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feminist judgments: rewritten property opinions
How would a feminist lens transform the development of property law? Using
feminist legal theories and methods, the authors in this volume present rewritten
opinions of fifteen foundational and other property law cases. By reimagining
these cases with a feminist lens, while staying within the precedent of the time the
cases were decided, the authors demonstrate that the use of feminist perspectives
and methodologies could have made a significant difference in the development
of property law.
Eloisa C. Rodriguez-Dod is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of

Law, Florida International University College of Law.
Elena Maria Marty-Nelson is Associate Dean for Diversity, Inclusion, and Public
Impact and Professor of Law, Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad
College of Law.
Feminist Judgments Series
Editors
Bridget J. Crawford
Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University
Kathryn M. Stanchi
University of Nevada, Las Vegas, William S. Boyd School of Law
Linda L. Berger
University of Nevada, Las Vegas, William S. Boyd School of Law
Advisory Panel for Feminist Judgments Series
Kathryn Abrams, Herma Hill Kay Distinguished Professor of Law, University

of California, Berkeley, School of Law
Katharine T. Bartlett, A. Kenneth Pye Professor Emerita of Law, Duke
University School of Law
Mary Anne Case, Arnold I. Shure Professor of Law, The University of
Chicago Law School
Margaret E. Johnson, Professor of Law, University of Baltimore School of
Law Sonia Katyal, Chancellor’s Professor of Law, University of California,
Berkeley, School of Law
Nancy Leong, Professor of Law, University of Denver Sturm College of Law
Rachel Moran, Michael J. Connell Distinguished Professor of Law and Dean

Emerita, UCLA School of Law
Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Dean and Professor of Law, Boston University

School of Law
Nancy D. Polikoff, Professor of Law, American University Washington

College of Law
Daniel B. Rodriguez, Dean and Harold Washington Professor, Northwestern

University School of Law
Susan Deller Ross, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Verna L. Williams, Dean and Nippert Professor of Law, University of

Cincinnati College of Law
Feminist Judgments: Rewritten
Property Opinions
Edited by
ELOISA C. RODRIGUEZ-DOD
Florida International University College of Law
ELENA MARIA MARTY-NELSON

Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad College of Law
University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom
One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, ny 10006, USA
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103 Penang Road, #05–06/07, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 238467
Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108835534
doi: 10.1017/9781108890922
© Cambridge University Press 2022
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2022
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
isbn 978-1-108-83553-4 Hardback
isbn 978-1-108-81287-0 Paperback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy
of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
To my mother and sister, whom I miss dearly, to all the strong and independ-
ent women in my family who have always given me so much love and support,
to my beautiful sister-friends (you know who you are), and to my husband,
Jose, for being my guiding light. —ERD
To my husband, David, and our sons, Scott and Matt, for their unflagging
support and fabulous sense of humor, to Dr. Aileen Marty, my feminist star,
and to my lifelong coauthor. —EMN
Contents
Advisory Panel for Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Property Opinions page xiii
Notes on Contributors xv
Preface xix
Acknowledgments xxi
About the Cover Art xxiii
part i introduction 1
1 Introduction to Feminist Judgments: Rewritten

Property Opinions 3
Eloisa C. Rodriguez-Dod and Elena Maria Marty-Nelson
2 Property Law Revolution, Devolution, and Feminist

Legal Theory 10
Lolita Buckner Inniss
3 Incorporating Feminist Perspectives throughout Law

School Curriculum 19
Hannah Brenner Johnson
part ii allocation of rights 33
4 Johnson v. M’Intosh, 21 U.S. 543 (1823) 35

Commentary: Stacy L. Leeds
Judgment: Alexandra Flynn
5 Botiller v. Dominguez, 130 U.S. 238 (1889) 61

Commentary: Marc-Tizoc González
Judgment: Guadalupe T. Luna
ix
x Contents
6 Pierson v. Post, 3 Cai. R. 175 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1805) 90

Commentary: Jill M. Fraley
Judgment: Angela Fernandez
part iii patents, publicity rights, and trademarks 119
7 Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics,

Inc., 569 U.S. 576 (2013) 121
Commentary: Dan L. Burk
Judgment: Kali Murray and Erika George
8 White v. Samsung Electronics America, Inc., 971 F.2d 1395

(9th Cir. 1992) 149
Commentary: Brian L. Frye
Judgment: Jon M. Garon
part iv condemnation and adverse possession 177
9 Kelo v. City of New London, Connecticut, 545 U.S. 469 (2005) 179
Commentary: Julia D. Mahoney
Judgment: Olympia Duhart
10 Tate v. Water Works & Sewer Board of City of Oxford,

217 So. 3d 906 (Ala. Civ. App. 2016) 198
Commentary: Hannah Haksgaard
Judgment: Meghan Hottel-Cox
part v gifts and future interests 225
11 Gruen v. Gruen, 496 N.E.2d 869 (N.Y. 1986) 227

Commentary: Richard Chused
Judgment: Stephanie M. Stern
part vi tenancy in common, joint tenancy,

and tenancy by the entirety 251
12 Sawada v. Endo, 561 P.2d 1291 (Haw. 1977) 253

Commentary: Susan Etta Keller
Judgment: Donna Litman
13 Taylor v. Canterbury, 92 P.3d 961 (Colo. 2004) 283

Commentary: Diane Klein
Judgment: Carrie Anne Hagan
Contents xi
14 Coggan v. Coggan, 239 So. 2d 17 (Fla. 1970) 293

Commentary: Phyliss Craig-Taylor
Judgment: Natasha N. Varyani and Stevie Leahy
part vii exclusionary zoning 309
15 Moore v. City of East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494 (1977) 311

Commentary: Berta Esperanza Hernández-Truyol
Judgment: Danaya C. Wright
part viii evictions 343
16 Phillips Neighborhood Housing Trust v. Brown,

564 N.W.2d 573 (Minn. Ct. App. 1997) 345
Commentary: Lua Kamál Yuille
Judgment: Pamela A. Wilkins
17 Blake v. Stradford, 725 N.Y.S.2d 189 (Dist. Ct. 2001) 371

Commentary: Andrea B. Carroll
Judgment: Meredith Render
part ix landlord–tenant premises liability 397
18 Bartley v. Sweetser, 890 S.W.2d 250 (Ark. 1994) 399

Commentary: Lindsey P. Gustafson
Judgment: Taja-Nia Y. Henderson
Index 415
Advisory Panel for Feminist Judgments: Rewritten
Property Opinions
Kristen Barnes, Professor of Law, Syracuse University College of Law

Rashmi Dyal-Chand, Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Research
and Interdisciplinary Education, Northeastern University School of Law
Lee Fennell, Max Pam Professor of Law, University of Chicago School
of Law
Angela Gilmore, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor of Law,
North Carolina Central University School of Law
Stacy L. Leeds, Foundation Professor of Law and Leadership, Sandra Day
O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University
Amy J. Nelson, Esq., PhD
Eduardo Peñalver, Allan R. Tessler Dean and Professor of Law, Cornell
Law School
Kalyani Robbins, Morris I. Leibman Professor of Law, Loyola University
School of Law
Ezra Rosser, Professor of Law and Associate Dean of the Part-Time and
Evening Division, American University Washington College of Law
Rebecca Tushnet, Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment,
Harvard Law School
Darryl C. Wilson, Associate Dean for Faculty and Strategic Initiatives,
Attorneys’ Title Insurance Fund Professor of Law and Co-Director of
the Institute for Caribbean Law and Policy, Stetson University College
of Law
xiii
Notes on Contributors
Dan L. Burk, Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Faculty Director for the AI
Global Public Policy Institute, University of California, Irvine School of Law
Andrea B. Carroll, C. E. Laborde, Jr. Professor of Law, Donna W. Lee
Professor of Law, Rosemary Slattery Davis & Jackson B. Davis Professorship,
and Associate Dean for Student and Academic Affairs, Louisiana State
University Paul M. Hebert Law Center
Richard Chused, Professor of Law, New York Law School
Phyliss Craig-Taylor, Professor of Law, North Carolina Central University
Olympia Duhart, Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Professor of
Law, Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad College of Law
Angela Fernandez, Professor, University of Toronto Faculty of Law and
Department of History
Alexandra Flynn, Assistant Professor, Peter A. Allard School of Law,
University of British Columbia
Jill M. Fraley, Professor of Law, Washington and Lee University School
of Law
Brian L. Frye, Spears-Gilbert Professor of Law, University of Kentucky
College of Law
Jon M. Garon, Director of Intellectual Property, Cybersecurity and
Technology Law Program and Professor of Law, Nova Southeastern
University Shepard Broad College of Law
Erika George, Samuel D. Thurman Professor of Law, University of Utah
College of Law
xv
xvi Notes on Contributors
Marc-Tizoc González, Professor of Law, The University of New Mexico

