Woman Lawyer Research Articles

The ideal Emirati woman lawyer: femininity and professionalism in Justice: Qalb Al Adala

ABSTRACT This article analyzes how the 2017 Emirati legal drama Justice: Qalb Al Adala depicts its female lead character, young lawyer Farah Hassan Ahmed, as she establishes herself professionally in Abu Dhabi’s legal sector. As the first Emirati television show on Netflix, Justice: Qalb Al Adala targets a global audience that is invited to learn about Abu Dhabi’s legal and justice system. It was created by US producers Walter Parkes and William M. Finkelstein and written by US screenwriter Carol Wolper. The show was co-produced by the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department, the emirate’s highest judicial authority, and can thus be viewed as an “official” representation of the legal and justice system in the United Arab Emirates and its personnel. The present article argues that in portraying the woman lawyer Farah, Justice: Qalb Al Adala replicates several problematic themes that have been previously observed in US law-related screen productions, particularly from the 1980s and 1990s. Yet in other instances, the show advances a much more progressive and positive picture of female legal professionals. In addition, the article concludes that, as an idealized combination of “modernity” and “tradition”, Farah’s character can be understood as a visualization of a preferred contemporary Emirati national identity.

American Legal Realism and the Revitalization of Literary Realist History

American Legal Realism and the Revitalization of Literary Realist History

The Ritual Solidarity of Masked Processions in Calabar, Cameroon, and Cuba

The Ritual Solidarity of Masked Processions in Calabar, Cameroon, and Cuba

The burnout syndrome in a woman lawyer in the city of Manaus

This article is part of a master’s thesis presented at the Universidad Europea del Atlántico that dealt with a field research that investigated: The burnout syndrome in a lawyer from the city of Manaus, and had as a problem: what are the effects of the burnout syndrome in women lawyer from the city of Manaus? Its general objective was to analyze the cases of syndrome of female lawyers in the city of Manaus, seeking to understand its effects on the daily life of the same. Five women were interviewed who had presented the problem in the last 2 years in the city of Manaus, State of Amazonas, Brazil. The results indicate that the therapeutic approach is multimodal and is based on recommendations for the psychosomatic management of functional somatic syndromes, complemented by interventions related to the work situation. It is concluded that Burnout among female lawyers has been little studied. The main burnout factors of the investigated workers are: professional factors and a high level of responsibility.

Trailblazers III: Süreyya Ağaoğlu the First Woman Lawyer of Turkey

In 1927, Sureyya Agaoglu became the first woman lawyer of Turkey. She had to force the doors of the Law School of the ancient Ottoman Empire. Because in its religious and tradition-based court system and laws, there was no place for a woman lawyer. According to the Mecelle, (the Ottoman civil and procedural code) ''In civil cases, evidence is only valid when given by two males, or one male and two females, but in places where males cannot be possessed of the necessary information, the evidence of females alone will be accepted in respect of the property.'' In a legal system, women were not excepted as witnesses, it would be impossible to give them the authority of a lawyer. While she was a student at the university, the old Ottoman Empire with its laws and institutions withdrawn from the stage of history. The young Republic of Turkey opened the doors of the legal profession to women. Agaoglu and her friends led the way, and today women consist the half of lawyers

A poor woman's lawyer? Feminism, the labour movement, and working-class women's access to the law in England, 1890–1935

ABSTRACT Women were excluded from both branches of the legal profession before the Sex Discrimination (Removal) Act 1919. Whilst campaigning for women's entry to the law was also part of wider efforts to make the law more accessible. Before and after the 1919 Act, middle-class women were able to offer legal support to working-class women, through feminist and trade unionist networks and the professions that were open to them—factory inspection and social work. By examining key women’s organisations between the 1890s and 1930s, we trace the development of work to both educate women and girls on their legal rights and to directly tackle problems and breaches of the law. We argue that, by looking at the legal activism of women in the factory inspectorate, social work, trade union and women's organisations, fresh insight into the development and ‘mainstreaming’ of working-class claims on citizenship in the early twentieth century can be found.

