Prof. Rosenblum on CEDAW

Pace Law Professor Darren Rosenblum's latest article Unsex Cedaw: What's Wrong with Women's Rights, recently posted on SSRN, is featured in a March 8 blog post on the Reproductive Rights Prof Blog. The abstract of Prof. Rosenblum's article follows:

This Article argues that the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (“CEDAW” or the “Convention”) has failed to create equality for women or gender equality because its scope remains limited to women. CEDAW’s focus on women enshrines an understanding of sex as a binary of men/women and a consequent presumption of their relationship as perpetrator/victim. The Convention is also the preeminent treaty on gender inequality, and cannot succeed in creating gender equality if it continues to focus so narrowly and exclusively on women.Instead of focusing on “women” as part of a binary, CEDAW should seek the elimination of the categories themselves. CEDAW’s very title is its mistaken diagnosis. CEDAW’s focus on the category “women” reifies rather than undermines gender disparities. This Article argues that CEDAW should reframe its target to focus on sex or gender discrimination rather than women as its sole particular victims. CEDAW represents men as the comparator for women’s equality and the implicit perpetrator of their inequality. Rather than be in CEDAW’s periphery, men should be central, along with women, to any rectification of gender inequality. Beyond men, CEDAW should protect people of all genders. Gender or sex must replace the identitarian category of “women” in international law. This reinterpretation must occur for the future of this crucial international Convention.

Prof. Rosenblum's article will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law.

Statutory Remedies For The Wrongfully Convicted

Adele Bernhard, Associate Professor of Law at the Pace University School of Law, has recently published A Short Overview of the Statutory Remedies for the Wrongly Convicted: What Works, What Doesn't and Why, in the Boston University Public Interest Law Journal.

Since the first wrongful conviction was overturned by DNA evidence, more than 230 wrongly convicted individuals have been exonerated. For most, the long awaited and hard won exoneration is the beginning of a new struggle. Exonerees face insuperable hurdles upon release. Lacking recent employment history or experience, work is difficult to secure. Without education or funds, most can’t access necessary counseling or relevant training. Often without family, they live alone and lonely.2 Money alone can never repair damage done by an undeserved prison sentence or fully compensate for pain and suffering. A monetary award, however, does provide a springboard from which to begin life again.

Adele Bernhard, A Short Overview of the Statutory Remedies for the Wrongly Convicted: What Works, What Doesn't and Why, 18 B. U. PUB. INT. L. J. 403 (2009).

Pace Law Library Faculty Handbook

The updated Faculty Handbook, listing the Pace law library services for faculty, is now available.

This handbook will acquaint you with the broad range of services offered to our faculty by the staff of the Pace Law Library. In particular, you are encouraged to read about our Library Liaison Program and get to know and rely on your liaison as the first contact for your regular research needs. An overview of the services we offer is provided here; more information may be found in the Faculty Services area of the Law Library website. Announcements of general interest to the Law School community are made in the Library’s monthly online newsletter, D‐Brief, which is delivered via e‐mail, and in the Law Library blog.

Please let us know if there are services the library is not currently offering but would be useful. We look forward to reading your comments. Or you can email us directly.