School of Law
Lindsey P. Gustafson, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Arkansas Bar
Foundation Professor of Law, University of Arkansas Little Rock William
H. Bowen School of Law
Carrie Anne Hagan, Director, Civil Practice Clinic and Clinical Associate
Professor of Law, Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law
Hannah Haksgaard, Associate Professor, University of South Dakota
Knudson School of Law
Taja-Nia Y. Henderson, Professor of Law and Dean of Rutgers Graduate
School Newark, Rutgers Law School
Berta Esperanza Hernández-Truyol, Stephen C. O’Connell Chair,
University of Florida Research Foundation Professor, University Term
Professor, and Professor of Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law
Meghan Hottel-Cox, Professorial Lecturer in Law, George Washington
University Law School
Lolita Buckner Inniss, Dean and Provost’s Professor, University of Colorado
Law School
Hannah Brenner Johnson, Vice Dean for Academic and Student Affairs and
Professor of Law, California Western School of Law
Susan Etta Keller, Professor of Law, Western State College of Law
Diane Klein, Lecturer, Dale E. Fowler School of Law, Chapman University
Stevie Leahy, Assistant Teaching Professor, Northeastern University School
of Law
Stacy L. Leeds, Foundation Professor of Law and Leadership, Sandra Day
O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University
Donna Litman, Professor of Law, Nova Southeastern University Shepard
Broad College of Law
Guadalupe T. Luna, Professor Emerita, Northern Illinois University College
of Law
Julia D. Mahoney, John S. Battle Professor of Law, University of Virginia
School of Law
Notes on Contributors xvii
Elena Maria Marty-Nelson, Associate Dean for Diversity, Inclusion, and

Public Impact and Professor of Law, Nova Southeastern University Shepard
Broad College of Law
Kali Murray, Professor of Law, Marquette University Law School
Meredith Render, Professor of Law, University of Alabama School of Law
Eloisa C. Rodriguez-Dod, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor
of Law, Florida International University College of Law
Stephanie M. Stern, Professor of Law, Chicago Kent College of Law
Natasha N. Varyani, Associate Professor of Law, New England Law
Pamela A. Wilkins, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Associate
Professor of Law, Mercer University School of Law
Danaya C. Wright, Clarence J. TeSelle Endowed Professor of Law,
University Term Professor, and Professor of Law, University of Florida
Fredric G. Levin College of Law
Lua Kamál Yuille, Professor of Law, University of Kansas School of Law
Preface
Could feminist perspectives and methods change the shape of property law?
To answer this question, we brought together a group of scholars and practi-
tioners to rewrite significant property law cases from a feminist perspective.
This volume, like all of the books in Cambridge University Press’s Feminist
Judgments Series, demonstrates that judges with feminist viewpoints could
have changed the law and the reasoning underlying the law, even though
based only on the precedent and law in effect at the time of the original
decision. It also demonstrates how rewritten opinions from a feminist perspec-
tive could have made property law more just and equitable for women and
marginalized groups.
This book shows how property law is not neutral but rather shaped by the
society that produces it and the judges who apply it. At the same time, this
book offers the hope that property law can be transformed to be an instrument
of greater justice and equality for all people.
xix
Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible without the support of Cambridge
University Press, which so enthusiastically endorsed a series of books following
the publication of Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions of the United
States Supreme Court (2016). We are grateful to the original editors of the
Feminist Judgments project, Kathryn M. Stanchi, Linda L. Berger, and
Bridget J. Crawford, for their leadership and guidance. We are also indebted
to Deborah S. Gordon for her invaluable insights and support throughout this
property project.
We wish to thank the members of the Advisory Panel who helped us select
the cases and embraced this project with zeal. We are also so grateful to our
editor, Matt Gallaway, for his patience, kindness, and insights. For research
assistance, we thank Noah Leopold, Paula Melo, and Carolina Sanchez.
We also wholeheartedly thank all our wonderful contributors for their
dedication and enthusiasm.
xxi
About the Cover Art
On the cover, Assembly © Jose Rodriguez-Dod

Jose Rodriguez-Dod is a Cuban artist, poet, and attorney. He prefers
watercolor as a medium because a painter can directly manipulate the pig-
ment’s unpredictability to configure an object. The process of painting, thus,
acts as a natural force in the stream of life where chance and intention interact
to create humanscapes.
Commentary on Assembly
Assembly is both a window and mirror to property law. The inspiration for
Assembly comes from the method of combining lots for development. The
multicolored panels offer a window to the varied perspectives on the devel-
opment of property law and also reflect on both those who benefit from
property rights and those who have not had the same access.
– Jose Rodriguez-Dod 2021
xxiii
part i
Introduction
1
Introduction to Feminist Judgments: Rewritten

Property Opinions
eloisa c. rodriguez-dod and

elena maria marty-nelson
This book started with an inquiry – whether judicial opinions written from
feminist perspectives could have affected the development of the foundational
legal subject of property law. We were inspired by how the original volume of
the Feminist Judgments Series, Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions of the
United States Supreme Court, demonstrated that feminist reasoning could
have changed the development of key areas of the law, including consti-
tutional law doctrines, such as equal protection and due process, and the
interpretation of certain federal statutory laws, such as Title VII and Title IX.1
We recognized the need to demonstrate how feminist analysis could similarly
have affected the path of property law.
Why is a feminist perspective critical for property law? Feminist analysis
highlights the impact and influence of perspective, background, and precon-
ceptions on the reading and interpretation of property law. Despite some
theories, particularly those focused on law and economics that approach
property law as a neutral system for recognizing, allocating, and protecting
competing claims to resources, property law is far from neutral. Sexism and
other biases have shaped the development of property law in ways that
perpetuate economic imbalances and maintain power inequities. For
example, we are painfully aware of landlord–tenant laws that prevent victims
of domestic violence, predominantly women, from terminating leases early
even when necessary to protect their lives.2 In Chapter 16, commentator Lua
Kamál Yuille and rewritten opinion author Pamela A. Wilkins describe how,
1
Kathryn M. Stanchi, Linda L. Berger, & Bridget J. Crawford, Introduction to the U.S. Feminist
Judgments Project, in Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions of the United States
Supreme Court 12 (Kathryn M. Stanchi, Linda L. Berger, & Bridget J. Crawford eds., 2016).
2
See Elena Marty-Nelson, We Gotta Get Out of This Place: When Residential Tenants Leave
Due to Exigent Circumstances, 35 U. Ark. Little Rock L. Rev. 871 (2013). We had hoped to
include cases addressing these and similar landlord–tenant issues in the book; however, these
3
4 Eloisa C. Rodriguez-Dod and Elena Maria Marty-Nelson
in Phillips Neighborhood Housing Trust, an entire family was evicted, pushing

them into homelessness, for the actions of one tenant.3 In analyzing Botiller
v. Dominguez, a United States Supreme Court case deciding competing
claims to land, commentator Marc-Tizoc González and rewritten opinion
author Guadalupe T. Luna describe how power dynamics played a role in the
denial of land titles held by Mexican-American women.4
There is a robust body of theoretical scholarship analyzing how property law
policies have exacerbated inequality and have served to deny property rights
for women and other marginalized groups.5 This volume in the Feminist
Judgments Series uses applied feminism scholarship to critique the develop-
ment of the law of property and to demonstrate how feminist perspectives
could shape its ongoing trajectory.
the feminist judgments property project