Cornelia Sorabji (1866–1954): a pioneer woman lawyer in Britain and India

ABSTRACT Cornelia Sorabji, born into a Parsee Christian family in Pune, was the first woman to write the BCL examinations at Oxford University in 1892. She had some initial success as a woman lawyer after she returned to India in 1893, including becoming the first woman lawyer in the British Empire to defend an accused charged with murder in 1896. In 1904, she was appointed Lady Assistant to the Court of Wards and provided advice to women Purdahnashin in northern India for nearly two decades. Yet, her ardent support for ‘British India’ eventually resulted in her opposition to Gandhi’s independence movement and, as Vera Brittain concluded, she chose ‘a wrong direction’ at a critical moment in history. Her story reveals both opportunities and constraints for women in India in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, as well as the shifting colonial relationships in British India in the context of the Independence movement of the 1930s and 40s.

Private pain versus public shame: González Sinde’s female lawyer in La suerte dormida/Sleeping Luck (2003)

ABSTRACTThis article analyses the representation of a female lawyer whose personal tragedy encourages her to become a heroine lawyer for the socially disadvantaged. It explores a female filmmaker’s account of a woman lawyer fighting for a lost cause and examines in what way the public/private, law/justice and reason/emotion dichotomies are played out in her public performance and private life. Central to my discussion will be the significance of emotion in filmmaking, law and social justice. I use Carl Plantinga’s seminal work on the emotional experience of the spectator and his cognitive-perceptual account of the viewing process, and combine it with a fruitful discussion of the genre of female lawyer films, as theorized by Cynthia Lucia and Orit Kamir in two pioneering studies on female lawyer films. This article fills a significant critical gap in the field of Spanish law and film. Positioned at the intersection between law, film and emotion, it gives space to a productive cross-fertilization of theories of spectatorship and the female lawyer film.

PENGLIBATAN NON MUSLIM SEBAGAI PEGUAM SYARIE DI MALAYSIA: SATU ANALISIS

The issue of the involvement of non-Muslims as Syarie counsel in the Shariah Court has triggered a debate among the public, especially involving Muslim scholars and Shariah and Civil legal practitioners in Malaysia. This is due to the actions of a non-Muslim woman lawyer who has filing an appeal challenging the ban issued by the High Court to stop the practice as a Syarie counsel. This study aims to identify the background of the issue and its evaluation from the Islamic law perspective and the contemporary legislation provisions in Malaysia. This issue has been analyzed with regard to the debate on Muslim scholars regarding the involvement of non-Muslims as Syarie counsels and its evaluation based on the legal context and current reality in Malaysia. The prohibition of the involvement was seen as crucial in preserving the relationship between religion in Malaysia and preventing any controversial disputes arising from the issue.

PENGLIBATAN NON MUSLIM SEBAGAI PEGUAM SYARIE DI MALAYSIA: SATU ANALISIS: The Involvement of Non-Muslims As Syarie Counsel in Malaysia: An Analysis

The issue of the involvement of non-Muslims as Syarie counsel in the Shariah Court has triggered a debate among the public, especially involving Muslim scholars and Shariah and Civil legal practitioners in Malaysia. This is due to the actions of a non-Muslim woman lawyer who has filing an appeal challenging the ban issued by the High Court to stop the practice as a Syarie counsel. This study aims to identify the background of the issue and its evaluation from the Islamic law perspective and the contemporary legislation provisions in Malaysia. This issue has been analyzed with regard to the debate on Muslim scholars regarding the involvement of non-Muslims as Syarie counsels and its evaluation based on the legal context and current reality in Malaysia. The prohibition of the involvement was seen as crucial in preserving the relationship between religion in Malaysia and preventing any controversial disputes arising from the issue.

