contributions to the development of legal and political thought, but who remain overshadowed and outside of the disciplinary canon and the select group of thinkers considered “classics”. In addition to offering the possibility of exploring “marginal” themes and texts beyond legal and political theory (including explorations in literature and sociology), it enables us to uncover the potentially dis- torting effects of one way (neutral in appearance only) of reconstructing the history of the philosophy of law, which is traditionally organized around the classics. Another aim is to suggest avenues for inquiry, marginal perspectives, paths rarely taken, and new research terrain to explore.

What does it mean for a man to conduct oneself as a feminist? It is this question that the author, a legal academic, dwells on in this essay. The article can be seen as a jurisdictional auto-critique about feminism's relationship with law, which by extension is a comment on the author's relationship with both law and feminism and his attempt to fashion a lawful feminist self as a man.

Reductive and corrosive imagery of women - rampant within historical sexual offence discourse -persists in contemporary sexual offence law despite its ostensibly value-free language. Today’s legal language surrounding sexual offences is not devoid of the prejudice which affected previous years. It is strikingly easy to reflect on historical cases and pick up on uncomfortable depictions of female victims as insatiable vixens, seductive sirens or degenerate whores. The misogynistic overtones of the type of language used are stark and obvious. Contrastingly, today’s legal language in sexual offence law presents as degendered, neutral and objective. But misogyny still exists in sexual offence law. Its residues are not encapsulated as explicitly as they once were, but they remain, nestled within subtle evocations of the law. The outmoded ideology of sexual relationships described by our legal forbears persists, although it has assumed new and mystifying forms.

Women’s rights are often curtailed online due to the pervasive internet atmosphere of cybermisogyny. Extreme examples include ‘image-based sexual abuse’, a term which encompasses the non-consensual creation and/or distribution of private sexual images. The harms attached to this phenomenon are well documented. In this paper, we explore how copyright logic, despite its male-centric and property oriented worldview, presents one legal solution to this problem. We assert that Digital Millennium Copyright Act Takedown Notices, a copyright mechanism that notifies websites they are hosting infringing content and requires the prompt removal of the content, represents a novel legal mechanism to force websites to remove image-based sexual abuse from women’s online spaces. By using critical discourse analysis to review how Digital Millennium Copyright Act Takedown Notices attempt to provide solutions to the socio-spatial problem of image-based sexual abuse, we argue that copyright can subvert its current leanings to return to its original purpose: supporting creativity. Supporting creativity also helps to protect against the reproduction of gendered harms, from the real world to virtual spaces. This theorization represents not just legal geography but a feminist legal geography, in that it recognizes the internet should be a safe and legal space for women. In endorsing a pragmatic legal solution for women to regulate the sexually violent and nonconsensual distribution of their intimate images online, copyright is one mechanism that affirms women’s right to cyberspaces.

In der Feministischen Rechtswissenschaft wird davon ausgegangen, dass es geschlechtsneutrales Recht, das für alle gleich gilt und sich auf alle gleich auswirkt, nicht gibt. Sie thematisiert Ungleichheiten aufgrund des Geschlechts, die vom Rechtsdiskurs legitimiert oder hergestellt, legalisiert und mit Zwangsgewalt ausgestattet werden, ebenso wie rechtliche Mittel und Strategien, die zur Überwindung dieser Ungleichheiten nutzbar gemacht werden können.