This feminist judgments property project is part of the Feminist Judgments
Series, which in turn is part of a global project. The US feminist judgments
project was itself inspired by a similar venture in England called Feminist
Judgments: From Theory to Practice.6 The English project, which in turn was
inspired by a similar project in Canada – the “Women’s Court of Canada” –
also spawned similar projects in Australia,7 New Zealand/Aotearoa,8
types of landlord–tenant cases involving vulnerable women rarely reach any level of the court
system, let alone the appellate level.
3
Phillips Neighborhood Hous. Tr. v. Brown, 564 N.W.2d 573 (Minn. Ct. App. 1997) (see
Chapter 16).
4
Botiller v. Dominguez, 130 U.S. 238 (1889) (see Chapter 5).
5
“When it comes to property, the questions of the day revolve around inequality, and this is
reflected in the broad nature of the questions scholars are asking of property law. But, while the
questions are broad, the answers are too narrow.” Ezra Rosser, Destabilizing Property, 48
Conn. L. Rev. 397, 399 (2015).
6
Feminist Judgments: From Theory to Practice (Rosemary Hunter et al. eds., 2010). The
English volume includes twenty-three rewritten decisions, two of which have property law
implications: one deals with whether husbands exerted undue influence on their wives to
obtain consent for mortgage loans benefitting only the husbands’ businesses and the other dealt
with whether a woman engaging in a sit-in at a utility company was improperly treated as
a trespasser.
7
See Australian Feminist Judgments: Righting and Rewriting Law (Heather Douglas
et al. eds., 2015). The Australian volume includes a bankruptcy case that tangentially involved
property law issues and cases in the more specialized field of environmental law.
8
See Feminist Judgments of Aotearoa New Zealand: Te Rino – A Two-Stranded Rope
(Elisabeth McDonald et al. eds., 2017). The New Zealand volume includes one property law
case regarding a Maori couple seeking to change the status of their land to effectuate a sale. It
also includes cases in environmental law.
Introduction to Feminist Judgments 5
Ireland,9 and Scotland,10 as well as a project devoted to the field of inter-

national law.11 Other feminist judgment projects are underway in India,
Africa, and Mexico. The editors of the English project noted the absence
of intellectual property cases in their book and expressed hope that future
feminist judgment projects could fill that gap and demonstrate the possibil-
ities of a feminist approach in various areas of property law.12 This volume of
the US Feminist Judgments Series responds to the challenge to fill the gap
regarding intellectual property, and goes beyond that to include other
fundamental property law cases not addressed in the English book, or that
represent developments in the law that are unique to the United States.
As with all the volumes in the Feminist Judgments Series, in keeping with
the focus on applying feminist theory to existing cases, the rewritten opinions
in this volume are framed within the same laws and precedents that bound the
original court at the time of the original opinion. In addition, the rewritten
opinion writers were bound by the existing facts of the cases and could not
change or create facts. The authors could, however, expand on the factual
narrative of the original opinion as long as they limited themselves to facts in
the record or facts that were appropriate for judicial notice. Even within those
confines, the authors in this volume demonstrate how the rewritten opinions
could have changed the development of property law. The authors bring to
the decision-making and opinion-writing feminist perspectives on the facts
and the law. One of the underlying claims of this volume is that even
seemingly objective questions – such as when a co-tenant has been ousted
or when the government may exercise its power of eminent domain to take
private property – are affected by judicial experiences, perspectives, and
reasoning processes. The rewritten opinions reveal that incorporating feminist
theories and methods into property law cases is consistent with judicial duties
and accepted methods of interpretation and has the effect of enriching and
deepening the process by which judicial decisions are made.
9
See Northern/Irish Feminist Judgments: Judges’ Troubles and the Gendered
Politics of Identity (Máiréad Enright et al. eds., 2017). The Irish volume includes a property
law case discussing extending time to a defaulting mortgagor for payment of a loan.
10
See Scottish Feminist Judgments: (Re)Creating Law from the Outside In (Sharon
Cowan et al. eds., 2019). The Scottish project includes two cases related to property law – one
regarding physical alterations to common areas and the other regarding the effect of legislation
on the rights of agricultural tenants.
11
See Feminist Judgments in International Law (Loveday Hodson & Troy Lavers eds., 2019).
12
Rosemary Hunter, Clare McGlynn, & Erika Rackley, Feminist Judgments: An Introduction, in
Feminist Judgments: From Theory to Practice 3, 12 (Rosemary Hunter et al. eds., 2010).
Our process for choosing property law cases for feminist rewriting was
deliberate. We began by putting together a list of cases culled from our own
teaching, knowledge, and scholarship. We were interested in cases that expli-
citly implicated gender on their face – such as an intellectual property case
involving patent claims for the isolation of two human genes linked to an
increased risk for breast and ovarian cancers and a case involving landlord
premises liability when a tenant was sexually assaulted – as well as in cases that
required an understanding of the way the law creates or allocates interests in
real and personal property, such as cases involving Indigenous rights, adverse
possession rights, and publicity rights. Although we selected several United
States Supreme Court property law cases, we also included cases from various
federal and state courts. We were mindful to select cases that are generally
taught in most first-year property law courses as fundamental to the develop-
ment of various property law doctrines.
We put together a diverse and distinguished group of leading property
scholars as our Advisory Board to help evaluate the cases on our list as
especially deserving (or not) of feminist rewriting and to help suggest other
cases. This Advisory Board consists of Kristen Barnes, Rashmi Dyal-Chand,
Lee Fennell, Angela Gilmore, Stacy L. Leeds, Amy J. Nelson, Eduardo
Peñalver, Kalyani Robbins, Ezra Rosser, Rebecca Tushnet, and Darryl
C. Wilson. The Advisory Board members gave us valuable feedback on the
cases we had selected and offered suggestions for what became a somewhat
expanded list of cases. We then disseminated a public call for authors,
allowing prospective authors to specify their top three choices of cases and
indicate whether they preferred serving as the author of a rewritten opinion or
a commentary. Prospective authors were further invited to suggest cases that
were not on the list.
With the goal of choosing the most impactful cases and diverse range of
authors for the book, and taking into account the input of our Advisory Board,
we selected the fifteen cases for this volume and the authors for the rewritten
opinions and commentaries. The cases in this book address many topics
covered in property law courses, including acquisition of property by capture;
Indigenous property rights; gifts; intellectual property, including patents,
trademarks, and publicity rights; eminent domain; adverse possession; future
interests; concurrent ownership, including tenancy in common, joint
tenancy, and tenancy by the entirety; zoning; rights of licensees; and
landlord–tenant rights and obligations, including possessory rights and prem-
ises liability. Most of the authors of the rewritten opinions and the commen-
tators specialize in property law, but a few have recognized expertise in a
substantive specialty that underlies the focus of the chosen case.
In addition to the authors for the cases, we invited two preeminent scholars
to participate in the project by writing complementary introductory chapters
to further situate this feminist project within the broader development of
property law. In her chapter immediately following this Introduction, Lolita
Buckner Inniss explains that, although several cases over the course of US
property law jurisprudence have reached groundbreaking outcomes that
reshape the common law and many others have represented major restructur-
ing and reallocations of property rights, courts have rarely explicitly taken
account of feminist legal theory. We also include a chapter written by Hannah
Brenner Johnson highlighting the importance of including feminist view-
points in first-year property courses and throughout the law school curricu-
lum, and discussing how to interweave the rewritten property feminist
judgments not only in the first-year property course, but also in advanced
property courses such as intellectual property, landlord–tenant, and land use.
organizing the cases for the feminist rewrite

