Criminal Law and the Man Problem

Ngaire Naffine, Criminal Law and the Man Problem (Hart Publishing, 2019).

This new analysis probes the unacknowledged thinking of generations of influential legal men, which includes the psychological and legal techniques that have obscured the operation of bias, even to the legal experts themselves. It explains how men's interests have influenced the most cherished legal norms, especially the rules of human contact, which were designed to protect men from other men, while specifically securing lawful sexual access to at least one woman. The aim is to test the discipline's broadest commitments to civility, and its trajectory towards the final resolution, when men and women were declared to be equal and equivalent legal persons. In the process it exposes the morally and intellectually limiting consequences of male power. 

-Publisher's Description

Gender War

Solange Mouthaan and Olga Jurasz, Gender War: International and Transitional Justice Perspectives (Intersentia, 2019).

This book explores and challenges common assumptions about gender, conflict, and post-conflict situations. It critically examines the gendered aspects of international and transitional justice processes by subverting traditional understandings of how wars are waged, the power dynamics involved, and the experiences of victims. The book also highlights the gendered stereotypes that underpin the (mis)perceptions about gender and war in order to reveal the multi-dimensional nature of modern conflicts and their aftermaths.

-Publisher's Description

After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate

Mary Ziegler (FSU College of Law). After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate (Harvard Univ. Press, 2015).

"In the early years after the decision, advocates on either side of the abortion battle sought common ground on issues from pregnancy discrimination to fetal research. Drawing on archives and more than 100 interviews with key participants, Ziegler’s revelations complicate the view that abortion rights proponents were insensitive to larger questions of racial and class injustice, and expose as caricature the idea that abortion opponents were inherently antifeminist. But over time, 'pro-abortion' and 'anti-abortion' positions hardened into 'pro-choice' and 'pro-life' categories in response to political pressures and compromises. This increasingly contentious back-and-forth produced the interpretation now taken for granted—that Roe was primarily a ruling on a woman’s right to choose."

—Publisher's website

Men Who Batter

Nancy Nason & Barbara Fisher-Townsend (University of New Brunswick). Men Who Batter (Oxford University Press, 2014).

"Men who act abusively have their own story to tell, a journey that often begins in childhood, ripens in their teenage years, and takes them down paths they were hoping to never travel. Men Who Batter recounts the journey from the point of view of the men themselves. . . . The men's accounts of their lives are told within a broader framework of the agency where they have attended groups, and the regional coordinated community response to domestic violence, which includes the criminal justice workers (e.g., probation, parole, judges), and those who staff shelters and work in advocacy. Based on interview data with this wide array of professionals, we are able to examine how one community, in one western state, responds to men who batter."

—Publisher's website

Sex and International Tribunals: The Erasure of Gender from the War Narrative

Chiseche Salome Mibenge (City University of New York). Sex and International Tribunals (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).


"Before the twenty-first century, there was little legal precedent for the prosecution of sexual violence as a war crime. Now, international tribunals have the potential to help make sense of political violence against both men and women; they have the power to uphold victims' claims and to convict the leaders and choreographers of systematic atrocity. However, by privileging certain accounts of violence over others, tribunals more often confirm outmoded gender norms, consigning women to permanent rape victim status."
—Sex and International Tribunals book jacket