I have been mulling on the phrase ‘trans rights are human rights.’ Of course they are; no-one at this blog would contend otherwise. We chant it at protests, wear it – sometimes literally – on our sleeves. But what happens when the trans person becomes separated from the universal construct of the human? What happens … Read more
With the culmination of the program for government talks in January 2025 and the unveiling of the new Irish cabinet, the first question was why are there as many James’s as women in the cabinet? Across the EU27, Ireland has the 6th lowest rate of female participation in Lower House Parliaments standing at only 23.1%. … Read more
The idea of a feminist judgment, or indeed a feminist judge, remains a scary thought for many lawyers. Judges are to be detached and impartial in deciding cases. For Lord Bingham, a decision must derive from the application of norms and legal principles, and not from ‘extraneous considerations’ such as ‘the prejudice or predilection of … Read more
From 18th to 21st October 2024, Professor Aoife O’Donoghue (Queen’s University Belfast) and Dr Ruth Houghton (Newcastle Law School) were teaching a course on “Feminist Constitutionalism: Law, Gender and Constitutions” at Masaryk University (MUNI) Law School. MUNI Law is based in Brno in Czechia. The module was divided into five seminars: (1) Gender, Feminism and … Read more
In October 2024, Dr Ruth Houghton visited UNESP College of Humanities and Social Sciences in Franca in Brazil to lead a set of seminars on the module, ‘Globalization, Inequality and Democracy’. Across the course of the week, Masters and PhD researchers discussed the contemporary challenges for global constitutionalism, and questions of democracy and constituent power … Read more
Funded by Northern Bridge and Gender and Law at Durham, in June 2024 we ran a workshop titled Feminist Utopias and Constitutionalism: Reimagining Feminist Futures. The purpose of this workshop was to provide hands-on training in critical feminist methodologies of knowledge production. Using the popular 2023 Barbie film as a starting point, the event was … Read more
Bridget let us keep our eyes and poke theirs out – we need another word than justice for these contests where everyone we care about almost always loses, we need new phrases for the way our bodies are perceived as traps for men to unsuspectingly get caught in and for how we are made comply … Read more
At the Cork Irish Association of Law Teachers Conference in 2021, still in the grips of Covid, myself and Maebh Harding, stood by the river Lee having a great catch-up and chat. Maebh had returned to Ireland to work at UCD just a bit beforehand, and I had just gotten my job at Queen’s. We … Read more
Doing Feminist Legal Work (DFLW) Conference ‘Feminist Drafting: Legislation, Activism & Reflection?’ School of Law, University Limerick · January 17th, 2025 ‘Feminist Drafting: Legislation, Activism & Reflection?’ focuses on theories of feminist drafting, including prefiguration as a technique, on examples of feminist activism using drafting across multiple areas of the law such as reproductive rights, … Read more
Agenda Welcome & Introduction 12:00 Mentoring: 12:10 Maebh Harding, Sarah Craig, Victoria Barnes, Martin Regan Lunch 1:15 Launch DFLW Feminist Pedagogies 2:15 Norah Burns Feminist Constitutional Futures Cloak 2:45 Dr Emma Campbell, Artist, Academic Brenda Malone, Curator, National Museum of Ireland Prof Catherine O’Rourke & Prof Máiréad Enright Tea/Coffee 4:00 The Future of DFLW 4:15 … Read more