Having chosen the cases and the authors, we turned to the organizational
framework of the feminist judgments for the book. We debated organizing
them by chronological order, by feminist theories or methods employed by the
authors, or by property law subject matter. We recognized that there are
benefits and burdens to any of these three organizational methods.
Presenting in chronological order benefits from avoiding signaling our own
personal preferences on theories or subject matter. On the other hand, using
chronological order does not easily serve readers who wish to delve quickly
into a particular feminist theory or property law topic.
Organizing by feminist theories (e.g., formal equality, anti-subordination/
dominance, anti-stereotyping, intersectionality, autonomy and agency,
cultural) or by feminist methods (e.g., feminist practical reasoning, narrative/
storytelling, widening the lens) would demonstrate the rich and varied field
that is feminist legal theory and would provide readers with guideposts for
teaching particular feminist theories or methods in connection with property
law. Although tempting, we ultimately chose not to use this organizational
framework because, as evident in the rewritten opinions and commentaries,
many of our authors used multiple and overlapping theories and innovative
methods in their rewritten opinions and commentaries making groupings
somewhat artificial. What is not evident but is just as impressive is that, in
developing their feminist rewritten opinions, the authors were innovative not
only in the theories they used, but also in how they found ways to apply a
feminist lens. Several of our authors took to heart the instructions that they
could use additional facts as long as such facts were in the record. In order to
create a richer more thoughtful narrative, the authors did significant detective
work to uncover critical facts that were not included in the appellate decisions,
such as interviewing lawyers or parties of the original cases to elucidate facts in
the record. Other authors used literature and history and went beyond stand-
ard legal authority to infuse their rewritten opinions with feminist takes from
the era. In addition to using different feminist theories, a few of our authors
took their rewritten opinions in unexpected directions – in fact, in directions
diametrically different from where we had envisioned they would take their
rewritten opinions. This served as a reminder that there are multiple strands of
feminist thought, many diverse feminist views, and no one definition of what
is feminist.13
Although several of the cases involved multiple property topics that could
be viewed as overlapping, we ultimately decided to use the subject matter
framework. Grouping by subject matter benefits from a structure similar to
first-year casebooks and provides for easier use of portions of this book as a
companion to a first-year property course or to a specialized upper-level
course, such as intellectual property and land use/zoning.
Of the doctrinal groupings found in Parts II through IX, we deliberately
started with the allocation of rights cases14 – Johnson v. M’Intosh,15 Botiller
v. Dominguez,16 and Pierson v. Post17 – for several reasons. Allocation of rights
is often the first topic covered in first-year property courses. Moreover, two
of these cases deal with dispossession of land – a central tenet of property law.
All three cases in Part II deal with devaluing interests of Indigenous persons
and other underrepresented groups. Of the cases in this trilogy, both Johnson
and Pierson typically appear in first-year property casebooks. The exclusion of
Botiller from standard property casebooks is disappointing, but not surpris-
ing.18 Although some scholars have focused on property rights of Mexican,
Indigenous, and Spanish women, those women remain primarily missing
13
For additional discussion of various feminist theories and methods, see Introduction to the U.S.
Feminist Judgments Project, supra note 1, at 13–22, and Martha Chamallas, Introduction to
Feminist Legal Theory (3rd ed., 2013). See also, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Demarginalizing the
Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist
Theory, and Antiracist Politics, 1989 U. Chi. Legal F. 139.
14
Ironically, had we chosen a chronological framework, these three cases would also have been
placed at the beginning of the book.
15
Johnson v. M’Intosh, 21 U.S. 543 (1823) (see Chapter 4).
16
Botiller v. Dominguez, 130 U.S. 238 (1889) (see Chapter 5).
17
Pierson v. Post, 3 Cai. 175 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1805) (see Chapter 6).
18
See Juan F. Perea, Los Olvidados: On the Making of Invisible People, 70 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 965,
966 (1995) (describing how Latinas and Latinos are treated as “Los Olvidados”).
from feminist and legal scholarship. Including Botiller in this property volume
gives these women a voice and places them in the current pantheon of
feminist-directed scholarship encompassing property rights.
The remaining cases are structured in the following loose subject matter
groupings: Part III patents, publicity rights, and trademarks; Part IV
condemnation and adverse possession; Part V gifts and future interests; Part VI
tenancy in common, joint tenancy, and tenancy by the entirety; Part VII exclu-
sionary zoning; Part VIII evictions; and Part IX landlord–tenant premises liability.
conclusion
The law of property, a broad yet fundamental area of the law, can serve to
subordinate or empower, impoverish or enrich. This volume demonstrates
that use of feminist perspectives and methodologies, if adopted by the courts,
could make a vital difference on the development of property law and its effect
on women and marginalized groups. The transformational force of rewritten
feminist judgments, attuned to power dynamics and social relations, is par-
ticularly evident in the land title cases, such as Johnson. As recently as 2017, in
discussing the Dakota Access Pipeline, scholars noted,
It is ironic that a global controversy over indigenous rights takes place in the
United States, litigated in a court system that still adheres to case law based
on the Doctrine of Discovery, a fifteenth-century concept used to invalidate
indigenous land possession and expropriate lands to the colonial forces of
western Europe.19
All of the feminist judgments and commentaries in this property volume

demonstrate how property law could have been reimagined. We were
honored to work with our thoughtful and creative authors. Some of the
changes that could have derived from the rewritten opinions would have been
transformative, some would have been more subtle, but all would have led to a
more just and equitable property law system.
19
Carla F. Fredericks, Rebecca Adamson, Nick Pelosi, & Jesse Heibel, Indigenous Rights of
Standing Rock: Federal Courts and Beyond, ABA Hum. Rts., Sept. 1, 2017, https://www
.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/vol–43/vol–43–no–
1/indigenous-rights-of-standing-rock–federal-courts-and-beyond/.
2
Property Law Revolution, Devolution, and Feminist

Legal Theory
lolita buckner inniss
introduction
In the rewritten judgments that follow in this volume, authors envision
alternatives to existing property cases. In their work, the authors query inter-
pretations in both iconic, well-known property cases and some lesser known
cases – for all the cases, in large and small ways, have shaped legal doctrine,
processes, and practices. The authors premise their work on the notion that in
many instances, judges, despite widely asserted notions of judicial constraint,
have choices to make when deciding cases. The adoption of a feminist legal
theory (and they are plural), that is, an explicitly feminist consciousness, is one
of those choices, and it is a vitally important and necessary choice. Though
feminist legal theories frequently promote change to existing legal norms, they
do so not only for the sake of change but also to mediate legal, political, social,
and economic barriers that limit women’s advancement.1 Moreover, feminist
legal theories often confront the political and moral issues that all too often
remain unaddressed, all while, within this silence, these issues work to narrow
women’s possibilities. Participant authors in this project engage in exercises
that are at once pointed and practical critiques of the law as it is, and also
theoretical expositions of what the law could be.
The judgments in this volume reflect a diversity of the theoretical underpin-
nings of feminist thought, from the classic distinction between liberal, differ-
entialist, and radical currents to more recent debates on the place to be given
to the discursive dimension. It is frequently said that the master’s tools cannot
be used to disassemble the master’s house.2 But that is only true if one
1
Lolita Buckner Inniss, (Un)common Law and the Female Body, 61 B.C.L. Rev. E.Supp. I.-95
(2020).
2
Lolita Buckner Inniss, Toward a Sui Generis View of Black Rights in Canada, 9 Berkeley
J. Afr.-Am. L. & Pol’y 32, 51 (2007) (describing the “Audre Lord question” in the context of
10
Revolution, Devolution, and Feminist Legal Theory 11
concedes ownership of the tools. These same tools, in different hands, may
accomplish the dismantling and restructuring. This proposed restructuring via
feminist legal theorizing is sorely needed even where there are claims that the
house – here, traditional norms of property law – has been remodeled via
revolution or devolution. Feminist legal theory is the ultimate tool that is often
missing from many accounts of change. Rewriting with a feminist lens does
not, however, mean taking flights of fancy, nor does it signal being entirely
untethered from extant legal rules. Instead, such work occurs within limits that
would have bound judges at the time of the original judgment, including
adherence to existing legal principles, and consciousness of the impact of
decisions on the parties and the broader community.3 Part of that conscious-
ness means explicitly rearticulating norms that property law theorists have
called part of the “revolution” in property. Another part of rewriting judgments
in a feminist vein, however, includes implicitly evoking what is, and has been,
devolution in property law. Both revolution and devolution have heralded
momentous change, and both are necessary to the productions of new legal
meanings. Both mechanisms of change have, however, frequently failed to
take account of women and their particular concerns.
revolution and devolution in property law