Link: https://www.gender-glossar.de/post/feministische-rechtswissenschaft

Özet: Hukuk eğitimindeki ana akım anlayış, nesnellik iddiasına karşın kendi ideolojisini taşımakta ve aktarmaktadır. Özgürlükçü, çoğulcu ve katılımcı olmayan, eleştirel düşünceyi teşvik etmeyen hukuk eğitimi, hukuk uygulamasında da etkisini göstermektedir. Feminizmin geliştirdiği eleştiri hem içerik, hem yöntem olarak alternatif bir eğitim ihtiyacını vurgular. Bu bağlamda, eleştirel pedagojinin çizdiği yoldan ilerleyen feminist pedagoji hukuk eğitiminde yeni bir yöntem arayışında yol göstericidir. Çalışmada Türkiye'de hukuk eğitiminde kadınların daha fazla temsil edilmesi gereği, norm odaklı yığmacı eğitim modeli yerine diyaloga dayalı ve alternatif modeller geliştirilmesi, müfredatların doğrudan veya örtük olarak cinsiyetçi ya da cinsiyete duyarsız yapısı, eğitim ve hukuk kültüründe dönüşüm olanakları ele alınmıştır. Anahtar Kelimeler: Hukuk eğitimi, feminist hukuk teorisi, eğitim yöntemleri, eleştirel pedagoji, feminist pedagoji. FEMINIST APPROACH TO LEGAL EDUCATION AND SEARCHING FOR NEW METHODS Abstract: The mainstream approach to legal education claiming neutrality of education, carries and conveys its own ideology. Legal education, which originates from hierarchical relations and smothers critical thinking, also influences implementation of law. Feminist critics emphasizes a need of searching for a new educational method based on critical and feminist pedagogy. In this Article, the necessity of much more representation of women in law schools, efforts on developing dialog-based alternative models rather than norm-based filling (banking) educational method, openly or implicitly patriarchal or gender-blind structure of legal curriculum and possibility of transformation of educational and legal culture has been discussed.

Using evidence from the Cairo Geniza, I revisit the oft-cited view of Jewish marriage as the "purchase" of a bride. Relying on the work of those who connect "partnership" and "marriage", I argue that the term "qinyan"--often translated as "acquisition"--should be understood as effecting a change in legal status between individuals that denotes them as marital partners rather than as acquirer and acquired.

Violence Against Women (VAW) is a worldwide pervasive phenomenon. This paper, making use of a variety of primary and secondary resources, including legislation, international law instruments, official statistics, book chapters, books and journal articles, will focus on VAW in the Palestinian context, with occasional reference to “honour” crimes, where appropriate. The paper will commence in covering the main points of convergence and divergence in the literature available on VAW and “honour” crimes.
Thereafter, the occurrence and prevalence of VAW in Palestine will be situated and analysed within the social, economic and legal dimensions of patriarchy. An in-depth, critical analysis of the impact of colonialism and neo-liberalism/ capitalism will be employed to deconstruct the factors that underpin VAW. This section will also highlight the persistence of VAW in light of the absence of alternatives for women survivors of violence and the role of the legal system. For the purposes of critically engaging with VAW, exclusive focus will be dedicated to the treatment of the penal code applied in Palestinian courts of HRV and crimes in the Palestinian society.
The last part of the paper will tackle “law” as a medium to address VAW, highlighting its importance through showcasing the impact of legal reform efforts; a temporal analysis of progress within this parameter will be employed. To further vindicate the need for comprehensive action in pursuance of gender equality, complementary strategies that feed into the “prevent” component of the due diligence standard, as well as the transformative equality concept of the gender mainstreaming model will be presented, including educational reform, economic empowerment, and rehabilitation of perpetrators. Ultimately, the paper seeks to identify possible answers for the reasons that make legal reform insufficient to eliminate VAW, and thereafter determine necessary strategies to complement legal reform.

