Virtual Library

In the early years of the People's Republic, the Communist Party sought to transform gender relations. Yet those gains have been steadily eroded in China's post-socialist era.

Contrary to the image presented by China's media, women in China have experienced a dramatic rollback of rights and gains relative to men.

In Leftover Women, Leta Hong Fincher exposes shocking levels of structural discrimination against women, and the broader damage this has caused to China's economy, politics, and development.

In this well-known critique, Duncan Kennedy argues that legal education reinforces class, race, and gender inequality in our society. However, Kennedy proposes a radical egalitarian alternative vision of what legal education should become, and a strategy, starting from the anarchist idea of workplace organizing, for struggle in that direction. Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy is comprehensive, covering everything about law school from the first day to moot court to job placement to life after law school. Kennedy’s book remains one of the most cited works on American legal education.

Much of what is known about how the law operates is based on the criminal justice process. What is less understood is whether legal, extra-legal, and organizational attributes matter for non-criminal justice processes, such as discrimination and employment disputes. It is this general issue that we examine in this paper. We also incorporate how the development of the legal construct of sexual harassment affects case settlement. Our study attempts to overcome the underutilization of theoretical understandings from the sociology of law to study sexual harassment complaints. We examine 267 sexual harassment complaints against corporate respondents or employing organizations handled by the Canadian Human Rights Commission between 1978–1993 to see what factors influence whether a complaint will be dismissed or settled. Our results show that legal, extra-legal, and case processing factors matter for the resolution of complaints. We also find that the development of sexual harassment as a legal concept is central to understanding the settlement of complaints over time. Finally, we conclude that research on civil and human rights processes should incorporate insights from research on criminal justice processes

Printemps 1956. Pour l'Algérie, c'est le temps de la guerre et de la lutte pour l'indépendance. Dans cette ville au flanc d’une montagne, ceux qui combattent risquent l'exil, la prison, la torture, la mort. Les femmes regardent le maquis où leurs maris font la révolution. Assia Djebar fait entendre les cris et les silences de ces femmes qui, tout autant que les maquisards, se sont battues pour voir leur pays libre.

Assia Djebar, one of the most distinguished woman writers to emerge from the Arab world, wrote Children of the New World following her own involvement in the Algerian resistance to colonial French rule. Like the classic film The Battle of Algiers--enjoying renewed interest in the face of world events--Djebar's novel sheds light on current world conflicts as it reveals a determined Arab insurgency against foreign occupation, from the inside out. However, Djebar focuses on the experiences of women drawn into the politics of resistance. Her novel recounts the interlocking lives of women in a rural Algerian town who find themselves joined in solidarity and empower each other to engage in the fight for independence. Narrating the resistance movement from a variety of perspectives--from those of traditional wives to liberated students to political organizers--Djebar powerfully depicts the circumstances that drive oppressed communities to violence and at the same time movingly reveals the tragic costs of war.

This book presents 130 letters written by Jews interned in the Drancy internment camp in the suburbs of Paris between 1941 and 1944. The letters describe the experiences of those interned, their fears, their incomprehension, and their daily routines up until their deportation to the Nazi extermination camps. 

During the Holocaust, while imprisoned at the Fresnes Prison and then later interned at the Drancy Camp, Louise Jacobson, a French Jewish teenager, wrote letters to her family and friends. Louise, who was denounced by a neighbor for not wearing the yellow star and for suspected communist activity, recounts in these letters her experiences as a young prisoner, her worries, and her plans for when she is liberated. Louise ultimately died in Auschwitz. Her sister Nadia saved the letters and comments on them in this volume.

Paris et ses prisons, ses égouts. Paris insurgé : le Paris des révolutions, des barricades sur lesquelles fraternisent les hommes du peuple. Paris incarné à travers la fi gure de Gavroche, enfant des rues effronté et malicieux. Hugo retrace ici avec force les misères et les heures glorieuses des masses vivantes qui se retrouvent. Les événements se précipitent, les personnages se rencontrent, se heurtent, s’unissent parfois, à l’image de Cosette et de Marius. L’histoire du forçat évadé et de la petite miséreuse symbolise quelque chose de plus grand : avec Les Misérables, Hugo réalise enfin l’esprit du peuple.

Victor Hugo's tale of injustice, heroism and love follows the fortunes of Jean Valjean, an escaped convict determined to put his criminal past behind him. But his attempts to become a respected member of the community are constantly put under threat: by his own conscience, when, owing to a case of mistaken identity, another man is arrested in his place; and by the relentless investigations of the dogged Inspector Javert. It is not simply for himself that Valjean must stay free, however, for he has sworn to protect the baby daughter of Fantine, driven to prostitution by poverty.

On the subjects of Vichy France and the Shoah, we thought we knew everything. This book shows that there is still much to discover. Answering a series of key questions, Laurent Joly rereads the history of the persecution of Jews under the Nazi Occupation and dispels many preconceived ideas.

He re-interrogates a number of key questions. For instance, in the summer of 1940, why did Marshal Pétain's regime initiate a politics of antisemitism without Nazi pressure? Why did Pétain agree to collaborate in the massive deportations of Jews throughout France from Paris to the unoccupied zone? To what extent did the Vichy administration collaborate in the genocide of its Jews?

Relying on archival sources, Joly returns agency to French actors from state leaders to policemen, all the while emphasizing the impact of their decisions. In turn, Joly writes a history from the perspectives of perpetrators, victims and witnesses.

Readers learn that the October 1940 antisemitic statute was not simply a codification of a long French antisemitic tradition. Joly argues, to the contrary, that Vichy sought, above all, to imitate the Nazi model. On the subject of the Vélodrome d'Hiver Round-Up, Joly retells the horrors of July 16-17, 1942 from the point of view of the Paris police charged with arresting the Parisian Jews from their homes. Lastly, Joly suggests that historians must further nuance the idea that the persecution of the French Jews became overshadowed in the post-war era by the "Épuration," or legal purge of French collaborators.

Thoughts for social justice law students to help navigate legal education.