The last several decades of US property law jurisprudence have seen ground-
breaking outcomes that have substantially reshaped common law property
norms. This is particularly true in the domain of real property, that area of law
that covers interests in land and the things attached to or significantly related
to land. Two areas where there has been this sort of substantial change have
been in landlord–tenant law and in zoning and other administrative property
law norms. Both of these areas are frequently said to have undergone or
engendered property law revolutions, a word often used to signal a vast, often
sudden alteration in norms. Because assertions of revolution often describe
unforeseen, greatly oppositional, and violent (though the violence here is
mostly discursive) change that yields immediate transformation in the status
quo, this type of description primes the listener for a non-longitudinal, impro-
vised, or chaotic process of change. But occurring along with revolution, there
assessing Black rights as “whether using common law norms can deliver justice to people who
are outsiders to the system”).
3
See, e.g., id.; Rosemary C. Hunter, The Power of Feminist Judgments?, 20 Feminist Legal
Studies 135, 135–148 (2012); Bridget J. Crawford & Anthony C. Infanti, Introduction to the
Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Tax Opinions Project, in Feminist Judgments: Rewritten
Tax Opinions (Bridget J. Crawford & Anthony C. Infanti eds., 2017).
12 Lolita Buckner Inniss
has also been, at the heart of the reshaping of many norms of property law,
devolution; that is, widespread, less immediately perceptible change wherein
power and authority have been decentralized and transferred, sometimes to
multiple parties or entities. Devolutionary change has increasingly been
premised on reallocations of rights. If revolutions in property law are flash
floods that immediately inundate traditional norms, then devolutions are
slower-moving deluges that may or may not eventually inundate, but are more
likely to erode and reshape the legal landscape, sometimes without immedi-
ate, or any, notice at all. It is this possibility of unseen mechanisms of change,
along with the redistribution of power and authority, that make devolution,
often working in tandem with revolution, an important process for the appli-
cation of feminist legal theory.
Leasehold law is a key example where both revolution and devolution have
taken place. There is no doubt that many substantial doctrinal changes in
modern residential leasehold law can be described as revolutionary. For
instance, in common law, leaseholds were viewed as limited-term convey-
ances of real property. This meant, among other things, that landlords retained
only reversionary interests. In a world where agricultural use was the basis for
most leases, fixtures on the land, whether for residential or commercial use,
were often considered ancillary to a tenant’s primary purpose for the lease.
Correspondingly, once transferred, leaseholds created relatively few landlord
obligations. Prior to conveyance of the leasehold, tenants could presumably
readily inspect the land to learn about its condition; hence, tenants were held
to the doctrine of caveat emptor – let the buyer beware. Many modern
property law norms dispense with, or make ineffectual, caveat emptor, substi-
tuting instead protections for lessees. Added to these broad new protections
were rights aimed explicitly at residential lessees, such as the implied warranty
of habitability. Related to this notion of the lease as a conveyance of land rights
was the fact that, traditionally, many promises made by the landlord to the
tenant were independent of the tenant’s obligation to pay rent. In major
contrast, much contemporary law views residential leases as a collection of
mutually dependent covenants. All of these changes shaped a world of
modern leaseholds where tenants were newly empowered. Compared to what
occurred for most of the history of Anglo-American leasehold law, this is
revolutionary. It is also devolutionary, for power flowed from the landlord to
the tenant, making the tenant’s rights, if not equal to those of the landlord,
more closely commensurate with the landlord’s rights.
This new world of leaseholds was said to render this area of property law
more akin to contract – a realm where there was, ostensibly, more mutuality
and fewer power imbalances. But what is often conveniently ignored in this
sanguine tale about the shift in leasehold norms is that the world of contract is
no juridical paradise. The greater deployment of contractual legal regimes
does not necessarily offer an abstract community where minds meet, where
rights and duties are reciprocal and equally weighted, and where property
allocations are perfected.
Similarly, issues of both revolution and devolution are evident within the
domain of zoning and other aspects of administrative property law. Traditional
zoning schemes are land use regulatory tools that typically prescribe desig-
nated land uses within a community with an ultimate goal of restraining
density and separating primary uses. Zoning is one of several administrative
property law mechanisms for advancing a city’s objectives, standards,
and strategies for the growth and development of the community.4
Notwithstanding its omnipresence as a tool of civic planners, zoning is, within
the context of both Anglo-American law and urban planning theory, relatively
novel, having been first articulated near the end of the nineteenth century.5
Zoning, while often working together with the common law land use norms
that came before it, is also highly distinct from those common law norms.
Zoning burst onto the scene of urban and suburban life and altered not only
property rights allocations but also social and economic relationships across a
broad spectrum of contexts. This easily makes zoning a revolutionary aspect of
property law. But just as is true in the domain of leasehold law, much of
zoning involves significant devolutionary change. The transfer of ultimate
control over land use from individual property owners to government is, one
might argue, almost a reverse devolution, where certain aspects of power and
authority over land, instead of being decentralized and diffuse, are concen-
trated in the hands of a single entity – the government. But this view fails to
account for the fact that government holds zoning rights, and even the power
to zone, not on its own account but on account of all of its subjects. Hence,
when municipalities decide to permit or forbid a particular use, they act for
those within their political jurisdiction. Zoning laws, just as in the case of
contemporary leasehold norms, are often wrapped in utopian ideologies that
envision new norms of fairness, utility, welfare, efficiency, and beauty in land
use.6 What occurs instead in some cases where zoning norms are at play is
decidedly realistic, even dystopian, such as in situations where zoning imposes
4
Lolita Buckner Inniss, Back to the Future: Is Form-Based Code an Efficacious Tool for Shaping
Modern Civic Life?, 11 U. Pa. J.L. & Soc. Change 75, 80 (2007).
5
Id.
6
Carol Willis, Zoning and “Zeitgeist”: The Skyscraper City in the 1920s, 45(1) Journal of the
Society of Architectural Historians, 47–59 (1986).
artificial barriers on use and, whether implicitly or explicitly, discriminates

based on gender, race, or class.
Property law in general, and in the examples seen in leasehold law and
zoning, are potent sites for power imbalances that are ongoing and frequently
unseen. These disparities in power are, moreover, exacerbated by social
identity factors. Much vaunted claims of property law revolution, and the less
often discussed but equally as important devolution in property law norms,
often distort and obscure persistent inequities. However one looks at it, there is
a gap between broad accounts of the property law revolution and the detailed
functioning of devolutionary processes in property law regimes. Any idea of
property law, and of change within its regulatory regime, is incomplete
without an incorporation of social identity–based legal theories, and especially
of feminist legal theory.7
social identity, revolution, devolution,

