Go On! "Feminist Futures"

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia and other events of interest)

To mark its launch, the brand-new Interest Group on Feminism and International Law of the European Society of International Law will hold a daylong workshop entitled "International Law and Feminist Futures" on Thursday, April 28, 2011, at the University of Leicester in England.
Organizers write:

The event will bring together individuals committed to feminist approaches in order to develop and share their research, generate ideas for future events and collaborations and consider what contribution feminist analysis can make to the future of international law.

Featured will be a keynote address, "The Paradoxes of Feminist Engagement with International Law," by University of Melbourne Law Professor Dianne Otto (left). Panelists from throughout Europe will round out the event.
Details and registration here.

On April 2

On this day in ...
... 1894, Jeanne Deroin died in England, 88 years after she'd been born into a working-class family in Paris. An embroiderer by trade and "an ardent then disillusioned republican" by politics, Deroin embraced Saint Simonianism in the 1830s and 1840s. Among her inspirations was IntLawGrrls foremother Olympe de Gouges (prior posts). With the ferment of 1848, Deroin became an advocate for socialism and women's rights. A journalist as well as an activist, she was imprisoned for "political conspiracy" in 1850; on release, she eventually fled to England and resumed publishing women's rights tracts. (credit for image, from fine-art print entitled "Women Carrying Jeanne Deroin (1805-94) in Triumph, from 'Les Femmes Celebres'")

(Prior April 2 posts are here, here, here, and here.)

Gender and Disaster

(Delighted to welcome back alumna Fionnuala Ni Aoláin, who contributes this guest post)

Given recent events in Japan it seems like an opportune moment to reflect on the gendered dimensions of natural and other kinds of disasters. The reflections here are part of a more sustained analysis I make in an article forthcoming in the Michigan Journal of Gender and Law entitled "Women, Vulnerability and Humanitarian Emergencies."
The catastrophic dimensions of humanitarian emergencies are increasingly understood and more visible to states and international institutions. There is also some recognition of the gendered dimensions of humanitarian emergencies in policy and institutional contexts.
It is generally acknowledged that women are overrepresented in the refugee and internally displaced communities that typically result from many humanitarian crises. Women bear acute care responsibilities in most societies, and also disproportionately bear familial and communal care responsibilities in communities affected by disaster, war and natural emergencies. Women, given their disparate social and legal status in many jurisdictions, may have less access to capital, social goods and other legal means to protect themselves when crises arise. While tacit acknowledgement of this reality increasingly permeates academic and political discourses, the depth of the descriptive often fails to capture and fully grasp the extent of gender harms and gender insecurity.
Moreover, as experts and policymakers calculate how best national and international communities should respond to such emergencies, women are frequently substantively and procedurally sidelined. This follows from the dual effects of a dearth of women decisionmakers in the relevant high-level fora and the failure to meaningfully imagine and include solutions to the particular issues affecting women in communities emerging from various emergencies. Disaster-related research suffers from considerable bias, revealing an asymmetrical distribution of gender themes, an absence of data on women’s lives and a male bias in identifying the channels from which information is sought.
The recent events in Japan offer us further opportunity to reflect on the intersection of women’s experiences with situations of humanitarian crisis. My goal is to give greater traction to a feminist analysis of women’s experiences in situations of extremity.
In particular, I argue that in order to fully understand the context of women’s specific vulnerabilities, we have to widen and deepen the frame of investigation. In short, we need to take account of pre-existing conditions. We must start by contextualizing the ordinary experiences shaping women’s lives, which form the bedrock upon which a specific crisis is then foisted. The specificity of vulnerabilities subsequently identified in the moment of crisis can only be completely understood and fully addressed by reference to the backdrop. But, accepting the reality of such situated vulnerability does not take us far enough. Institutionalizing helplessness and propagating its inevitability continues to perpetuate a conceptual framework that fails to address the underlying causes of women vulnerability in situations of extremity. This requires a more nuanced approach, seeing compounded vulnerabilities for women in which prior discrimination, exclusion and social marginalization interplay with the specific harms and vulnerabilities foisted on women in situations of crisis. These two elements [the prior and the present] are in constant interplay. Moreover unless experts accept the predictability of such crises their planning will suffer from obvious, gender-biased defects.
By extending and reframing our understanding of why vulnerability is pronounced for women we may both expose and address the limits of current international legal obligations in addressing women’s harms and needs in the context of humanitarian crises. We do so by returning to basics, addressing the persistent social, economic and political discriminations that are routine for most women in most societies, most of the time.

