Revisiting Feminist Jurisprudence: A Rehabilitation

Abstract

This paper seeks to revive feminist interest in jurisprudence. However, it does not do so by conducting a historical inquiry designed to restore forgotten female jurists or reveal women’s contributions to the jurisprudential tradition. Instead, it comprises an invitation to rethink the encounter of jurisprudence with feminism. To this end it considers what counts as feminist jurisprudence, situating the rise of legal scholarship that defines itself as such, and setting out the notion of positionality as the criterion to judge what else can be included under this label. Thereafter it discusses the distinctive strands of what I deem to be feminist jurisprudence, before concluding with a call for a feminist re-imagining of jurisprudence as an activity both theoretical and pragmatic, and also as one which might hold hitherto un-thought possibilities for a feminist analysis and critique of law.