and the role of feminist legal theory
Though social identity–based legal theories have at times acknowledged
women and some of their concerns, they have not consistently or rigorously
done so. This lack of address to women’s issues is especially noteworthy in
revolutionary and devolutionary processes of property law change. Had courts
engaged in such practices, it would have clarified established doctrines and
potentially given them more impact. These rewritten judgments do this work,
showing how the concerns of women can be centered in narratives of revolu-
tion and devolution.
Some of the judgments in this volume directly assail the patriarchal dimen-
sions of law. For example, in her rewriting of Phillips Neighborhood Housing
Trust v. Brown,8 author Pamela Wilkins addresses a case whose outcome
appears to be a workaday example of the contemporary relationship between
landlords and tenants wherein contract, and not property norms, prevail. In
Phillips, Mary Brown, the appellant, rented an apartment in a municipal
government–run apartment complex for herself and her co-occupant chil-
dren, two minor daughters and a young adult son. The landlord required one
of those children, a 20-year-old son named Anthony Brown, to join as a
co-signer on the lease, apparently because he was past the age of 18. As
Wilkins notes, the landlord was under no legal obligation to require
Anthony Brown to join on the lease, but did so nonetheless. When Anthony
7
Margaret Davies, Property: Meanings, Histories, Theories (2007).
8
Phillips Neighborhood Hous. Trust v. Brown, 564 N.W.2d 573, 574 (Minn. App. 1997).
Brown was found to have illegal drugs (crack cocaine) on the premises in
violation of the lease, the landlord brought an unlawful detainer action to
recover possession of the apartment. After an administrative proceeding found
for the landlord, Mary Brown sought judicial review of the decision. The
district court, however, affirmed, finding that the lease clearly gave the
landlord the right to cancel the lease and bring an unlawful detainer action
against a tenant who engages in illegal activity on the premises. Wilkins,
dissenting to the original judgment, argued that the original judgment erred
in its uncritical reliance on formal legal norms.
The original outcome in Phillips relies upon what is claimed as part of the
revolution in property law – the proliferation of contract law norms and
presumed greater rights for both parties – and in the process, undermines
the tenant’s rights. Wilkins notes that the lease left Mary Brown with a trio of
difficult choices: (i) refuse to sign the lease in view of her objections, thereby
ensuring her family’s continued homelessness; (ii) enter the lease as the sole
signatory, thereby abandoning Anthony to the streets; or (iii) enter the lease
with Anthony as a co-lessee, thereby ensuring housing for her entire family but
virtually eliminating any control she had over Anthony Brown.
In her commentary on Wilkins’s rewriting of Phillips, author Lua Kamál
Yuille notes that the original decision elides not only the economic but also
the racial and gendered dynamics of the situation. Mary Brown faced home-
lessness, both before and after her eviction, a situation exacerbated by her role
as a mother. Moreover, the original judgment gives no attention to the fact
that Mary Brown is likely a Black woman. Nothing in the case clearly
identifies her race. But as Yuille observes, Anthony Brown possessed crack
cocaine, and “crack is black.”9 And the facts of Mary Brown’s single mother-
hood, poverty, and use of publicly funded housing make Mary Brown discur-
sively, if not actually, Black. In the United States, the traditional family is not
only a gendered system of social organization; it is also often explicitly
connected to racial ideas and practices.10 Persons with Mary Brown’s attributes
are frequently “coded” Black even where they may not be.11
As Wilkins notes, Anthony Brown’s violation of rules regarding possession of
drugs came to light when, less than a week after the Browns moved in, police
were called to the apartment because Anthony Brown was threatening
9
Lua Kamál Yuille, Commentary, Chapter 16.
10
Patricia Hill Collins, It’s All in the Family: Intersections of Gender, Race and Nation, 13(3)
Hyptia 62, 62 (1998).
11
Lolita Buckner Inniss, “Sisters Underneath Their Skins”: Theorizing Maternal Performativity
in Legal Discourses of White Women’s Race-involved Child Custody Disputes in the United
States, 1941–2004 (2011) (unpublished PhD dissertation, York University) (on file with author).
violence. There was no dispute that the drugs police found were the property
of Anthony Brown and that neither Mary Brown nor her daughters were aware
of its presence. Nonetheless, Mary Brown was held responsible, and there
were no contractual norms that protected her and her interests, even in the
face of Mary Brown’s suffering as a victim of domestic violence. There were,
as Wilkins noted, legislative norms on domestic violence that could have been
deployed to protect Mary Brown from eviction. But the original court some-
how refused to invoke that protection, deciding instead to stick to the four
corners of the lease contract.
Other rewritten judgments draw more nuanced observations, premised on
the notion that though law is often used to reinforce male domination, it can
also be mobilized in an emancipatory sense for women. This is seen in the
case of Moore v. City of East Cleveland,12 rewritten by author Danaya Wright.
In the original Moore judgment, the United States Supreme Court found that
an East Cleveland, Ohio, zoning ordinance that prohibited Inez Moore, a
widowed Black woman, from living with one of her grandchildren, was
unconstitutional. The Court ruled that the East Cleveland zoning ordinance
violated substantive due process because it intruded too far upon the “sanctity
of the family.”13 As author Wright points out, the case should have been a
clear-cut example not only of jurisprudence in support of family values and
the importance of the family unit but also of ingrained social norms. The town
of East Cleveland, presumably understanding these norms, should never have
enacted such laws, much less defended them up to the highest court. Instead,
the city insisted upon a labyrinthine definition of “family” that excluded from
city housing many common family groupings, such as adult different-sex
siblings, married women who rejoined their parents while their spouses were
deployed in the military, and others. Mrs. Moore lived in her East Cleveland
home with her adult son, Dale Moore, Sr., his son Dale Moore, Jr., and her
grandson John Moore, Jr. Then six-year-old John Jr., the son of Mrs. Moore’s
other, absent son, John Moore, Sr., was the family member whose presence
offended the zoning ordinance.
While the original judgment finds for Mrs. Moore, author Wright’s rewrit-
ten judgment goes further and discusses what is likely at the heart of East
Cleveland’s ordinance: gender, race, class, and the interaction of the three
aspects of social identity. There is, as Wright points out, a much greater
tendency for Black families than White families to offer homes to children
outside their nuclear families. And as commentary author Berta Esperanza
12
Moore v. City of East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494 (1977).
13
Id. at 503.
Hernández-Truyol points out, the original Moore case, while hinting at racial
injustice, does not go far enough in discussing the likely impetus behind the
ordinance: the growing number of poor Black families in what earlier in the
twentieth century had been a wealthy White enclave. East Cleveland’s use of
zoning was, in perverse respects, revolutionary, in that it was a means of hiding
behind norms of neutrality, thus avoiding de jure racial discrimination that
had characterized much twentieth-century property law. It was, moreover, also
archly devolutionary, since zoning actions undertaken by the city were not, on
their faces, at the behest of any one citizen, but still allowed those wishing to
discriminate to disavow all involvement and yet benefit from implementation
of discriminatory actions.
conclusion
Rewriting legal judgments in the property context, or in any other, is an
exercise in actively critiquing an “official” evaluative legal judgment by
going back to the original statement of facts, re-answering the legal questions
(or reframing the questions posed), and rendering an alternate judgment.14
Such analyses proceed from a feminist perspective, and in the process they
often question “known” truths. There is, however, an overarching concern:
How does one invoke an assiduously feminist analysis of law, thereby
denouncing the patriarchal nature of law, all while deploying law as a tool
for social change? The denunciation of the role of law in the maintenance of
patriarchal domination is perhaps one of the most commonly held aspects of
feminist legal theorizing. The authors in this volume have multiple and
varied views on what feminism is and/or with what tenets of critical feminist
legal theory they specifically agree. This diversity of perspective is indicative
of the intersectional feminist lens specifically imported into the work.15
Crucially, these rewritten judgment writers face, as did the original judges,
the reality “that judges cannot always reach the results they consider most
14
Evaluative judgments are those that look to all possible options from a regulatory perspective to
reach a conclusion, even while sometimes acknowledging that there are other ways to go, and
ultimately recognizing the “truth” of an outcome. Christian Barth, Judgement in Leibniz’s
Conception of the Mind: Predication, Affirmation, and Denial, 39 Topoi 689, 693 (2020).
15
One significant aspect of the feminism seen within the rewritten judgment movement is its
concern with “justice and equality, that . . . brings into focus issues such as gender, race,
ethnicity, socioeconomic class, disability, sexual orientation, national origin, and immigration
status.” Crawford & Infanti, supra note 3, at 7.
desirable by means of statutory interpretation or the incremental develop-