Dalit Women Writings: Breaking the stereotypical annotations of “being an untouchable”

Abstract Indian women writers have established a permanent place in the arena of literature, because they have written with a woman’s point of view and have not imitated the established and stereotypical manners of writing. Most of the earlier Indian women autobiographies are written by educated, high-caste and rich women, especially queens and princess. However in their writings they have not glorified their riches instead have written about the social practices committed on women of their times and thus have expressed a genuine female experience.The Autobiography of an Indian Princess (1921) is one of the earliest writings by an Indian woman. Sunetee Devi (1864-1932), a daughter of Brahma follower Keshav Chandra Sen, who became the Maharani of Cooch Behar, lost her husband early in life. The book is a stepping stone in the realm of Indian women autobiographies as it depicts the inner feelings of most of the Indian women of 19th and 20th century. Another remarkable woman autobiography is India Calling (1934) by Cornelia Sorabji (1866-1954). It is the autobiography of India’s first woman lawyer, who raged a struggle against the suppression of women. Sorabji belonged to Parsi-Christian family. She was inspired to choose her job by observing the plight of women who visited her mother. Her book depicts the gender discrimination encountered by her not only in India but also in England where she went to study

A Woman of Strange, Unfathomable Presencee: Ida Platt's Lived Experience of Race, Gender, and Law, 1863-1939

In 1894, Ida Platt became the first African-American woman lawyer in Illinois. She was one of only five black women lawyers in the country and the only one able to maintain a law practice. Throughout her thirty-three year career, Platt served as head of her household, providing for her mother and sisters, without marrying or having children. She accomplished these feats by employing a fluid racial identity, passing as white in her professional life, and by avoiding the dominant gender roles that excluded women from the masculine legal profession. In 1927, at the age of sixty-four, Ida Platt retired, married Walter Burke, a white man, and moved to England. Twelve years later, Ida Burke died. As is the practice in England, there was no race designation on her death certificate. Platt’s choice to employ a fluid racial identity allowed her to pursue her career as a lawyer amidst a racist and sexist society that particularly discriminated against black women. She entered the law when Jim Crow was taking root, race lines were hardening, and elite, white, male lawyers were intensifying their opposition to women’s rise within the profession. Platt’s life and career offer insights into how law and the legal profession responded to the complexities of race and tender a new story of the lived experience of race as it intersects with gender. It suggests that Platt’s pragmatic strategy of changing her racial identity both contested and shaped the ways in which race, gender, and identity were constructed and represented in American society, as it exposed both the rigidity and permeability of these constructions.

Public Law, Private Practice: Politics, Profit, and the Legal Profession in Nineteenth-Century Japan by Darryl E. Flaherty (review)