RÉFÉRENCE: Alexandre Baril, « Société de l’aveu, cis-tème de l’aveu : repenser le consentement à la lumière des images intimes de personnes trans* dans les medias », GLAD! [En ligne], 05 | 2018, mis en ligne le 15 décembre 2018, consulté le 21 janvier 2019. URL : https://www.revue-glad.org/1260 /// RÉSUMÉ FRANÇAIS: Malgré une redéfinition féministe du consentement sexuel axée sur son caractère renouvelable, affirmatif et rétractable, le consentement légal à la diffusion publique de tout type d’image de soi ne requiert qu’un accord unique et irrévocable. Je soutiens qu’il est problématique de considérer le consentement à la diffusion publique de sa nudité au même titre qu’un consentement à montrer d’autres images de soi. Peut-on redéfinir le consentement à la diffusion publique d’images intimes selon la compréhension féministe du consentement sexuel ? En m’inspirant des travaux de Foucault sur l’aveu, j’argumente que nous vivons dans une « société de l’aveu » qui nous mène à croire que l’aveu public de notre soi le plus profond constitue une libération, ainsi que dans un « cis-tème de l’aveu » qui pousse les personnes trans* à se dénuder corps et âme pour satisfaire la curiosité du public. À partir d’une approche féministe et transactiviste et adoptant une méthodologie auto-ethnographique fondée sur ma propre expérience comme homme trans ayant « accepté » des requêtes des médias de me mettre à nu et pour lesquels mon consentement ne peut pas être retiré, je présente deux arguments. Premièrement, pour certaines personnes trans*, certaines dimensions du cis-tème de l’aveu, dont les pressions sociales et médiatiques, devraient être prises en compte comme éléments pouvant biaiser le consentement. Deuxièmement, j’invite à repenser le consentement à la diffusion publique d’images intimes : que le consentement soit accordé dans des circonstances biaisées ou pas, il devrait être possible de le retirer, comme dans le cas du consentement sexuel. S’il est possible de changer d’idée dans le cas d’activités intimes avec une seule personne, cela devrait aussi s’appliquer lorsqu’il est question de montrer sa nudité au grand public. /// ABSTRACT ENGLISH: Despite feminist redefinitions of sexual consent that highlight its renewable, affirmative, retractable nature, legal consent to the public distribution of any type of image requires only a single, irrevocable instance of consent. I argue that it is problematic to consider consent to publicly distribute intimate nude images in the same way as consent to sharing other images. What if consent to the public distribution of intimate images were redefined according to feminist understandings of sexual consent? Using the example of trans* people and inspired by Foucault’s work on confessing, I argue that we live in a “confessing society” that leads us to believe that disclosing our deepest selves is liberating and a transphobic/cisgenderist “confessing cis-tem” that, together, push trans* people to show their naked bodies/souls to satisfy public curiosity. Adopting a feminist, transactivist approach and an auto-ethographic methodology based on my experience as a trans man who reluctantly undressed for media projects on my transition for which my consent cannot be retracted, I present two arguments. First, for some trans* people, certain aspects of the confessing cis-tem, including social and media pressures, should be considered factors that can bias consent. Second, I call for a redefinition of consent to the distribution of intimate images: whether consent is given in biased circumstances or not, it should be possible to withdraw it, as with sexual consent. If people can reconsider being intimate with just one other person, the same should be true of exposing their nudity to an audience. /// ORIGINAL PUBLICATION: Baril, Alexandre. 2017. « Confessing Society, Confessing Cis-tem: Rethinking Consent Through Intimate Images of Trans* People in the Media », in « Mapping Gendered Violence », Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 39(2) 1-25.

Annamaria Galoppini è senza dubbio una figura emblematica nel
rapporto fra donne e diritto, ed è figura unica nel panorama della civilistica
italiana, soprattutto se facciamo riferimento agli anni in cui pubblica
il suo libro Il lungo viaggio verso la parità. I diritti civili e politici
delle donne dall’unità ad oggi (Bologna, Zanichelli, 1980). Il suo rapporto
con il diritto è la storia di una lunga militanza politica che si coagula
intorno alla fiducia nel legal change, alla fede nel diritto come strumento
di ingegneria sociale e di mutamento – idee peraltro condivise
da esponenti di punta della sua generazione.

This is a syllabus/course manual of an elective I will be teaching this Fall. The course draws from the Feminist Judgment Project, a shadow judgment writing project (in UK, Australia, ireland, USA etc) that has taken over feminist scholarship by storm. The project situates writing alternate judgments for judgments that 'could have been' written better or written differently by using a feminist lens. Comments and feedback welcome.

