People in Sociology - Faculty

HOW DOES THE COLLISION BETWEEN LAW AND CULTURE CREATE GENDER INEQUALITY?

.......High profile sexual assault trials routinely pivot on questions and definitions of sexual consent.  Ideas about manhood and womanhood complexly entwine with legal considerations to guide jurors and the public in these evaluations.  I am completing a book that explains how ideas about men and women shape and reflect the trial process.  This book, tentatively titled Trials of the First Sexual Revolution, examines approximately 90 transcripts of rape, seduction, sodomy, and forced prostitution cases tried in New York City during the first two decades of the 20th century.
.......This book will give its readers a better understanding of the history of sexual violence, but it also makes a contribution to socio-legal theory. My interdisciplinary study uses the tools of cultural history, historical sociology, and an emerging body of legal scholarship that focuses on trial narratives and rhetoric.  This scholarship, often referred to as “law and language” studies, emphasizes the importance of storytelling, the structure of language, and the interdependence of cultural and legal knowledge for understanding how the law works.  This research shows how different linguistic and discursive tactics create injustice and inequity despite formal features of the legal system designed to promote fairness and equality.  Much of this work focuses on contemporary sexual assault trials.  I contribute to this emerging field by exploring the historical roots of sex crime trials, as well as competing cultural notions of masculinity and femininity that enter the legal sphere.  Examining trial testimony about sexual assault from a historical vantage point helps clarify the role of law and culture in shaping gender inequality.