Reviewed by: Public Law, Private Practice: Politics, Profit, and the Legal Profession in Nineteenth-Century Japan by Darryl E. Flaherty Daniel H. Foote (bio) Public Law, Private Practice: Politics, Profit, and the Legal Profession in Nineteenth-Century Japan. By Darryl E. Flaherty. Harvard University Asia Center, Cambridge, Mass., 2013. xii, 322 pages. $39.95. Public Law, Private Practice is an impressive work that greatly advances knowledge about Japan’s legal profession and its role in Japanese society and history. The author, Darryl E. Flaherty, associate professor of history at the University of Delaware, has conducted a vast amount of research, in both Japanese- and English-language sources from the Meiji era to the present, including archival materials housed at numerous institutions, biographies and autobiographies of major figures, and comparative works on the profession in Europe and the United States. From this comprehensive research, he has constructed a rich account of the historical development of the legal profession in Japan. As the subtitle implies, Flaherty’s primary focus is on the nineteenth century. His account commences much earlier, though, from early in the Edo era; and many themes continue to resonate today. Late in chapter 1, Flaherty quotes an 1889 letter from John Henry Wig-more to the then-president of the Johns Hopkins University: “I believe you could render a substantial service to New Japan by Historical investigations into the social and legal History of Old Japan” (p. 85). Wigmore is well known to generations of U.S. lawyers as the author of a leading treatise on the law of evidence, and he served for nearly three decades as dean of Northwestern University School of Law. He began his teaching career in 1889 as professor of Anglo-American law at Keio University and wrote the above letter that year. Wigmore himself organized a major project to compile and study law and legal precedents from the Edo era,1 and he devoted a chapter to Japanese legal history in his 1928 three-volume work, A Panorama of the World’s Legal Systems (West Publishing Company). Relatively few others have taken up Wigmore’s call. Noteworthy English-language sources that address civil justice in the Edo era include works by Dan Fenno Henderson, John Owen Haley, Carl Steenstrup, Herman Ooms, and Frank Upham.2 Their works include some discussion of legal practice [End Page 190] in the Edo era, but that is not their primary focus. Few works in English have addressed the historical development of the Japanese legal profession since the Meiji era, either. The two most notable works—by Richard Rabinowitz and Takaaki Hattori—appeared over 50 years ago.3 Notably, these works all tend to focus either on the pre-Meiji situation or later developments in isolation, without examining the transition in any detail. Even for materials in Japanese, the situation is similar. While there are far more works in Japanese than in English exploring specific aspects of the legal profession and its history, I am not aware of any comprehensive study of the development of the legal profession that traces its historical roots from the Edo era through the various permutations of the Meiji era. Indeed, given Flaherty’s extensive research, if such a study existed, one could be confident he would have cited and relied on it. This book addresses that gap in existing scholarship by tracing the legal profession in Japan from Edo-era antecedents up through the close of the nineteenth century. In chapter 1, Flaherty provides an extensive account, rich in detail, of legal practice in the Edo era. In the subsequent four chapters, he examines several stages in the development of the legal profession during the Meiji era. Flaherty has enriched this study by incorporating vignettes from the lives of leading figures in the history of the legal profession—including the so-called “first woman lawyer,” Sono Tel (or Teruko) and the first Japanese registered as a British barrister, Hoshi Tōru—and by including rather detailed accounts of the establishment and activities of various organizations and associations. Moreover, by interspersing comparative references throughout the book, Flaherty provides valuable reminders that the pattern of development of the legal profession in Japan bears numerous...

Shakespeare in Chinese Cinema

Shakespeare’s plays were first adapted in the Chinese cinema in the era of silent motion pictures, such as A Woman Lawyer (from The Merchant of Venice, 1927), and A Spray of Plum Blossoms (from The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 1931). The most recent Chinese adaptations/spinoffs include two 2006 films based on Hamlet. After a brief review of Shakespeare’s history in the Chinese cinema, this study compares the two Chinese Hamlets released in 2006—Feng Xiaogang’s Banquet and Hu Xuehua’s Prince of the Himalayas to illustrate how Chinese filmmakers approach Shakespeare. Both re-invent Shakespeare’s Hamlet story and transfer it to a specific time, culture and landscape. The story of The Banquet takes place in a warring state in China of the 10th century while The Prince is set in pre-Buddhist Tibet. The former as a blockbuster movie in China has gained a financial success albeit being criticised for its commercial aesthetics. The latter, on the other hand, has raised attention amongst academics and critics and won several prizes though not as successful on the movie market. This study examines how the two Chinese Hamlet movies treat Shakespeare’s story in using different filmic strategies of story, character, picture, music and style.

Alexander C. Y. Huang, Chinese Shakespeares: Two Centuries of Cultural ExchangeChinese Shakespeares: Two Centuries of Cultural Exchange. Alexander C. Y. Huang. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. Pp. xi+350.

<i>Alexander C. Y. Huang</i>, Chinese Shakespeares: Two Centuries of Cultural Exchange<i>Chinese Shakespeares: Two Centuries of Cultural Exchange</i>. Alexander C. Y. Huang. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. Pp. xi+350.

