Gender and the Analytical Jurisprudential Mind

32 Pages Posted: 26 Aug 2015

See all articles by Leslie Green

Leslie Green

Queen's University - Faculty of Law; University of Oxford - Faculty of Law

Date Written: August 25, 2015

Abstract

Why does contemporary jurisprudence have so little to say about law and gender? I think that is because gender is not relevant to theories of the nature of law. Joanne Conaghan disagrees. She says the methods of analytic philosophy screen out gender by abstracting concepts from social contexts, smuggling in hidden values, and ignoring empirical evidence. My own work on the law of marriage is said to exemplify this. But Conaghan is comprehensively mistaken in her diagnosis. She misunderstands analytic jurisprudence, misunderstands the relation between sex and gender, and misunderstands the role of social facts in legal philosophy. Feminist legal theory is made poorer if it accepts the caricature she offers. Legal scholars should be more open to the contributions of analytic philosophy to feminist inquiry.

Keywords: jurisprudence, legal philosophy, feminism, feminist philosophy, gender, Joanne Conaghan

Suggested Citation

Green, Leslie, Gender and the Analytical Jurisprudential Mind (August 25, 2015). Oxford Legal Studies Research Paper No. 46/2015, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2650448 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2650448

Leslie Green (Contact Author)

Queen's University - Faculty of Law ( email )

Kingston, Canada, Ontario K7L3N6
Canada

HOME PAGE: http://https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/people/leslie-green

University of Oxford - Faculty of Law ( email )

Balliol College
Oxford
Oxford, UK, OX1 3BJ
United Kingdom

HOME PAGE: http://https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/people/leslie-green

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