This is a chapter in Elizabeth Brake and Lucinda Ferguson (eds), Philosophical Foundations of Children's and Family Law (OUP 2018).

This chapter's argument stems from the premise that legal language should speak for itself. The 'paramountcy' principle suggests the prioritization of children's interests, and 'children's rights' suggests some aspect of distinctiveness to children's interests. But there is academic consensus in respect of both that children's interests cannot and should not be prioritized over those of others. This chapter examines the justification for the contrary perspective, and for treating children as a prioritized 'special case' in all legal decisions affecting them.

Four key counter-arguments frame the discussion. First, the 'social-construct' objection: as a social construct, childhood cannot sustain the prioritization of children's interests over those of others. Second, the 'vulnerability' objection: children's vulnerability is either not unique or suggests dependency or interdependency, not prioritization. Third, the 'family autonomy' objection: parents' rights and the family unit justify deference of children's interests. Fourth, the 'equality' objection: equal moral consideration makes prioritization unjustifiable.

Investigating minority and indigenous women’s rights in Muslim-majority states,
this book critically examines the human rights regime within international law.
Based on extensive and diverse ethnographic research on Amazigh women in
Morocco, the book unpacks and challenges generally accepted notions of rights and
equality. Significantly, and controversially, the book challenges the supposedly
‘emancipatory’ power vested in the human rights project; arguing that rights-based
discourses are sites of contestation for different groups that use them to assert their
agency in society. More specifically, it shows how the very conditions that make
minority and indigenous women instrumental to the preservation of their culture may
condemn them to a position of subalternity. In response, and engaging the notion
and meaning of Islamic feminism, the book proposes that feminism should be interpreted
and contextualised locally in order to be effective and inclusive, and so in order
for the human rights project to fully realise its potential to empower the marginalised
and make space for their voices to be heard.
Providing a detailed, empirically based, analysis of rights in action, this book will
be of relevance to scholars, students and practitioners in human rights policy and
practice, in international law, minorities’ and indigenous peoples’ rights, gender
studies, and Middle Eastern and North African Studies.

Predložený príspevok predstavuje vo všeobecnosti základné znaky právneho feminizmu ako smeru právneho myslenia a bližšie sa venuje diverzite ako znaku právneho feminizmu. V tejto súvislosti sa zameriava na päť základných podôb právneho feminizmu (liberálny feminizmus, kultúrny feminizmus, radikálny feminizmus, postmoderný feminizmus, černošský feminizmus) a predstavuje ich charakteristické rysy, hlavný myšlienkový prínos a uvádza ich vybraných predstaviteľov.

Catherine Malabou's philosophical thought stages a new and restless encounter with form, and so transforms the possibilities of philosophy for thinking contemporary politics, law, and justice. In a series of books, most of which have been recently translated into English, she has pioneered a distinctive mode of reading the Continental philosophical tradition, revealing a new materialism that survives and brings to restored relevance Hegel, Heidegger, Derrida, Irigaray, Deleuze, Foucault and Freud among others. Traversing the philosophical groundwork of these thinkers, Malabou uncovers and exposes elements of their work that metabolize and metamorphosize concepts and logics that otherwise appear to be unmoving, if not static. The restless form that survives philosophical critique, which she explores with her signature concept of plasticity, has its material counterparts in socio-economic structures such as neoliberal capitalism, the science of neurobiology, the theory and practice of psychoanalysis, the experience and expression of subjectivity and identity, and the political organization of sovereignty. Oriented firmly against the naturalization of these enterprises, Malabou asks us instead to see each institution engaged with a kind of immanent thought that materially grounds its potential metamorphoses. The form of thought today, she argues, is ontologically plastic; self-transformation is built into our bodies, it suffuses our possible readings of philosophy, and it promises us new perspectives on political and social change.