Authority and Corporeality: The Conundrum for Women in Law

Despite a significant increase in the number of women in the legal profession, women continue to be disproportionately represented in the lower echelons. It is apparent that the liberal progressivist thesis, which avers that the asymmetry will be remedied through numerosity, cannot be sustained. Structural theories of discrimination may be invoked to explain the gender differential, but it is argued that such theories are inadequate. The key to the conundrum lies in the social construction of femininity and masculinity through what are termed the ‘fictive feminine’ and the ‘imagined masculine.' Drawing on qualitative research conducted for Dissonance and Distrust Women in the Legal Profession (Oxford University Press, 1996), the paper considers the ways in which the gender boundary is maintained so that the masculine remains the norm and the feminine the `other' for legal practice. It is argued that mechanisms emphasising the sexed body of the woman lawyer, including eroticisation, abjection, and motherhood, continue to reproduce conventional notions of the feminine and to diminish the authority of women as legal knowers in subtle ways.

Woman Lawyer: The Trials of Clara Foltz

Woman Lawyer tells the story of Clara Foltz, who in 1878 became the first female lawyer in California. Today her legacy is memorialized in the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in Los Angeles. The courthouse recognizes Foltz’s efforts to establish the office of the public defender. Barbara Babcock is eager to tell Foltz’s story, and the details come tumbling out. Babcock is a leader among legal historians of women. Her Women’s Legal History Biography Project at Stanford Law School produces publicly available biographies of early women lawyers. Babcock is at her best in Woman Lawyer when she integrates these biographical stories to contextualize Foltz’s experience. Babcock briefly introduces many of these famous first women, giving just enough information to whet the appetite. Babcock’s focus is the personal story of Clara Foltz. The first four chapters of the book present the details of Foltz’s life in rough chronological order. Foltz married early at the age of fifteen but was soon abandoned by her ne’er-do-well husband. As a single mother with five children to raise, she came to law as a way to support her family. The book recounts Foltz’s challenges to the entrenched male legal establishment, including her denial of valuable apprenticeships, exclusion from moot court clubs, and the lawsuit she filed to gain admission to the new Hastings College of Law. Her experiences are intertwined with glimpses into the history of California, from its constitutional convention driven by anti-Chinese sentiment to the economic boom times and depressions caused by gold, real estate, and the great fire.

Gender, Sexualities and Law (review)

Reviewed by: Gender, Sexualities and Law Sahana Dharmapuri, Associate Fellow (bio) Gender, Sexualities and Law, (Jackie Jones, Anna Grear, Rachel Anne Fenton, & Kim Stevenson eds., Oxon and New York: Routledge Press, 2011), 334 334 pages, ISBN 978-0-415-57439-6. Editors Jones, Grear, Fenton, and Stevenson have pulled together this collection of articles for a generation of young women and men who might proclaim "I'm not a feminist, but," yet who are passionate about finding solutions to social justice problems today. Gender, Sexualities and the Law begins with the premise that the Law is gendered, and that equality is not a fact of life. The text examines the questions, "What does this mean for men and women?" and "How do women and men benefit (or not) from the law because of their different roles, status and needs?" Using a feminist lens, Gender. Sexualities and Law is a new option for instructors who want to introduce their students to current legal issues in contemporary terms. Intended to primarily serve law students, this book is accessible to the lay reader interested in the intersection of gender and current legal topics. Topics include; human trafficking, LGBT rights, honor killings, and work-life balance in the legal profession. The articles also [End Page 312] cover more traditional feminist ground with an examination of new laws on reproductive rights. A few examples are: the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act passed in 1990 in the UK, as well as other laws on sexual violence in the US, the UK, and the EU, and an exploration of women as legal persons. The common thread is an examination of the law through a feminist lens. In each piece the authors examine the idea of how gender shapes legal concepts, asking about the location of women in the law and its structures, and probing into the role that gender plays in shaping laws, and the legal system itself. Part I: Theory, law, and sex, provides an introduction to legal theory on the person, law, and sex. At the heart of this section is the relationship between legal theory and women's lived reality. The authors explore how women are perceived by the law, and how they experience it. Ngaire Naffine and Anna Grear examine the complexity of the legal concept of "persons" as they appear in the law and reveal how women find themselves not fully recognized as "legal persons" today. Rosemary Hunter's (De-)sexing the woman lawyer is sure to captivate the attention of any law student contemplating their future career as it examines gender and sex in the culture of the legal profession. Martha A. Fineman, a leading authority on feminist jurisprudence and the founder of the Vulnerability Project at Emory University, has made an excellent contribution illuminating her work on vulnerability and equality (Chapter 4). She presents the concept of vulnerability analysis as a "guarantee of true access to resources," which underscores that autonomy is a man-made concept and aspiration, not the natural condition of humanity. Part II: Representations, law and sex, offers reflections on the representations of masculinities and femininities in the corporate world via the "invisible" sexuality of the judiciary, and in the depiction of women in the criminal-justice system. Alice Belcher's The Gendered Company (Chapter 7) examines the masculinity of corporate environments, and how this affects the social culture of corporate environments today. Leslie J. Moran admits that his study of the public sex of the judiciary through a study of judicial images is one that legal students might find bizarre (Chapter 6), but he also states clearly that this is an exploration of the individual and the institution. His use of "queer theory" is an interesting introduction to those new to the subject. In Chapter 8, Todd Brower explores how our beliefs about people or situations guide our interaction with those things in the context of same-sex sexual harassment. He examines cases arising under the sex-discrimination prohibitions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the US. He points out that atypical gender behavior can influence a court's interpretation of sex and gender. Brower finds that male plaintiffs who exhibit...

