The essays in this volume fall within a chapter on one of the foundational law subjects on the degree syllabus, and aim to provide an account of feminist approaches to each of the following areas: contracts, torts, land law, equity and trusts, criminal law, public law, and European law.

The essays in this volume fall within a chapter on one of the foundational law subjects on the degree syllabus, and aim to provide an account of feminist approaches to each of the following areas: contracts, torts, land law, equity and trusts, criminal law, public law, and European law. The text uses historical and comparative analysis, political philosophy, legal theory and different literary styles to explore both law and feminist theory.

This collection of essays on feminist legal theory therefore provides an interdisciplinary approach, drawn not only from law and philosophy, but also from cultural and womens studies.

Feminist scholarship can provide public lawyers with the critical tools and insights to respond to these new challenges. This collection begins a dialogue between public law and feminism by offering a range of perspectives on contemporary public law themes and topics.

Questions of evidence and proof are fundamental to the operation of substantive law and to our understanding of law as a social practice. The study of evidence involves issues of central concern to feminist scholars,including matters of epistemology, psychology, allocation of risk and responsibility. Debates about evidence, like debates about feminism, involve questioning ideas of rationality and truth, as well as claims to knowledge both by and about men and women. Social constructions of gender are reflected both explicitly and implicitly in evidential rules and in the way in which evidence is received and understood by judges, jurors and magistrates. Feminist evidence scholarship is a relatively new but rapidly developing field. This collection brings together previously unpublished work by feminist legal scholars from different jurisdictions. In these essays, they explore the contributions of feminist theory and methodology to the understanding of the law of evidence.

Criminal law has traditionally been taught and analysed as if the gender of criminals and their victims is irrelevant. It has also been taught and analysed as if criminal law doctrine has no connection with questions of criminalisation,crime detection, decisions to charge and prosecute, lawyers trial tactics, decisions as to guilt and sentencing policy and practice, all of which are significantly affected by gender.This book seeks to fill these gaps by looking at the major areas in which gender affects the way that suspected criminals and their victims are treated by the criminal justice system. However, this book is not just a supplement to traditional criminal law discourse. It is a dangerous supplement, in that the focus on gender challenges laws claim to neutrality and even-handed justice.The essays in this book establish that, not only does the law frequently fail to offer women the sort of protection from male violence and sexual invasion that they need, but it continues to discriminate on grounds of gender. Even when discriminating in favour of women, it does so in ways that reinforce dangerous gender stereotypes. More specifically, both criminal law doctrine and criminal justice personnel apply and reinforce ideas, on the one hand, of female passivity, irrationality and proneness to illness, and, on the other, of natural male aggression - both physical and sexual.

This book offers powerful analyses of the relationship between law and gender and new understandings of the limits of, and opportunities for, legal reform drawn from the experiences of women and from critical perspectives developed within other disciplines.

"First Published in 1998, Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company."

Feminist Perspectives on Tort Law offers a distinctly feminist approach to key topics in tort law. Ten original essays written by feminist legal scholars from the UK, US, Canada and Australia encompass a range of ways of thinking about women, tort law and feminism. The collection provides a fresh and original analysis of issues of long-standing concern to feminists as well as nascent areas of concern. These include conceptions of harm, constructions of reasonableness, the duty of care, the public/private divide, sexual wrongdoing, privacy and environmental law. Written with both scholars and students in mind, Feminist Perspectives on Tort Law is an important and timely addition to key debates in tort law..

"In the completely updated second edition of this outstanding primer, Nancy Levit and Robert R.M. Verchick introduce the diverse strands of feminist legal theory and discuss an array of substantive legal topics, pulling in recent court decisions, new laws, and important shifts in culture and technology. The book centers on feminist legal theories, including equal treatment theory, cultural feminism, dominance theory, critical race feminism, lesbian feminism, postmodern feminism, and ecofeminism. Readers will find new material on women in politics, gender and globalization, and the promise and danger of expanding social media. Updated statistics and empirical analysis appear throughout. At its core, Feminist Legal Theory shows the importance of the roles of law and feminist legal theory in shaping contemporary gender issues"--Unedited summary from book cover.