Postmodern Legal Feminism

An urgent need to rethink sexual difference and equality has motivated some of the best recent feminist thought. Nowhere has this been more true than in the field of law, where feminist legal scholars have developed a widely read body of theory. Within law, the postmodern legal feminists have brought a unique perspective, making use of deconstructive strategies to expose contradictory and repressed elements within legal texts. In Postmodern Legal Feminism, Mary Joe Frug charts a course for future feminist thinking about law. She builds on advances made by earlier generations of legal theorists: the liberal feminists who stressed equality, the radical feminists who stressed male domination and sexuality, and the cultural feminists who stressed the positive virtues of traditional women's values. But at the same time she identifies the limitations of these earlier strands of legal feminism and demonstrates, through concrete analysis of legal doctrines, texts, and strategies, why postmodern feminism offers more hope for women. The book is unusual because it offers not simply a theoretical exposition but a series of demonstrations of the power of postmodern legal feminist analysis. It does so through a focus on specific examples of legal writing (the Dawson, Harvey and Henderson casebook; the Posner/Rosenfeld and Hillman articles), specific legal doctrines (the impossibility doctrine; the Sears case), and specific legal strategies (the impact of women in the legal profession; the antipornography campaign). It is also unusual in that it demonstrates the relevance of non-legal texts, such as Carol Gilligan's In a Different Voice, to law and the relevance of law to such basic social issues as the construction of the meaning of women's bodies.