Cornelia Sorabji: India’s Pioneer Woman Lawyer. A Biography, by Suparna Gooptu

Cornelia Sorabji, a Parsee Christian convert, was ‘a pioneer in more ways than one’ (p. 1). She achieved many firsts, or near firsts (she was not actually, as is commonly believed, the first Indian woman to be called to the bar, but the second), and so can be rightly regarded as a path-finder at a time when strong racial and gender biases shaped the colonial professional world. Her senior bureaucratic role, as a lawyer with responsibility for protecting the interests of Indian women who lived secluded lives (purdahnashin, confined to the female quarters, or zenana), underlined her capacity to work with the system and her readiness to challenge particular aspects of it. However, as this biography highlights from the outset, Sorabji moved at a tangent to her time. Rather than going with the flow of the rising tide of Indian nationalism, she was politically and socially conservative in outlook, which translated into ardent, if often unpopular, support for the British Raj in India. Indeed, her choice ‘not to question existing structures of authority, based on British racial superiority and patriarchal authority’ (p. 67) made her ‘a rarity among educated Indians of her time’ (p. 3) and helped to marginalise her in terms of mainstream historiography.

The Birth of Legal Aid: Gender Ideologies, Women, and the Bar in New York City, 1863–1910

At the New York Legal Aid Society's twenty-fifth anniversary banquet in 1901, Arthur von Briesen, the Society's longtime president, ended the evening with the following acknowledgement: “Before we separate I beg to be permitted to say a few words on … the valuable aid which the Society has received from the women of New York. I want you to understand that without them we could not have prospered, without their assistance we could not have done the work… . Their energetic efforts in our behalf, their clear understanding of the duties … has enabled us to increase not only the forte and our power for good, but enabled us to create a special branch in which the cases of women can be specially considered by an able lawyer who is also a woman.” Here Briesen publicly recognized women's efforts on behalf of legal aid as benefactors, supporters, volunteers, and lawyers. The audience that evening would not have been surprised to learn that a woman lawyer now would be providing legal services to women clients, for this was not a new phenomenon. The Society already employed a number of women lawyers. Furthermore women formally untrained in law, but nonetheless acting as lawyers, had prior to the turn of the century provided legal services to poor women through New York City's Working Women's Protective Union (WWPU). As I demonstrate, the origins of legal aid lay in the provision of legal services to poor women—often by other women.