(photos from post-tsunami Japan (c) 2011 Associated Press, available in slide show here)

On March 16

On this day in ...
... 1822, a daughter, Marie-Rosalie, was born in Bordeaux, France, to a mother who was a piano teacher and a father who was a landscape and portrait artist as well as a follower of "Saint-Simonianism, a Christian-socialist sect that promoted the education of women alongside men" and "prophesied the coming of a female messiah." Several of the couple's children would become painters; most renowned was this daughter, known as Rosa Bonheur (left). Especially noted were her paintings of animals (right) (not to mention the menagerie of four-footed subjects that she maintained). "A professional artist with a successful career, Bonheur lived in two consecutive committed relationships with women", preferred to wear men's clothing, and is considered a feminist of her time.

(Prior March 16 posts are here, here, here, and here.)

On February 28

On this day in ...
... 1879, Hortense Allart de Méritens (right) died in Montlhéry, France, 77 years after she'd been born in Milan, Italy. (image credit) Also known by her nom de plume, Prudence de Saman L'Esbatx, Allart was a French feminist writer who spoke out in favor of free love and women's rights and contributed to La Gazette des femmes, or Women's Daily, a periodical whose contributors also included a colleague of Allart, the Frenchwoman who wrote novels under the pseudonym George Sand. Philosophical inquiries by Allart -- the study of this 1998 biography by Helynne Hollstein Hansen -- included publication in 1857 of Novum organum ou sainteté philosophique, which contended that new scientific discoveries proved the existence of a higher power. Among Allart's many lovers was diplomat François-René de Chateaubriand, who inspired not only French Romantic literature, but also the beefy dish popular to this day.

(Prior February 28 posts are here, here, here, and here.)

Aggression, Humanitarian Intervention & Women

(From IntLawGrrl Beth Van Schaack, another in our series of posts on essays forthcoming in "Women and International Criminal Law," a special issue of the International Criminal Law Review)

For this special issue dedicated to Judge Patricia M. Wald, an IntLawGrrls alumna, I contributed an article on the potential for the new crime-of-aggression provisions in the Statute of the International Criminal Court to chill bona fide exercises of humanitarian intervention, given that:
► The crime is expansively drafted to potentially cover all uses of sovereign force,
► Delegates rejected efforts by the United States to include an express exception for military operations launched to prevent the commission of other crimes within the jurisdiction of the ICC, and
► Other proposals that would have prevented humanitarian interventions from being considered “acts of aggression” were not fully explored or implemented.
Drawing on elements of feminist theory, the article acknowledges that feminists may never fully come to terms with a notion of humanitarian intervention given the doctrine’s valorization of militarism. This is especially true in light of the fact that women are so often excluded from decisions about uses of force. The article nonetheless argues that if we want to hold out the possibility of humanitarian intervention being deployed in defense of women, elements of the new provisions (such as the terms “manifest,” “character,” “gravity,” and “consequences”) should be interpreted to exclude situations involving the nascent responsibility to protect doctrine.
Entitled "The Crime of Aggression and Humanitarian Intervention on Behalf of Women," this article is part of a larger project to analyze the rarely-considered gender aspects of the crime of aggression and to explore whether or not the amendments adding the crime of aggression to the ICC Statute would represent an advancement for women, as discussed here.
This work was inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry—the longest piece of embroidery on record—which tells in detail how William the Conqueror contested the coronation of King Harold II upon the death of King Edward the Confessor. After arriving in England, William's troops pillaged the locals in preparation for battle. Among other atrocities that we would today designate as war crimes, they burned a home, sending the mother depicted at left and her child fleeing.

Aging as a Feminist Concern

I’ve spent the past few days at a Feminism and Legal Theory Conference on Aging as a Feminist Concern, organized by Martha Fineman at Emory (pictured below near right). The conference was designed to encourage feminist legal theorists to develop further transformative theories about aging. We called attention to the parallels between negative stereotypes about older adults and women. Moreover, the growing population of older women raises distinct issues of caretaking whether the older woman is serving as caretaker or as the care recipient.
Although many of the participants have focused on US domestic aging issues, we’ve also learned about Housing Equity and Older Owners in the UK, Pensions and Unpaid Work in Canada, and The Invisibility of Older Women’s Experiences of Inequality in Irish Discrimination Law. A few issues have pervaded the entire discussion, including the vulnerability of older women, regardless of where they live, the question of whether older people should be treated differently (as with laws targeting elder abuse) or whether law should be more universally focused, and the comparative lack of attention to, and action about, gender and aging. Many participants reported that students are not particularly interested in courses of particular relevance to this area.
Even with attention, the situation remains difficult. For example, as Freya Kodar (Victoria) and Claire Young (British Columbia) (pictured far right) reported, in Canada, there has been some examination at the national level of women’s financial status as they age, with women constituting a disproportionately high number of those in poverty at age 65 or older. One issue has involved retirement benefits. The primary sources of such income involves attachment to the paid labor market. Canada has three different pillars for financial security for older individuals: Old Age Security; defined benefit plans funded by payroll deductions; and supplements through private plans. In 2009, the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women examined the gender impact of pension benefits. It found a gap in retirement income for men and women, due in part to women’s unpaid caregiving work. Nonetheless, the report and its recommendations have languished.
We’re hoping that this conference stimulates more attention and discussion to these issues domestically and internationally.

