The Gender of Constitutional Jurisprudence

Description

To explain how constitutions shape and are shaped by women's lives, the contributors to this volume examine constitutional cases pertaining to women in twelve countries. Analyzing jurisprudence about reproductive, sexual, familial, socio-economic, and democratic rights, they focus constructively on women's claims to equality, asking who makes these claims, what constitutional rights inform them, how they have evolved, what arguments work in defending them, and how they relate to other national issues. Their findings reveal significant similarities in outcomes and in reasoning about women's constitutional rights in these twelve countries, challenging the tradition of distinguishing constitutional jurisprudence depending on whether the country has a written or unwritten constitution, subscribes to civil or common law, is a federal or unitary state, limits constitutional adjudication to the public domain, accords international norms binding or subject to incorporation force, or relies on a specialized or general court to adjudicate constitutional matters.

Beverly Baines is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada where she originated the Law Gender Equality and Feminist Jurisprudence courses. Her research interests include issues in constitutional law, feminist legal theory, anti-discrimination law, multiculturalism, and equality rights. She has contributed chapters to Conversation Among Friends - Entre Amies: Women and Constitutional Reform, Changing Patterns: Women in Canada, and Women and the Constitution, and has written articles for major Canadian and international journals. Ruth Rubio-Marin is Associate Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Seville, Spain. She is author of Immigration as a Democratic Challenge: Citizenship and Inclusion in Germany and the United States and of articles on language rights, nationality, immigration and gender in law. She has taught at several North American academic institutions including Princeton University and Columbia Law School and is currently a member of the Hauser Global Law School Program at New York University.

"...this book is a welcome start. Separately and together, these articles add to our theoretical understanding and reaffirm a truth..." Judith A. Baer, Department of Political Science, Texas A&M University, Law and Politics Book Review "a must-have addition to libraries in comparative policy and especially feminist policy." - Dorothy E. McBride, Florida Atlantic University