Esta publicación correspóndese co 4º número da colección "Ideas Impresas". Baixo o título "Vivas e libres. Lexislación e violencia machista: contribucións do nacionalismo galego", a doutora en filosofía e pensadora feminista, Carme Adán, realiza un percorrido polas principais contribucións do nacionalismo galego en materia de política públicas feministas na Galiza no que atinxe a violencia machista desde a dimensión lexislativa.

This article focuses on the doctrine of undue influence as applied in bilateral transactions between spouses (husbands and wives), civil partners, and other couples that are in long-term cohabitation. // I am grateful to Professor Colm O’Cinneide (UCL) for supervising this article. I am also indebted to Ms Amy Goymour (Cambridge) and the editors of the Oxford University Undergraduate Law Journal for their insightful comments on various drafts.

It is important to embrace the responsibility that comes with the new geological epoch of the Anthropocene, which, in terms of environmental law, requires nothing less than a radical revisiting of its basics tenets. In an attempt to incorporate the Anthropocene to my ongoing project on Critical Environmental Law, I examine it from three angles: grammar, theoretical perspective and methodology. Grammar refers to the need for a new, anthropocenic vocabulary that will deal with the challenges of the Anthropocene. To this effect, I suggest some terms, such as continuum/rupture, human/nonhuman/inhuman, as well as geologic immersion and planetary withdrawal. Theoretical perspective refers to the way current thinking changes or at least is affected by the Anthropocene – indeed, how current environmental legal thinking is turning in order to accommodate the needs of the new epoch. Finally, methodology refers to the way the Anthropocene changes the way we seek knowledge and the epistemological presuppositions of the limits of such knowledge. I offer four theses in the form of suggestions on how Critical Environmental Law needs to adapt methodologically in order to integrate the Anthropocenic grammar and perspective.

Contemporary feminist theory by and large agrees on criticizing the traditional, autonomous subject and instead maintains a relational, dependent self, but the vocabulary used to describe the latter remains contested. These contestations are seen in comparing the approach of some feminist legal theory, as demonstrated by Martha Fineman, to the approach of some feminist theory that draws on continental philosophy, as demonstrated by Judith Butler. Fineman's concept of vulnerability emphasizes the universality of vulnerability in the human condition, arguing that a "responsive state" is most conducive to producing subjects who are "resilient" in the face of neoliberal pressures. We argue that vulnerability, as an existential as opposed to a political description, is a limited rubric under which to organize against neoliberal forces. Further, we contend that Fineman's rhetoric of resilience risks reiterating a neoliberal logic of individualized self-management. In response, we look to Butler's concept of precarity, which underscores particular social conditions, as opposed to universal ontological vulnerabilities, that debilitate certain subjects. At stake is how we respond to neoliberal forces today: a vocabulary of precarity poses a more effective challenge than one of vulnerability, for it opens onto not merely individual or institutional resilience but grounded, communal resistance.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2021.25

This book offers a much-needed new political theory of an old phenomenon. The last decade alone has marked the highest number of migrations in recorded history. Constrained by environmental, economic, and political instability, scores of people are on the move. But other sorts of changes—from global tourism to undocumented labor—have led to the fact that to some extent, we are all becoming migrants. The migrant has become the political figure of our time.

Rather than viewing migration as the exception to the rule of political fixity and citizenship, Thomas Nail reinterprets the history of political power from the perspective of the movement that defines the migrant in the first place. Applying his "kinopolitics" to several major historical conditions (territorial, political, juridical, and economic) and figures of migration (the nomad, the barbarian, the vagabond, and the proletariat), he provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary migration.

Sexual harassment is a complex and evolving practice. The rise of sexual discrimination in cyberspace is only one of the most recent and most striking examples of the phenomenon's increasing complexity. Sexual harassment law, however, has not kept pace with this evolution. Discrimination law has not been adequately " updated " to address new and amplified practices of sex discrimination. Its two principal limitations are (1) it treats only sexual harassment that occurs in certain protected settings (e.g. the workplace or school) as actionable and (2) it assumes that both the activity and the resulting harm of sexual harassment occur in the same protected setting. Thus, it is unable to address any harassment that occurs completely or partially outside of traditionally protected settings. By proposes a " multiple-setting " conception of sexual harassment that both moves beyond traditionally protected settings and explicitly acknowledges that sexual harassment in one setting can produce harms in another. In order to address multiple-setting harassment, a third-party liability regime similar to that of traditional sexual harassment law should be introduced into non-traditional contexts. In the particular case of online harassment, liability should attach to website operators. This regime will create an incentive for website operators to adopt preemptive, self-regulatory measures against online sexual harassment, much as employers have done in the offline setting.

