Feminine Law: Freud, Free Speech, and the Voice of Desire explores the conjunction between psychoanalysis and democracy, in particular their shared commitments to free speech. In the process, it demonstrates how lawful constraints enable an embodied space or "gap" for the potentially disruptive but also liberating and novel flow of desire and its symbols. This space, intuited by the First Amendment as it is by Freud's free association, enables personal and collective sovereignty. By naming a "feminine law," we mark the primacy a space between the conceivable and the inconceivable, between knowledge and mystery. What do political free speech and psychoanalytic free association have in common, besides the word "free"? And what do Sigmund Freud and Justice Louis Brandeis share besides a world between two great wars? How is the female body a neglected key to understanding the conditions and contradictions of free discourse? Drs. Jill Gentile and Michael Macrone take up these questions, and more, in their wide-ranging, often passionate exploration of the hidden legacy of Freud and the Founding Fathers.

Erika Bachiochi offers an original look at the development of feminism in the United States, advancing a vision of rights that rests upon our responsibilities to others. In The Rights of Women, Erika Bachiochi explores the development of feminist thought in the United States. Inspired by the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft, Bachiochi presents the intellectual history of a lost vision of women’s rights, seamlessly weaving philosophical insight, biographical portraits, and constitutional law to showcase the once predominant view that our rights properly rest upon our concrete responsibilities to God, self, family, and community. Bachiochi proposes a philosophical and legal framework for rights that builds on the communitarian tradition of feminist thought as seen in the work of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Jean Bethke Elshtain. Drawing on the insight of prominent figures such as Sarah Grimké, Frances Willard, Florence Kelley, Betty Friedan, Pauli Murray, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Mary Ann Glendon, this book is unique in its treatment of the moral roots of women’s rights in America and its critique of the movement’s current trajectory. The Rights of Women provides a synthesis of ancient wisdom and modern political insight that locates the family’s vital work at the very center of personal and political self-government. Bachiochi demonstrates that when rights are properly understood as a civil and political apparatus born of the natural duties we owe to one another, they make more visible our personal responsibilities and more viable our common life together. This smart and sophisticated application of Wollstonecraft’s thought will serve as a guide for how we might better value the culturally essential work of the home and thereby promote authentic personal and political freedom. The Rights of Women will interest students and scholars of political theory, gender and women’s studies, constitutional law, and all readers interested in women’s rights.

The legal status of women has changed more rapidly in the last 20 years than in the previous 200, Hoff argues, but these changes have become less important over time. The American power structure has relinquished rights to women and minorities only after these rights have been diminished by a white-male-dominated legal system. She calls for a reinterpretation of legal texts to create a feminist jurisprudence. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

'Women's Lives, Men's Laws' collects papers by MacKinnon from 1980 to the present, in which she discusses the deep gender bias of American law and the changes to legislation on sexual harassment, rape and battering, to which she has contributed.

The Female Body and the Law provides an original and incisive reexamination of the dynamics of sexual equality. Eisenstein contends that sexual inequality is fostered both by the law and by the insistence that men and women are biologically different. Through a fascinating discussion of a series of issues including affirmative action, AIDS, Baby M, pornography, and abortion, Eisenstein shows how the law operates as a political language that establishes and curtails choices and actions. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990.

This book reveals a secret that has been kept from mainstream consciousness for millennia. The author calls it the Law of Balance: the closer you bring your inner masculine and feminine into a state of balance and harmony, the more you will thrive. The book provides a rich and thoughtful exploration of what it really means to balance, how to attain this and how it will enhance your life. You will be introduced to ten major benefits of balance. With the help of the unique Journey-to-Balance Model, you can discover your current state of balance and go on to benefit from the authors Seven-Steps-to-Balance process.

How do we bring the law into line with people's psychological experience? How can psychoanalysis help us understand irrational actions and bad choices? Our legal system relies on the idea that people act reasonably and of their own free will, yet some still commit crimes with a high likelihood of being caught, sign obviously one-sided contracts, or violate their own moral codes--behavior many would call fundamentally irrational. Anne Dailey shows that a psychoanalytic perspective grounded in solid clinical work can bring the law into line with the reality of psychological experience. Approaching contemporary legal debates with fresh insights, this original and powerful critique sheds new light on issues of overriding social importance, including false confessions, sexual consent, threats of violence, and criminal responsibility. By challenging basic legal assumptions with a nuanced and humane perspective, Dailey shows how psychoanalysis can further our legal system's highest ideals of individual fairness and systemic justice.