Guest Blogger: Felice Batlan

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Dr. Felice Batlan (left) as today's guest blogger.
Felice is an Associate Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Institute for Law and the Humanities at Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago-Kent College of Law. She joined that faculty in 2006; before that, she taught at Tulane Law School. At Chicago-Kent, Felice teaches corporate law, securities regulation, legal history, and feminist legal theory. We've posted on her feminist legal history scholarship here and here. In her guest post below, she situates Florence Kelley (1859-1932) -- a lawyer and social-political reformer active on issues including women's suffrage, the labor movement, and children's rights -- in the struggle against laissez-faire industrialism that had been sanctioned by the U.S. Supreme Court in cases like Lochner v. New York (1905).
Before entering academia, Felice spent 9 years in legal practice, as a corporate and litigation associate in New York and as head of global compliance and associate general counsel at Greenwich Capital Markets. After that, she earned her Ph.D. in U.S. history from New York University. Felice also holds a J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she served as executive editor of the Harvard Women’s Law Journal, and a bachelor's degree summa cum laude from Smith College. After law school, she served as a law clerk for Judge Constance Baker Motley, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York -- an IntLawGrrls foremother!
Honors that Felice has received include: the IIT Julia Beveridge Award for service to students; a 2003 fellowship at the J. Willard Hurst Summer Institute in Legal History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison; and the 2003 Dissertation Writing Award of the Coordinating Council For Women in History / Berkshire Conference of Women’s Historians.
Felice has served as: an associate editor and book review editor of Continuity and Change, an academic journal dedicated to exploring the legal and social structures of past societies; an associate editor for the Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court of the United States (David Tanenhaus ed., 2008), with responsibility for sections on corporations, women, gender, and sexuality; and as a member of the board of the H-Net website for humanities and social sciences. She's also been an adviser to the historical society of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Dedicating her post to Harriet Boyd Hawes (1871-1945), Felice writes:

Harriet Boyd Hawes was on of the first professional women archeologists. In the late 19th century, she studied at the American School in Athens and spent the next years on Crete excavating a number of important sites. Eventually Hawes taught at both Smith and Wellesley. Like so many women “firsts” she would not accept no as an answer and lived her life adventurously and often defiantly.

Boyd Hawes (above right; photo credit) joins Judge Baker Motley and other foremothers in the list just below the "visiting from..." map at right.

Heartfelt welcome!

On December 11

On this day in ...
... 1920 (90 years ago today), feminist and pacifist writer Olive Schreiner (left) died in South Africa, 65 years after her birth in what is now Lesotho. She was the 9th of 12 children born to a poor missionary family. A voracious reader of social theory, early on she rejected religion, and further

rejected the accepted stereotypical gender roles and espoused an equality of shared labour between men and women.

After working for years as a governess, Schreiner sailed to England, where her semi-autobiographical novel, The Story of an African Farm (1882), was published under a male pseudonym "because of a contemporary prejudice against women authors"; she revealed her identity in the 2d edition 9 years later. (credit for circa 1909 photo) Back in South Africa, she married and gave birth to a daughter, who died within in a day, sending Schreiner into deep depression. During the Boer War, Schreiner lost all her property and was interned for a year on account of her support for the Afrikaner side. Her Women and Labour (1911) is described as a "feminist 'bible' of the early twentieth century"; another late-in-life work argued in favor of rights for blacks in South Africa.

(Prior December 11 posts are here, here, and here.)

Africa-based international law projects

(Delighted to welcome back alumna Bonita Meyersfeld, who contributes a 2-part series of guest posts on international law in Africa. Part 2 is below; Part 1, published yesterday, is here.)

