The Rule of Law and the Human Rights of Women

Abstract

It is no wonder that there are still some vulnerable groups in society such as women even in the modern era of the rule of law. Even the vulnerability of women gets worse in some areas of law as well as in reality.The reason for this is the ideal of justice and the conception of the rule of law have not been fully figured out. As mentioned in Aristotle and Rawls, distributive which deals with proportionate aspects of return should be considered as well as rectificatory justice. Okin, Cornell, and Butler’s arguments are also in line with distributive justice.On the rule of law, modern legal scholars, including Fuller, Raz, and Tamanaha have demonstrated how much valuable the rule of law is in every aspect of law and society. The value of law was especially well presented in three themes of the rule of law, suggested by Tamanaha. But the rule of law still has limitations as seem in Tamanaha and Raz.Probably, the limitations of the rule of law could be resolved within the ideal of justice and substantial rule of law. Because the conception and application of the formal rule of law have some limitations despite the valuable nature of the formal rule of law, as seen in Tamanaha’s arguments, Cornell, and Butler, it should be remandedIn this way, the human rights of women, especially in sexual harassment and patriarchy in family law could be properly resolved in law and society even though it might take time.In case of sexual harassment, the law on sexual harassment could contribute in to eliminating the problem through the formal rule of law. But nevertheless the underlying serious problem of sexual harassment, happening everyday life of people, could find a proper solution through the substantive rule of law and the ideal of distributive justice.In case of surname, the amended provision of family law contributed to reducing patriarchal character of the law, but the law should consider the matter more substantially to approach the legal provision on surname because the law on surname will not solve the problem, despite contribution of legal amendment, because of embedded patriarchy in society and law in general.Therefore, the rule of law, both from formal perspective and a substantial perspective should be considered together to enhance the human rights of women in vulnerable areas of law and society.