This article analyzes how concepts of gender, gender equality, and secularism have been addressed by the higher judiciary in India in cases dealing with matters of religion. The discussion focuses on three landmark decisions of the Indian Supreme Court on gender equality. The cases involve challenges to discriminatory religious practices that target women in the Muslim-minority and Hindu-majority communities. In each case, gender equality is taken up in relation to religion in ways that produce several outcomes for women that are problematic rather than ones that are unequivocally progressive or transformative. The judicial reasoning in each case resonates with the Hindu Right's approach to gender, gender equality, and secularism. Each concept is used to advance the Hindu Right's majoritarian and ideological agenda, which seeks to establish India as a virile “Hindu” nation. Ironically, interventions by progressive groups, including feminist and human rights advocates opposed...

Predkladaná štúdia sa zameriava na objasnenie podstaty, znakov a významu feminizmu a následne feministickej právnej vedy. Obsah štúdie je venovaný rovnoprávnosti pohlaví a rodov, problému patriarchálneho usporiadania spoločnosti a bližšieho vymedzenia navrhovaného spôsobu dosahovania zmeny smerom k žiadúcemu stavu.

This article advances an interpretative account of parental rights and builds a normative case against them. This normative account considers how parental rights function in existing constitutional and family law, and assesses theoretical arguments that seek to justify them.

This article begins by describing the most common, child-centered justification for parental rights: that parents are empowered in order to protect children’s best interests. I argue that these child-centered accounts do not justify the current legal regime governing parental rights. Instead, current parental rights are better understood as quasi-property interests, residual from historical traditions where children were more explicitly regarded as their parents’ property.

The middle part of this article advances the thesis that the quasi-property functioning of parental rights is not a contingent feature of American law of parents and children. It is instead characteristic of granting parents separate autonomy interests in determining the path of their children’s lives. Parental autonomy rights displace and diminish consideration for children’s interests and objectify children. This article introduces the concept of “desire-contingent goods” and argues that parental autonomy rights are paradigmatically the right to choose desire contingent goods for children regardless of whether they are desired or not.  This denies the equal importance of children’s desires, subjective experiences and perspectives on their own lives. As a consequence, basic doctrines in constitutional and family law cannot be reconciled with liberal and egalitarian commitments.

The later portion of this article evaluates alternative theoretical justifications for parental rights. These include constitutional and philosophical arguments based on personal liberty and family privacy, as well as philosophical arguments based on relational rights, ethics of care, and the Lockean labor theory of value. These arguments all fall short and, in crucial ways, rely on denying children equal moral consideration. The article concludes with recommendations for legal reform.

María Eugenia Monte (2017). Abortion, sexual abuse and medical control: the Argentinian Supreme Court decision on F., A.L. En Sexualidad, Salud y Sociedad: Revista Latinoamericana, 26, (68-84).

In Argentina, during the 2000s but increasingly since 2005 up to 2016, women and feminist´s organizations and lawyers disputed over the abortion juridical regulation at Courts facing conservative resistances. These disputes could be located in a broader process of judicialization of the socio-political conflict over abortion. The Argentinian Supreme Court took a decision over one of these judicial processes on March 13th, 2012, F., A.L. This paper analyses the Argentinian Supreme Court decision on F., A.L. regarding non-punishable abortion boundaries, medical and judicial practices and, specifically, sexual abuse and medical control. It also analyses its material effects on a subsequent struggle and judgment in the
province of Córdoba.