ment of the common law.”16
Each feminist judgment here takes a different route than the original court
in explicating the relative positions of the parties in terms of identity and
respective places within society.17 Nonetheless, the effects of both revolution
and devolution are present. The jurists in this volume promote an implemen-
tationist property jurisprudence, one that starts from the point of view of
women, and of the reality of their oppression. All of the rewritten judgments
expose the possibilities for law to both destabilize and rebuild the gendered
system in place. These judgments give attention to the traditional foundations
of property law, and explore fissures within narratives of change, thus allowing
property law to be reimagined.
16
See Feminist Judgments: From Theory to Practice 15 (Rosemary Hunter et al. eds., 2010).
17
See, e.g., Lolita Buckner Inniss et. al., Cecilia Kell v. Canada, in Feminist Judgments in
International Law 343–347 (Loveday Hodson & Troy Lavers eds., 2019); see also Grant
Christensen, United States v. Rickert, in Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Tax Opinions
64–65, 73–76 (Bridget J. Crawford & Anthony C. Infanti eds., 2017); see also David A. Brennen,
Bob Jones University v. United States, in Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Tax Opinions
150–156 (Bridget J. Crawford & Anthony C. Infanti eds., 2017).
3
Incorporating Feminist Perspectives throughout

Law School Curriculum
hannah brenner johnson
In law schools across the United States, feminist perspectives are glaringly
absent from the curriculum – from the first year’s core subjects through the
upper-division specialty, experiential, and elective courses. The formal study
of feminist jurisprudence, if it occurs at all, is typically relegated to the
occasional specialized gender-focused seminar offered at some institutions.1
Today, traditional first-year doctrinal courses are almost uniformly taught
using the well-established case method.2 The content of the casebooks
(including the cases and supplementary notes) for these courses may vary
somewhat from author to author. However, most rely on a fairly well-defined
and similar group of legal opinions that were written almost exclusively by a
homogenous group of judges whose perspectives were not informed by femi-
nist jurisprudence, as evidenced by the selection of property cases for this
volume titled Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Property Opinions of the
Feminist Judgments Series.
Perhaps more than other subjects, the law of property has evolved without
the benefit of diverse judicial perspectives, making it a ripe topic for revision.
“Property is oft considered the province of the antediluvian, far situated from
modern concerns, particularly issues of race and diversity. Even more so than
other areas of legal academia, Property remains the province of dead white
1
There is debate surrounding the precise place and time of introduction of special upper-level
courses that addressed women and law, but the general consensus is that these courses emerged
in the 1970s. Many law schools today offer a course with a focus on women, gender, and/or
sexuality, but this depends largely on the availability, interest, and expertise of faculty.
2
For a comprehensive discussion of the history of legal education and the evolution of law
teaching, see Martha Minow, Marking 200 Years of Legal Education: Traditions of Change,
Reasoned Debate, and Finding Differences and Commonalities, 130 Harv. L. Rev. 2279 (2017).
19
20 Hannah Brenner Johnson
men.”3 As a result of this dynamic, very few students encounter written

materials, cases, or textbooks reflecting feminist perspectives during their years
of studying property and other legal subjects, with almost no exception. The
net effect of this reality is that once students become lawyers (and later
judges), they lack even a basic understanding and appreciation of feminist
viewpoints and ideas. The mostly monolithic – or masculine – perspective
forms their perceptions of law, which limits their worldview and results in a
narrow frame through which they advocate for their clients or shape precedent
and evolve the law. They also enter the legal profession unaware of the
gendered dynamics that exist among lawyers themselves, and subsequently
engage in law practice and judicial decision-making without knowledge of
fundamental feminist concerns like inequality, bias, stereotypes, sexual vio-
lence, domestic abuse, sexism, and discrimination. The entire Feminist
Judgments Series strives to upend this reality by offering scholars the oppor-
tunity to rewrite judicial opinions through a feminist lens.
Despite the importance of this undertaking, it is not sufficient to simply
convene a cohort of legal academics to rewrite the opinions and compile them
into a text that will be read largely by other feminist scholars, although this is
not an unimportant outcome. Indeed, the more significant and lasting impact
of this work that is the focus of Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Property
Opinions depends largely on how law professors throughout the legal academy
engage with the book and share its contents – the rewritten property law
opinions and their respective commentaries – with their students. Law school,
after all, is the site where future lawyers are trained, offering a natural place to
educate and inform students about a myriad of ideas that will eventually shape
the future of the profession. This chapter will highlight the importance of
interweaving feminist perspectives into the law school curriculum generally,
from first-year Property courses and beyond. But before delving into the
reasons that underscore the importance of this undertaking and offering a
few strategies for infusing some of these rewritten property opinions into the
curriculum, the chapter will first focus on the demographics of the legal
profession, an exercise that reveals a pervasive and problematic lack of diversity
among lawyers and, relatedly (and relevant to this book’s purpose),
of perspective.
3
Bela August Walker, Making Room in the Property Canon Integrating Spaces: Property Law
and Race. By Alfred Brophy, Alberto Lopez & Kali Murray. New York, New York: Aspen
Publishers, 2011. 368 Pages. $40.00, 90 Tex. L. Rev. 423 (2011).
Feminist Perspectives throughout Law School Curriculum 21
diversity in the legal profession

The historic origins of the legal field were such that women and minorities
were routinely excluded from participation in law school4 and denied admis-
sion to the bar,5 resulting in a profession that was very homogenous and
predominately led by White men. Although the demographics of the legal
profession today are more reflective of the diversity in our communities than
they once were, there is still a great deal of progress that must be accomplished
to ensure that lawyers reflect the diversity of the population and of clients
they serve.
For the past several decades, women have been entering and graduating from
law schools in fairly equal numbers with men and are hired by employers
throughout the profession, suggesting that the historic gender gap has likely
closed. While there has indeed been some progress for women, the same is not
necessarily true for students from diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds, or
those who identify as LGBTQIA. Indeed, in 2018, 8.11 percent of students
enrolled in an ABA-accredited law school were African American, 6.17 percent
were Asian American, and 12.8 percent were Hispanic, while 60.7 percent were
White.6 Similarly, of the students who graduated with a J.D. degree in the
2017–2018 period, 61.4 percent were White, 8.5 percent were African American,
6.8 percent were Asian American, and 11.9 percent were Hispanic.7
Although some of the progress made in law school admissions is reflected in
the relative gender parity that now exists among the student body, the legal
profession itself has stubbornly remained a sphere dominated by a lack of
diversity, especially in the highest echelons of leadership and power. As but
one point of illustration, the American Bar Association’s National Lawyer
Population Survey revealed that the percentage of active attorneys in the
USA who identified as Black/African and American Hispanic/Latino was only
5 percent for each group.8 According to current statistics, 22 percent of
4
A Brief History, W&L, https://my.wlu.edu/about-wandl/history-and-traditions/a-brief-history
(last visited Feb. 18, 2020).
5
Myra Bradwell was denied admission to the Illinois bar because she was a woman. The
decision of the Illinois Supreme Court was upheld by the Supreme Court. Bradwell v. Illinois,
83 U.S. 130, 141 (1872).
6
Law School Enrollment by Race & Ethnicity (2018), Enjuris, https://www.enjuris.com/
students/law-school-race-2018.html (last visited Feb. 19, 2020).
7
Diversity in the US Population & the Pipeline to Legal Careers, LSAC, https://www.lsac.org/
data-research/data/diversity-us-population-pipeline-legal-careers (last visited Feb. 19, 2020).
8
ABA National Lawyer Population Survey, ABA (2019), https://www.americanbar.org/content/
dam/aba/administrative/market_research/national-lawyer-population-demographics-2009–2019
.pdf.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
LES ANES MALADES.
Qu’on en pense ce qu’on voudra, j’eus toujours un faible pour

