Feminist Jurisprudence

Feminist jurisprudence is a burgeoning school of legal thought that encompasses many theories and approaches to law and legal issues. Each strain of feminist jurisprudence evaluates and critiques the law by examining the relationship between gender, sexuality, power, individual rights, and the judicial system as a whole. As a field of legal scholarship and theory, feminist JURISPRUDENCE had its beginnings in the 1960s. By the 1990s it had become an important and vital part of the law, informing many debates on sexual and DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, inequality in the workplace, and gender-based discrimination at all levels of U.S. society.

Feminist jurisprudence intersects with a number of other forms of critical theories, most notably critical race theory and the study of GAY AND LESBIAN RIGHTS. Moreover, the form of feminist thought that focuses on legal theory draws from feminism in other disciplines, including sociology, political science, history, and literature. Leaders in the feminist jurisprudence camps thus do not focus exclusively upon purely legal aspects of feminism.