Having described the overall work of the Southern and Eastern African Regional Centre for Women’s Law at the University of Zimbabwe, I continue in this post with descriptions of research in progress:
► Makanatsa Makonese (left), a Doctor of Philosophy Candidate, is examining Zimbabwe’s Post-Independence Land Reform Laws and Policies and Their Impact on Women’s Right to Agricultural Land: A Critical Analysis of the Fast Track Land Reform Programme from 2000 and Beyond.
This research seeks to assess the availability or otherwise of a legal, policy, and institutional framework governing the Fast Track Land Reform Programme in Zimbabwe. The focus is on women and their right to access, own, and control agricultural land. The effect over the years of the country’s property laws in general, and land laws in particular, will be critically examined. The goal is to establish whether there have been any efforts during the implementation of the fast track land reform programme to break away -- away from a system that subjugates women in property ownership and toward one that recognises women as equal partners in national economic, social, and political development and transformation.
A primary focus of the research is the recognition that the fast track land reform programme was and is not just about parcelling out land but also about: creating social classes; developing jurisprudence around land ownership and reform in Zimbabwe; and setting up centres and sources of power that are critical in shaping the country in various ways. The position of women in the matrix and the country’s level of compliance with international human rights standards and best practices therefore have to be examined.
The nuance of the work is its engagement in a rights analysis in a context of rights violations; namely, the land grabs and concomitant displacement of landowners.
► Research by Renifa Madenga (left), also a Doctor of Philosophy Candidate, is entitled Using Women’s Voices/Experiences To Interrogate The Efficacy Of The International Criminal Justice System on Rape: The case of Rwanda 1994 Genocide. (credit for photo (c) Robert H. Jackson Center)
Her study explores the lived reality and experience of rape survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. It is sited in the web of fears, needs, relationships, and anxieties that affect survivors of rapes committed during the Rwandan genocide, as well as their interactions with the international criminal justice system at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
Using the voices and experiences of survivors and witnesses, the study interrogates the efficacy of the justice system. Its major questions: Does the system acknowledge and condemn the egregious abuses suffered by victim survivor witnesses? Does it recognize and addresse the needs, fears, and aspirations of those survivor witnesses?
The researcher, Madenga, works as an Appeals Counsel in the ICTR Office of the Prosecutor, and chairs that office's 3-year-old Sexual Violence Committee.
► Annette Mudola Mbogoh, another Doctor of Philosophy Candidate, is researching The 2007 Post-Election Violence As A Spring Board For Peace, Reconciliation And Reparation: A Case For The Participation And Involvement Of Women In Mombasa, Kenya.
The study investigates the participation of women in Mombasa in peace, reconciliation, and reparation processes through Kenya's Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission. Women suffered gross human rights violations in recurrent electoral violence in Mombasa -- in 1992, in 1997, and in the unprecedented 2007 general elections. (Prior IntLawGrrls posts available here.) Women have been internally displaced, lost their loved ones, their property, and their businesses. They are survivors of physical violence and rape. However, their voices, needs, and concerns have been sidelined in the current transitional justice process in Kenya (flag at right). The Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission presents an opportunity for women’s voices, injustices, and stories to be heard, investigated, documented, and redressed in the ensuing reparation programmes.
Against this backdrop, this research investigates the level of participation of women in the unfolding truth commission process, as well as the factors hindering women’s active involvement. It seeks both to document injustices committed against women by virtue of their sex and to identify priority concerns and preferred reparations on the part of survivors. It interrogates the question of truth-telling versus justice. The study highlights the importance of reparations to achieve true reconciliation and the extent to which women’s multiple identities influences their choice between collective and individual reparations. The study explores the politics of representation amongst women in a very polarized and ethnicized community. It furthers the debate on the right to truth, which has been expounded by the institutions of the inter-American human rights system. These arguments are hinged on the new Constitution of Kenya, which enshrines women’s right to equality and representation in legislative bodies through reservation of special seats. Finally, the study recommends implementation of a gender perspective in peace and reconciliation efforts, as is espoused in international instruments such as U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1325 and 1820.
► Under examination by Catherine Makoni is The Impact of the Political Crisis in Zimbabwe on Women’s Right to Protection of the Law: An Investigation into the Handling of Cases of Politically Motivated Rape from 2000-2009.
Makoni's research investigates how cases of politically motivated rape have been dealt with, if at all, within the justice system of Zimbabwe (flag at right). The objective is to interrogate the duty of the state to protect women, and therefore its role to provide sufficient and meaningful redress. The research undertakes an empirical assessment of what assistance victim survivors of rape have received from both state and nonstate actors -- including officials of their own political party, who have undertaken to protect party members from acts of violence and intimidation by the ruling party. The study further seeks to influence responses by all these actors.
Rape was used as a tool for political coercion during the election periods in 2000, 2002, 2005 and 2008. The political crisis had an impact on how cases of politically motivated rape were dealt with at multiple levels. In brief, the State failed in its duty to protect women. The perceived inviolability of the perpetrators, as a result of their perceived political affiliation, determines whether allegations of rape are reported, investigated, prosecuted, and adjudicated. The law as presently formulated is not sufficient to cover the total scope of rape as it occurs when used as a tool for political coercion.
► Rosalie Kumbirai Katsande, a Lecturer at the Centre, is Exploring the Potential of Laws and Procedures Governing Business Entities in Facilitating Women’s Entrepreneurial Development in the Horticultural Sector of Zimbabwe.
Inspiring this research is a passage in Peasants, Traders and Wives: Shona Women in the History of Zimbawe 1870 – 1939 (1996), in which Dr. Elizabeth Schmidt, Professor of History at Loyola University Maryland, writes:

When the Jesuit father A Hartmann visited the Shona Chief Chipanga in about 1891, he asked the chief how numerous the people where including women and children, the chief reportedly answered, 'women are not counted'. He then took a handful of dust from the ground and said, 'that is the woman. Hartman concluded that women were regarded as almost nonexistent.

In her own research project, Katsande explores women entrepreneurs in the horticulture sector of Mashonaland East Province of Zimbabwe. Her work interrogates the appropriateness for the development of business regimes by government authorities for women in rural areas. In an effort to determine the appropriateness of current such regimes, the study traces the economic history of Zimbabwe and shows how women’s economic initiatives have been marginalized by historical processes. Laws designed during colonial governance continue to inform and limit women’s entrepreneurial potential and development.
Historically, state officials discouraged Zimbabwean women from settling in the towns and at the mines. The officials opposed the growth of a permanent and potentially explosive African population in the urban areas, and encouraged women and children to subsidize male wages through agricultural production at rural homesteads. State officials expected rural-based women to bear the social costs of production -- caring for the sick, disabled, and retired workers -- while raising the next generation of labourers. Innovation by women was deeply affected by legislative and policy restrictions.
Against this backdrop, the study considers the current government’s people-centred development approach from an African feminist perspective, which, inter alia, focuses on empowering African women to improve their own lives.
The study reveals challenges to community income-generating projects initiated by the Zimbabwean Ministry of Women Affairs, Gender and Community Development. These are reported to have failed to address women’s economic needs; indeed, they present more of a burden, as they add work on already overworked women.
Women in the areas of study are running potentially viable horticultural ventures. The profitability of these ventures is dependent on agricultural support and training; however, this is not being received. Instead, women in these communities are presented with artificially constructed income-generating projects.

These are some of the impressive projects under way at the Centre. Perhaps of primary importance is the investigation of the realities of individual lives and how to link them into the international human rights agendas through national legal and policy frameworks.

On September 26

On this day in ...
... 1946, Andrea Dworkin (left) was born in Camden, New Jersey. Some time after earning a bachelor's degree in literature in 1968 from Bennington College, she moved to Europe and "married a Dutch political radical." (photo credit) The couple divorced within 3 years; Dworkin later told The New York Times:

'I was a battered wife, and pornography entered into it. Both of us read it, and it helped give me the wrong idea of what a woman was supposed to be for a man.'

Dworkin became a "feminist writer and antipornography campaigner," cowriting with Catharine A. MacKinnon an antipornography ordinance that would be invalidated on 1st Amendment grounds. Among Dworkin's books were Woman Hating (1974), Pornography: Men Possessing Women (1981), Intercourse (1987), and Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant (2002). Dworkin died in her sleep, at age 58, in 2005.


(Prior September 26 posts are here, here, and here.)

Will the Codification of the Crime of Aggression Benefit Women?

The image at left is part of the magnificent Bayeaux Tapestry, which chronicles the 1066 Norman conquest of England. (Our family visited the exquisite Tapestry this summer, which is housed in the Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux in Normandy. I recommend walking through the exhibit once with the kids' audio tour, which was in some ways cooler than the adults'.)
The Tapestry—the longest piece of embroidery on record—tells in detail how William the Conqueror contested the coronation of Harold upon the death of King Edward the Confessor. After arriving in England, William's troops pillaged the locals in preparation for battle. Among other atrocities that we would today designate as war crimes, they burned a home, sending this mother and her child fleeing.
This image of women impacted by war serves as inspiration for a new piece I have just posted on SSRN. The article is entitled “The Grass That Gets Trampled When Elephants Fight”: Will the Codification of the Crime of Aggression Protect Women?" after an African proverb:

When elephants fight the grass gets hurt.

The article analyzes the outcome of the International Criminal Court Review Conference in Kampala with an eye toward

• the rarely considered gender aspects of the crime of aggression,
• whether or not the provisions adopted represent an advancement for women, and
• how aspects of feminist theory might interpret the new regime.

