E-Book Overview
"Our Lives Before the Lawis an extremely interesting book on an extremely interesting subject. Baer offers passionate and powerful criticism that should appeal to a wide audience."--Deborah L. Rhode, Stanford University
"This book displays a deep and subtle understanding of law, its possibilities and limits."--Christine A. Littleton, University of California, Los Angeles
"A comprehensive and impressive work in feminist jurisprudence. It will become a must read for scholars in law and for those in political science and women's studies for whom law is a subject of interest."--Austin Sarat, Amherst College
According to Judith Baer, feminist legal scholarship today does not effectively address the harsh realities of women's lives. Feminists have marginalized themselves, she argues, by withdrawing from mainstream intellectual discourse. In Our Lives Before the Law, Baer thus presents the framework for a new feminist jurisprudence--one that would return feminism to relevance by connecting it in fresh and creative ways with liberalism.
Baer starts from the traditional feminist premise that the legal system has a male bias and must do more to help women combat violence and overcome political, economic, and social disadvantages. She argues, however, that feminist scholarship has over-corrected for this bias. By emphasizing the ways in which the system fails women, feminists have lost sight of how it can be used to promote women's interests and have made it easy for conventional scholars to ignore legitimate feminist concerns. In particular, feminists have wrongly linked the genuine flaws of conventional legal theory to its basis in liberalism, arguing that liberalism focuses too heavily on individual freedom and not enough on individual responsibility. In fact, Baer contends, liberalism rests on a presumption of personal responsibility and can be used as a powerful intellectual foundation for holding men and male institutions more accountable for their actions.
The traditional feminist approach, Baer writes, has led to endless debates about such abstract matters as character differences between men and women, and has failed to deal sufficiently with concrete problems with the legal system. She thus constructs a new feminist interpretation of three central components of conventional theory--equality, rights, and responsibility--through analysis of such pressing legal issues as constitutional interpretation, reproductive choice, and fetal protection. Baer concludes by presenting the outline of what she calls "feminist post-liberalism": an approach to jurisprudence that not only values individual freedoms but also recognizes our responsibility for addressing individuals' needs, however different those may be for men and women.
Powerfully and passionately written, Our Lives Before the Law will have a major impact on the future course of feminist legal scholarship.
E-Book Content
OUR LIVES BEFORE THE LAW
OUR LIVES BEFORE THE LAW CONSTRUCTING A FEMINIST JURISPRUDENCE
Judith A. Baer
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS P R I N C E T O N, N E W J E R S E Y
COPYRIGHT 1999 BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PUBLISHED BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 41 WILLIAM STREET, PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY 08540 IN THE UNITED KINGDOM: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, CHICHESTER, WEST SUSSEX ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA BAER, JUDITH A. OUR LIVES BEFORE THE LAW : CONSTRUCTING A FEMINIST JURISPRUDENCE / JUDITH A. BAER. P. CM. INCLUDES BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES AND INDEX. ISBN 0-691-03316-1 (CLOTH : ALK. PAPER) ISBN 0-691-01945-2 (PBK. : ALK. PAPER) 1. FEMINIST JURISPRUDENCE. 2. WOMEN—LEGAL STATUS, LAWS, ETC.—UNITED STATES. I. TITLE. K349.B34 340′.082—dc21
1999 98-55309
THIS BOOK HAS BEEN COMPOSED IN JANSON CHAPTER 5 OF THE PRESENT WORK APPEARED AS PART OF THE AUTHOR’