Women’s rights advocates in the United States have long argued that violence against women denies women equality and citizenship, but it took a movement of feminist activists and lawyers, beginning in the late 1960s, to set about realizing this vision and transforming domestic violence from a private problem into a public harm. This important book examines the pathbreaking legal process that has brought the pervasiveness and severity of domestic violence to public attention and has led the United States Congress, the Supreme Court, and the United Nations to address the problem. Elizabeth Schneider has played a pioneering role in this process. From an insider’s perspective she explores how claims of rights for battered women have emerged from feminist activism, and she assesses the possibilities and limitations of feminist legal advocacy to improve battered women’s lives and transform law and culture. The book chronicles the struggle to incorporate feminist arguments into law, particularly in cases of battered women who kill their assailants and battered women who are mothers. With a broad perspective on feminist lawmaking as a vehicle of social change, Schneider examines subjects as wide-ranging as criminal prosecution of batterers, the civil rights remedy of the Violence Against Women Act of 1994, the O. J. Simpson trials, and a class on battered women and the law that she taught at Harvard Law School. Feminist lawmaking on woman abuse, Schneider argues, should reaffirm the historic vision of violence and gender equality that originally animated activist and legal work.

A comprehensive, readable analysis of the key issues of the Black Lives Matter movement, this thought-provoking and compelling anthology features essays by some of the nation’s most influential and respected criminal justice experts and legal scholars. “Somewhere among the anger, mourning and malice that Policing the Black Man documents lies the pursuit of justice. This powerful book demands our fierce attention.” —Toni Morrison Policing the Black Man explores and critiques the many ways the criminal justice system impacts the lives of African American boys and men at every stage of the criminal process, from arrest through sentencing. Essays range from an explication of the historical roots of racism in the criminal justice system to an examination of modern-day police killings of unarmed black men. The contributors discuss and explain racial profiling, the power and discretion of police and prosecutors, the role of implicit bias, the racial impact of police and prosecutorial decisions, the disproportionate imprisonment of black men, the collateral consequences of mass incarceration, and the Supreme Court’s failure to provide meaningful remedies for the injustices in the criminal justice system. Policing the Black Man is an enlightening must-read for anyone interested in the critical issues of race and justice in America.

The legal status of women has changed more rapidly in the last 20 years than in the previous 200, Hoff argues, but these changes have become less important over time. The American power structure has relinquished rights to women and minorities only after these rights have been diminished by a white-male-dominated legal system. She calls for a reinterpretation of legal texts to create a feminist jurisprudence. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

What Women Want is a trenchant examination of the struggle for women's equality, and a prescription for what to focus on next in order to ensure maximum success. Feminism today is a movement that lacks leadership, unity, and definition, and it has gotten stuck in a boom and bust cycle when it comes to public opinion and action. Despite significant progress over the last fifty years, equality is still a distant goal in the political, social, and economic spheres. Only by identifying the barriers (both internal and external) that remain, Deborah Rhode argues, can we begin to identify solutions. A rigorously researched and well-written answer to the glut of gender-related books that have come onto the market recently, What Women Want comprehensively analyzes the challenges the feminist movement faces today. Combining sharp academic analysis and interviews with notable figures such as Sheryl Sandberg, Rhode focuses on five main topics: employment issues such as pay discrimination, work-life balance and the government's pitiful response, the assault on women's reproductive rights and the limits it places on their economic mobility, sexual harassment and violence, and the detrimental effect that the unfashionable label "feminist" can have, especially in attracting young women to the movement. Despite these formidable obstacles, the goals and principles of feminism are widely accepted by the American mainstream, and Rhode, herself a pathbreaker in the fields of law and education, offers effective strategies for redefining and advancing the feminist agenda, thereby creating a movement that truly recognizes, and is responsive to, what all women want.

This volume focusses on Law and the Imagining of Difference with each chapter examining how law responds to the claims of difference, how and when it recognizes difference and accommodates it, as well as when and why such recognition and accommodation is resisted. Topics covered include disability, same-sex marriage and gender equality.

Women's Legal Landmarks commemorates the centenary of women's admission in 1919 to the legal profession in the UK and Ireland by identifying key legal landmarks in women's legal history. Over 80 authors write about landmarks that represent a significant achievement or turning point in women's engagement with law and law reform. The landmarks cover a wide range of topics, including matrimonial property, the right to vote, prostitution, surrogacy and assisted reproduction, rape, domestic violence, FGM, equal pay, abortion, image-based sexual abuse, and the ordination of women bishops, as well as the life stories of women who were the first to undertake key legal roles and positions. Together the landmarks offer a scholarly intervention in the recovery of women's lost history and in the development of methodology of feminist legal history as well as a demonstration of women's agency and activism in the achievement of law reform and justice.