Janet Halley

• Harvard University

The first comprehensive analysis of the emergence of academic brands, this book explores how the modern university is being transformed in an increasingly global economy of higher education where luxury is replacing access. More than just a sign of corporatization and privatization, academic brands provide a unique window on the university's concer...

Describing and assessing feminist inroads into the state Feminists walk the halls of power. Governance Feminism: An Introduction shows how some feminists and feminist ideas-but by no means all-have entered into state and state-like power in recent years. Being a feminist can qualify you for a job in the United Nations, the World Bank, the Internati...

In the decades following the globalization of the world economy, trafficking, forced labor and modern slavery have emerged as significant global problems. States negotiated the Palermo Protocol in 2000 under which they agreed to criminalize trafficking, primarily understood as an issue of serious organized crime. Sixteen years later, leading academ...

This chapter demonstrates the centrality of the humanities to the core of law school pedagogy today. At the same time, by focusing on two areas within the humanities-literature and history-it tries to show how disciplines still matter, both as engines and impediments. Examining the shifting passions that bind law, literature, and history to each ot...

In “The Move to Affirmative Consent,” I argue that, though affirmative consent has great appeal because of its respect for norms about good sex that we all share, as a rule intended to be enforced in actual punitive processes, whether on campus or in the criminal justice system, it will be vastly overinclusive, deeply repressive, and socially conse...

In “The Move to Affirmative Consent,” I argue that, though affirmative consent has great appeal because of its respect for norms about good sex that we all share, as a rule intended to be enforced in actual punitive processes, whether on campus or in the criminal justice system, it will be vastly overinclusive, deeply repressive, and socially conse...

I’ve been pondering this problem as I participated in this sparking conference titled “Beyond the Law”: What, if anything, is “beyond the law”? The better parent’s risk aversion; the propertyless man’s hunger: should we insist that these are non-legal attributes about these characters which interact with legal rules to condition legally important d...

This is an Introduction to a Special Issue of the American Journal of Comparative Law, edited by Janet Halley. The central theme of the Special Issue is "family law exceptionalism": the myriad ways in which the family and its law are deemed, either descriptively or normatively, to be special. We argue that the nineteenth century emergence of Family...

Is it time to take a break from feminism? In this pathbreaking book, Janet Halley reassesses the place of feminism in the law and politics of sexuality. She argues that sexuality involves deeply contested and clashing realities and interests, and that feminism helps us understand only some of them. To see crucial dimensions of sexuality that femini...

This Article is the result of an intense series of text and telephone exchanges among the four of us, taking place from December 2005 to April 2006. Each of us has her own project which forms the basis of her contribution to this conversation. Janet Halley is working on new rules governing wartime sexual violence in international humanitarian law,...

As a result of the challenge posed by Gayle Rubin based on the assumption of how feminism should be perceived as a privileged site in terms of sexuality, members of feminist and leftist groups in the United States debated on whether they should come up with practices and theories that deal with such issues as gender, sexuality, and erotic life, iss...

This chapter presents the Supreme Court's notion that same-sex sex harassment may be sex discrimination within the ambit of Title VII. This implies that same-sex erotic overtures at work can be sex discrimination, and invites lower courts to test for erotic content by inquiring into the sexual orientation of the individual defendant. Where the defe...

This article analyzes the 1993 revisions to military anti-gay policy, with an eye particularly to understanding the lexical relationship between "status" and "conduct." Basing its analysis on a close examination of legislative debates, published reports of the role of the White House and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, litigation, and Department of Defe...

Three recent scientific reports that purport to show a biological basis for homosexuality have changed the face of pro-gay equal protection litigation by making the argument from immutability more attractive. Professor Janet E. Halley critiques these studies and their reception in legal culture. Because immutability is not a requirement for success...

In this dialogue, four authors critically examine how to describe feminism and what it can and cannot do, particularly with regard to sexuality. The authors use the Texas Supreme Court case Twyman v. Twyman, involving divorce, sadomasochistic sex, and a claim of emotional distress, as a focal point to explore how feminism deals with gender, sexuali...