The Article concludes that any impact of the provisions will inevitably be limited by gaps and ambiguities in the definition of the crime and the jurisdictional regime, which is premised on state consent and exempts non-states parties altogether. At the same time, the insertion of the crime of aggression in the Rome Statute of the ICC enables the prosecution of a wider range of acts, and actors, that cause harm to women and makes actionable harm to women that may not rise to the level of war crimes or crimes against humanity and that has historically been rendered juridically invisible by the collateral damage euphemism. Extending the reach of international criminal law may generate indirect negative effects from the interaction of the Court’s potential to prosecute the crime of aggression and the long-standing jus in bello, that body of rules governing how war is waged rather than why war is waged, which is the purview of the jus ad bellum. By penalizing the resort to armed force, the threat of prosecution of the crime of aggression may undermine incentives to comply with key doctrines within international humanitarian law that serve to protect civilians and other vulnerable groups. (Refugees in Chad at right, photo credit).
It also remains to be seen whether the codification of the crime of aggression will serve any deterrent purpose whatsoever when governmental leaders contemplate using force—offensively or defensively—in their international relations, especially in situations that do not implicate exigent sovereign threats. To the extent that the new provisions do exert a restraining effect, the expansive way in which the crime has been defined may end up chilling those uses of force that are protective and thus more discretionary, such as uses of force employed pursuant to the nascent doctrine of responsibility to protect. The crime may thus result in more ex post prosecutions at the expense of ex ante efforts at preventing and repressing violence. Whether this over-deterrence argument should be raised on behalf of women, however, requires an acceptance of the legitimacy, if not lawfulness, of humanitarian intervention with or without Security Council approval and a coming to terms with a certain valorization of militarism and its inherent masculinities—a perspective that is alien to much feminist thinking.
The International Criminal Court has yet to demonstrate that it can fulfill its current mandate. Operationalizing the crime of aggression without allocating additional resources to enable the Court to prosecute this controversial, largely unprecedented, and qualitatively different crime may distract the Court from responding more effectively to the “atrocity crimes” that now finally address gender-based violence more directly. The crime may also encourage the Court to focus on leaders in capital cities rather than the warlords next door, whom victims more directly associate with atrocities and without whose prosecution it may be impossible to achieve complete justice for women. Given the potential to reach top political leaders, the crime may be also subject to abuse. The amendments approved in Kampala will eventually permit states parties to refer each other to the ICC as alleged violators of the prohibition against aggression. Misuse of this referral authority could render the Court little more than just another forum for states to manipulate and exploit in order to advance their interests. Such an outcome would politicize and de-legitimate the Court.
At this early stage in the life of the Court and in the absence of any concrete experience investigating or prosecuting the new crime of aggression, these bases for criticism and praise are inherently speculative. Applying a feminist perspective to the codification of the crime of aggression yields no easy conclusions. Rather, reasoning through the central question of whether the codification of the crime in the ICC Statute will be good for women produces a dizzying spiral of dialectical reasoning. And so, as a feminist, I approach the crime with a profound ambivalence.
I welcome your comments on the paper...

Go On: Women's Rights/Human Rights

Folks in or near the Bay Area are welcome to sit in on this year's Social Justice Workshop at Santa Clara University School of Law convened by yours truly. The topic: Women's Rights/Human Rights. Unless otherwise noted, all lectures will be held in Bannan Hall, Room 237 at 4:10 - 5:30, followed by a reception in Strong Commons in Bergin Hall. (Map of campus here).

The line up of speakers is impressive and includes many IntLawGrrls:

9/2/10 Diane Marie Amann (University of California Davis School of Law): Women at Nuremberg

Diane Amann is a professor of law, research scholar, and founding director of the California International Law Center at King Hall, U.C. Davis School of Law. Her scholarship examines the interaction of national, regional, and international legal efforts to combat atrocity and cross-border crime.

9/16/10 Michelle Oberman (Santa Clara Law): Abortion Laws and Women's Lives: Exploring the Relationship Between the Uterus, the Conscience, and the State

Michelle Oberman (left) is a professor of law at Santa Clara Law where she specializes in the area of health policy and the law, with particular emphasis on the intersection of women's health, poverty, criminal law, and public health issues. As a legal scholar with a background in public health, her research focuses on legal and ethical issues relating to adolescence, sexuality, pregnancy, and motherhood.

9/28/10 Luis CdeBaca (Ambassador-at-Large, Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons): The United States Effort to Combat Human Trafficking

** Note: Alternative Time & Venue: 5:30 – 7:00 p.m. Bannan Hall 142

Luis CdeBaca was appointed by President Obama to coordinate U.S. government activities in the global fight against contemporary forms of slavery. He was formerly with the U.S. Department of Justice where he led the investigation and prosecution of complex crimes. He has received a number of honors for his work on trafficking and related crimes.

