Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Tulsa Law Review

Abstract

MacKinnon's signature ideas - the power that lies behind seemingly "neutral" rules, the role of male privilege in the construction of hierarchical rules and dominant law-making actors, the invisibility of those subordinated by the normative public/private divide, the flaws in Aristotle's restricted notions of equality - came relatively late to us, filtered through the work of some of our own, especially Christine Chinkin and Hilary Charlesworth, who took MacKinnon's work seriously enough to present the first feminist critique of the field in 1991. But when these ideas arrived, they proved as transformative to us as they have been elsewhere. They challenged our sources of law, our state centricity, the interplay between power and law, how our international institutions worked (or failed to), and the ways others (and not just states) could be made accountable. International lawyers have been feminist late-bloomers but many of us, myself included, have become enthusiastic acolytes of MacKinnon's brand of theory built from practice.

First Page

25

Volume

46

Publication Date

2010

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