The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog

Mary Anne Case on the Anglican Debate about Homosexuality

The Immanent Frame, a blog run by the Social Science Research Council, recently asked a number of leading thinkers, including our own Arnold I. Shure Professor of Law Mary Anne Case, for a response to the ongoing debate over the role of homosexuals in the Anglican Communion. They were asked:

In light of both the ongoing conflict within the Anglican Communion and the Archbishop’s latest missive, we ask: why has homosexuality persisted as a divisive issue for religious traditions and communities, within the Anglican Communion and beyond? And what are the likely effects of the Archbishop’s recent intervention?

You can read Professor Case's response here.

The other participating scholars were:

• Eric Fassin, Professeur agrégé, Ecole normale supérieure (Paris)
• Siobhán Garrigan, Associate Professor of Liturgical Studies and Associate Dean for Chapel; Yale Divinity School
• Jimmy Casas Klausen, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Wisconsin at Madison
• Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Assistant Professor, Wesleyan University
• Emilie M. Townes, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of African American Religion and Theology, Yale Divinity School

Video: Symposium Honoring Martha Nussbaum

Earlier this month, Columbia Law School held a symposium honoring Martha Nussbaum's contributions to the scholarship of gender, sexuality and the law. The proceedings will be published in a special issue of the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, but videos of Prof. Nussbaum's keynote and the symposium panels (one of which featured Chicago's Mary Anne Case) are now available on Columbia's Gender & Sexuality Law Blog.

Student Blogger - Is Feminism A Live Issue?

Last week Judge Posner and Professors Nussbaum and Case faced off in a much-anticipated debate entitled "Posner Answers the Feminists" (moderated by Professor Stone). The talk (which you can listen to here) was inspired by articles written by Nussbaum and Case for a Symposium published by the University of Chicago Law Review commemorating Posner’s 25 years on the bench.  Both professors wrote on the topic of Posner’s sexual harassment jurisprudence. See here for Case’s article and here for Nussbaum’s.

But what began as a discussion about specific sexual harassment opinions seemed to transform into a debate over the state of feminism in the United States. Posner questioned whether feminism is still a "live issue" in the United States given his view that women are outperforming men at all educational levels and forging ahead in all professions, including in the military. In Posner’s words, women are now dropping bombs on people "just like the boys." "If that isn’t equality," he joked, "I don’t know what is."

Audio/Video: Mary Anne Case on State Recognition of Same-Sex Marriages

If you've ever wondered what Arnold I. Shure Professor of Law Mary Anne Case and former Chicago professor (and current Supreme Court Justice) Antonin Scalia might actually agree on, have we got a Halloween treat for you. The first Chicago's Best Ideas talk of the year, held on October 1, featured Professor Case discussing "Why Evangelical Protestants are Right When They Say that State Recognition of Same-Sex Marriages Threatens Their Marriages and What the Law Should Do About It." Video of the talk is embedded below, or you may download an .mp3 or .mov file for your portable media player.

Conference: "Emotion in Context: Exploring the Interaction between Emotions and Legal Institutions"

This past May, then-Visiting Professor of Law Susan Bandes organized a fascinating conference that brought together scholars working in philosophy, neuroscience, neuroeconomics, sociology, psychology, and political science to consider the intersection of legal institutions and human emotion. For example, legal institutions consistently make assumptions about how people individually or collectively respond to new information, assess risks, or decide whom to trust or fear, about what motivates people to forgive or to seek vengeance, or about how to promote or discourage empathy. The conference explored the complex interaction between emotion and social structure to consider both how institutional context affects the experience and expression of emotion, and how emotion norms affect the shape and operation of legal institutions. Included in the proceedings were Chicago faculty members Scott Anderson, Mary Anne Case, Richard Epstein, and Martha Nussbaum. Audio recordings of many of the talks are now available on the conference website.

The conference was sponsored by the University of Chicago Law School, the Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research, the DePaul University College of Law and the John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School.

Video: Mary Anne Case on "Feminist Fundamentalism"

On April 9, Mary Anne Case, Arnold I. Shure Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School, gave a Chicago's Best Ideas talk entitled "Feminist Fundamentalism."

At a time when so many different religious fundamentalisms are coming to the fore and demanding legal recognition, in this talk Prof. Case seeks to vindicate feminist fundamentalism, defined as an uncompromising commitment to the equality of the sexes as intense and at least as worthy of respect as, for example, a religiously or culturally based commitment to female subordination or fixed sex roles.

Video of the talk is embedded below, or you may download a .mov file. Just want to listen to the talk? An .mp3 file is also available.