9/30/10 Shadi Sadr (Iranian lawyer, journalist, and woman's rights activist): Women's Rights in Iran

Shandi Sadr (right) is a prominent Iranian lawyer; journalist, and women's rights activist and legal expert. She served as director of Raahi-a legal advice center for women. She has pioneered the first website dedicated to Iranian women, Zanan-e Iran. She continues work representing women in danger of execution as well as journalistic coverage of women's rights and her work on the "Stop Stoning Forever" campaign.

10/7/10 Beth Van Schaack (Santa Clara Law): A Feminist Review of the Crime of Aggression

Beth Van Schaack is an associate professor at Santa Clara Law, where she teaches and writes in the areas of human rights, transitional justice, international criminal law, public international law, international humanitarian law, and civil procedure. Professor Van Schaack served on the U.S. delegation to the International Criminal Court Review Conference in Kampala, Uganda, in June 2010.

10/14/10 Doris Buss (Carleton University - Ottawa, Canada): Is Polygamy a Women's Rights Issue?

Doris Buss (right) is an associate professor of law at Carleton University, where she teaches and researches in the areas of international human rights law, women's rights, and international criminal law. Her work examines social movement activism, identity, and international law and policy. Prior to joining Carleton, Professor Buss taught law at Keele University in the United Kingdom.

10/21/10 Social Justice Diversity Lecture and Reception: Darren Hutchison (American University Washington College of Law): Resistance in the Afterlife of Identity

** Note: Alternative Time & Venue: 4 – 5 p.m. Weigand Room, Arts and Sciences

Darren Hutchinson (left) teaches Constitutional Law, Equitable Remedies and seminars in Critical Race Theory and Equal Protection Theory. Prior to his career in law teaching, Professor Hutchinson practiced commercial litigation at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen and Hamilton in New York City. He also clerked for the late Honorable Mary Johnson Lowe, a former United States District Judge in the Southern District of New York.

11/4/10 Nancy Northup (President, Center for Reproductive Rights): Recent Transnational Law Developments on Reproductive Rights

Nancy Northup (right) is president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, a global human rights organization that has brought groundbreaking cases before national courts, U.N. committees, and regional human rights bodies, and has built the legal capacity of women's rights advocates in over 45 countries. Before joining the Center, she was the founding director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU.

11/18/10 Joanna Erdman (Co-Director, International Reproductive and Sexual Health Law and Programme and Director, Health Equity and Law Clinic at the University of Toronto): The Procedural Turn in Transnational Abortion Law

Joanna Erdman is co-director of the International Reproductive and Sexual Health Law Programme and Director of the Health Equity and Law Clinic at the University of Toronto. She has published on the regulation of reproductive and sexual health care, Canadian and comparative health policy, and human rights law. Her primary scholarship concerns sex and gender discrimination in health systems.

Hope to see you there!

Write On! "Feminism Globally"

(Write On! is an occasional item about notable calls for papers.)

IntLawGrrls guest/alumna Nienke Grossman, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, sends news that the law school's Center on Applied Feminism seeks submissions for its 4th Annual Feminist Legal Theory Conference, which will be held March 3 & 4, 2011, and focus on the theme of Applying Feminism Globally.

As detailed in the full call for papers, paper topics within this theme might include:

► How has feminist legal theory affected the lives of women across the globe?

► How could feminist legal theory improve women's lives in a global context?
► How does feminist legal theory differ across cultures within and outside the United States?

► What do comparative perspectives teach us about feminist legal theory?

► How could feminist legal theory from outside of the United States benefit American women and feminist scholarship?

► How do anti-essentialist perspectives on feminist legal theory apply in an international context?

► How do post-colonial perspectives on feminist legal theory apply in a domestic context?

► What can feminist legal theory contribute to the debate over universal vs. cultural specific norms and objectives?

► Is feminism still ambivalent about many areas of international law?

► What, if any, role has feminism played in the empowerment of women in international law-making?

► Can feminist legal theory improve our understanding of challenges facing immigrants within our own borders?

► What does feminist legal theory offer for indigenous peoples?

► How are human rights norms compatible with feminist legal theory?

(As described here, the Center's past 3 conferences have treated a variety of issues and featured keynotes speakers like Sheryl WuDunn, Maya Angelou, and Gloria Steinem.)
Abstracts of no more than 1 page, describing papers within the theme of the "Applied Feminism Globally" theme, should be submitted no later than October 15, 2010, via an e-mail with subject line "CAF conference submission," to Professor Michele Gilman (right), the Center's Co-Director, at mgilman@ubalt.edu. Working drafts of papers to be presented at the conference will be due no later than February 11, 2011; a select number of the final papers will be published in the University of Baltimore Law Review. Details on all aspects of the options in this call here.

