FEMINIST JURISPRUDENCE
LAW AS A PATRIARCHAL INSTITUTION
Professor Susan Dimock
York University 2007
Copyright © Susan Dimock 2007
Not to be used without written permission of the copyright holder.
Patricia Smith, Feminist Jurisprudence
Catharine Mackinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of State
WARNING: THIS LECTURE CCONTAINS LANGUAGE AND CONTENT THE
SOME MAY FIND DISTURBING
FEMINISM
 descriptive/ empirical claim
 normative claim
PATRIARCHY
FEMINIST JURISPRUDENCE
 analysis and critique of law as patriarchal institution
LIBERAL FEMINISM
 public/private
 equal rights
 remove barriers
 equal opportunity
RELATIONAL FEMINISM
 ethic of care
 differences between men and women
 transform institutions to accommodate difference
SAMENESS / DIFFERNCE DEBATE
RADICAL FEMINISM (FEMINISM UNMODIFIED)
 gender is a social construction
 based on power
 must eliminate dominance so as to reconstruct gender
 genuine sex equality
INTERNAL / EXTERNAL CRITIQUE
 paradigm shifts and cultural revolution
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LAW AS PATRIARCHAL
 male point of view as legal standard
 standards of harm, due care, etc.
 specific laws
LEGAL IDEALS
 neutrality
 abstract
 limits on judicial review
 judicial restraint
 precedence
 separation of powers
 division between public and private law
 standing
POWER
SEXUAL INEQUALITY
sex as inequality (gender) and inequality as sex (sexualized dominance and
subordination)
SEXUAL EQUALITY
R. v. Lavalle (1990) 1. S.C.R. 852
 self-defence (subjective and objective conditions)
 victim of unlawful assult
 reasonable apprehension of death
 lack of alternatives to self-help
 admissibility of expert testimony
 relevance of expert testimony
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