The Creation of International Law

Greetings from Oslo, where a number of IntLawGrrls (members, guests, and alumnae) are participating in a conference organized by Cecilia Bailliet and others at the University of Oslo Faculty of Law on The Creation of International Law: An Exploration of Normative Innovation, Contextual Application, and Interpretation in a Time of Flux.

Participants include the following women in international law (IntLawGrrls have a * next to their names):

► Henriette Aasen - University of Bergen
► Montserrat Abad - Carlos III University of Madrid
► Sumudu Atapattu (above left) - University of Wisconsin
► * Karima Bennoune (left) Rutgers School of Law, Newark
► * Rebecca M. Bratspies (right, in black) - CUNY School of Law
► Catherine Brölmann (below, in blue) - University of Amsterdam


►* Doris Buss - Carleton University
► Rosemary Byrne (right, with scarf) - Trinity College Dublin
► Christine Byron - Cardiff Law School (below left, in purple)
►* Hilary Charlesworth (below, in white) - Australian National University

► *Fiona de Londras (below) - University College Dublin
► Katherine Del Mar (below right) - University of Geneva
► Malgosia Fitzmaurice - Queen Mary University of London School of Law
► Anne Hellum - University of Oslo
► Agnieszka Jachec-Neale (below right, in front of window) - School of Oriental and Asian Studies
► Edda Kristjansdottir - Amsterdam Law School
► Catharine MacKinnon - Harvard Law School/U. Michigan Law School
► Claudia Martin - AU Washington College of Law
► *Fionnuala Ni Aoláin - U. Minnesota School of Law
► Phoebe Okawa (right) - Queen Mary University School of Law
► *Hari M. Osofsky - U. Minnesota School of Law
► Inger Johanne Sand - University of Oslo
► Kirsten Sandberg (right, in green) - University of Oslo
► Birgit Schlütter - Norwegian Center for Human Rights
► Hitomi Takemura - NUI Galway & Kyusha International University
► * Beth Van Schaack - Santa Clara University School of Law
► Maria Varaki - PhD candidate, NUI Galway; Irish Centre for Human Rights

Stay tuned for additional postings from the conference.

Guest Blogger: Yvonne McDermott

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Yvonne McDermott (left) as today's guest blogger.
Yvonne is a Ph.D. candidate and doctoral research fellow at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland-Galway, where she is also a Lecturer on Children's Rights. Her research focuses on due process in international criminal proceedings, and her guest post below examines the jurisprudential doctrine of abuse of process, an ongoing issue in 3 International Criminal Court cases now proceeding against defendants from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Yvonne holds a Diploma in Irish (Gaeilge), a Bachelor of Corporate Law and a Bachelor of Laws from the National University of Ireland, Galway. In 2008, Yvonne earned an LL.M. cum laude in Public International Law from Leiden University in the Netherlands. Her scholarship includes the journal article Victims and International Law: Remedies in the Courtroom (2009), for which last year she was named the inaugural recipient of the Böhler Franken Koppe Wijngaarden advocaten Hague Academic Coalition Award for Young Professionals. Yvonne is the Managing Editor of the Oxford Reports in International Criminal Law.
Yvonne chooses to dedicate her post to 2 Irish women. Both "are perhaps better known for their associations with famous men," she writes, but both "deserve to be recognised in their own right." Yvonne continues:

Mary Ann McCracken [left; 1770-1886], the sister of executed United Irishman Henry Joy McCracken, was born in Belfast. She too was committed to social reform, and was a dedicated philanthropist and activist, committed to helping the poor of Belfast,
pioneering for equal rights for women and the abolition of slavery. There are descriptions of her at the age of 88 handing out leaflets at the docks of Belfast to those heading for the southern ports of the United States, where slavery was still practiced.
Maud Gonne [below right; 1866-1953] was born in England but her legacy is cemented as a pivotal player in the Irish struggle for independence. She was particularly involved in countering evictions and in famine relief in counties Connaught in the late 19th century. She was the founder of Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Daughters of Ireland), an Irish nationalist feminist organisation, in 1900, and was fiercely devoted to the promotion and preservation of Irish culture through the arts. In spite of her own achievements, Maud Gonne is often celebrated as the muse of William Butler Yeats and the mother of diplomat and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Seán MacBride.

Today Gonne (prior post) and McCracken join the foremothers' list just below our "visiting from..." map in the righthand column -- and thus also join what Yvonne aptly calls "the wonderful Mná na hÉireann so honoured on this blog before me." The "Women of Ireland" to whom she refers are foremothers Grace O'Malley/Gráinne Ní Mháille, Eva Gore-Booth, Mary Harris "Mother" Jones, Eibhlín Dhubh Ní Chonaill, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, and Constance Markiewicz.

Heartfelt welcome!