l’âne. Cela sans doute me vient d’enfance et les impressions
d’enfance ne se discutent point.
J’aime l’âne, estimable animal, si voisin de l’humanité par ses
vertus comme par ses vices : dur au travail et flâneur par boutade,
continent et luxurieux suivant l’occasion et la saison, patient un jour,
puis révolté, volontiers rêveur et tout à coup se ruant et pétaradant
en des facéties imprévues, l’œil malicieux et résigné à l’ombre d’un
bouquet de longs poils gris, l’oreille raide sous le bâton, mais
devenant d’une mobilité étonnante, d’une exquise sensibilité pour
prendre le vent au moindre bruit, vrai philosophe en somme dans sa
robe de bure bourrue, un peu terreuse, usée par places et pareille
non au froc du capucin, mais, ce qui vaut mieux, au manteau
effrangé du Cynique.
Dans Canteperdrix, qui est une ville de paysans, chaque paysan
a son âne et sa maisonnette. Le paysan loge au premier, l’âne loge
au rez-de-chaussée. A part cela, leur vie est la même. Levés tous
les deux avant l’aube, ils vont à l’olivette ou à la vigne ; l’homme
porte le bissac et la pioche, l’âne porte une charge de fumier, un sac
de semence, quelquefois aussi il ne porte rien, car l’âne sous ce ciel
béni est un ami plus qu’un esclave et l’homme travaillerait mal si,
entre deux coups de collier, relevant la tête, il n’apercevait au haut
du champ son compagnon sobre et fidèle en train de tondre à larges
lèvres quelque maigre buisson rôti par le trop grand soleil. Pour
tromper la longueur du jour, parfois l’âne se met à braire ; son chant
remplit l’espace immense, le silence règne quand il s’est tu, silence
absolu, religieux, que trouble seul sur les coteaux le bruit argentin de
la pioche. Et c’est longtemps, longtemps après que l’ortolan ou le
coucou hasardent de nouveau leur cri et qu’on entend se réveiller le
chœur enragé des cigales.
L’âne fait partie de la famille ; et c’est un grand orgueil pour tous,
quand, après les courses de Saint-Aroï, son maître le ramène
vainqueur, monté à cru, sans bât ni selle, mais secouant fièrement
au son des tambours le bridon triomphal pomponné dans le goût
espagnol ou la musette en sparterie que décorent de petits miroirs et
des broderies en laine aux couleurs voyantes. Heureux les ânes de
Canteperdrix s’ils connaissaient bien leur bonheur ! car, ils sont
vraiment paysans, peinant l’été, se reposant l’hiver et partageant en
tout et toujours les nobles travaux et les robustes joies de la vie
rurale.
Donc, une fois il arriva que tous les ânes de Canteperdrix furent
malades, et Dieu sait qu’il y a des ânes dans la ville de
Canteperdrix !
L’ange exterminateur, celui des ânes, avait passé, marquant les
portes ; et dans le haut, dans le bas quartier, les pauvres bêtes
tombaient comme mouches. Plus de bruit de sabots, le matin à
l’heure où l’on part, dans les ruelles ; plus de clochettes sonnantes le
soir, au retour des champs, près de la fontaine ; mais tout le long de
la journée, avec de durs cahots sur le pavé pointu, le chariot bas de
l’équarrisseur qui, suivi du hurlement des chiens, emportait les
cadavres à la grève.
Un remède fut trouvé, cher, mais guérissant quelquefois : on
gorgeait les ânes de miel, largement, par grandes cuillerées. Je vis
soigner ainsi l’âne d’un voisin : efflanqué, la langue pendante, le poil
secoué de longs frissons, il gisait tristement sur la litière de buis frais
coupé près de sa mangeoire à moitié pleine. La femme, appuyant
maternellement la tête de l’âne sur ses genoux, maintenait ouvertes
ses mâchoires et l’homme, les bras nus, fouillant dans un grand pot,
enfournait d’énormes pelotes d’un beaux miel odorant et roux,
naturelle potion où le gosier du moribond pouvait reconnaître au
passage, réduites à leur quintessence, toutes les fleurettes des près
et toutes les herbes des montagnes.
Dans un coin, Baptistin soupirait. Baptistin le fils de la maison, un
gamin de huit ans qui malgré son âge menait déjà le soir l’âne boire.
— « Voyez comme il avale ! soupirait Baptistin, cela lui fait du bien, le
pot est presque aux trois quarts vide… » Et s’étant accroupi il
regarda l’âne qui avalait, avalait toujours. Depuis la maladie,
Baptistin était comme fou et manquait l’école, mais son père le lui
pardonnait, comprenant sa grande douleur.
Tant de cœur chez un enfant si jeune me toucha.
A deux jours de là, je le vis passer riant, rayonnant, respirant la
joie : — « Hé ! Baptistin, arrête-toi ; l’âne va donc mieux ? — Au
contraire, mon pauvre monsieur, il est mort ce matin quand le coq
chantait ; je viens d’avertir l’écorche-rosses. » Puis il ajouta, l’œil
éclairé, la lèvre gourmande : — « Vous savez ? C’est moi qui achève
le pot de miel ! »
LE LAPIN DU COUSIN ANSELME.
— Pourtant, quel intérêt…

— Quel intérêt !… Décidément tu n’es pas fort en ces délicates
psychologies. Mais, ce qui fait le charme raffiné du mensonge, du
vrai mensonge, c’est précisément d’être inutile. Le mensonge trouve
en lui-même sa récompense et son plaisir. C’est un lys qui ne file
point, une flamme heureuse de briller sans qu’elle éprouve le besoin
d’éclairer personne… Quel intérêt ! comme si Anselme, le cousin
Anselme, avait obéi à un intérêt quelconque le jour où bénévolement
il nous proposa de manger son fameux lapin ! Tu te rappelles bien le
lapin d’Anselme ?
A vrai dire, je ne me rappelais pas du tout. Mon interlocuteur est
un Méridional du pur Midi, menteur par excès d’imagination et
sceptique comme tous les menteurs qui ne croient qu’à leurs
propres mensonges. Conteur agréable, d’ailleurs, à cela près que sa
pensée allant toujours d’un train de galop, sa parole a peine à la
suivre. Il commence une histoire, l’oublie et, soudain la remplace par
une autre. Aussi, sans plus m’occuper du sujet de conversation
semé en route, je m’apprêtai à écouter l’aventure du cousin Anselme
et de son lapin.
— Tu n’as pas l’air de te rappeler ! c’est étonnant… Enfin, peu
importe ! Donc, un jour de l’année passée, m’étant, suivant
l’habitude des commerçants de chez nous, levé de grand matin pour
ne rien vendre, je m’occupais sur le pas de ma porte, avec toi ou
avec un autre, à considérer l’air du temps, quand Anselme passa et
me demanda : — Comment préférez-vous le lapin ? — Mon Dieu !
répondis-je, en civet, avec beaucoup de serpolet et de thym ; je ne
crains même pas d’y ajouter gros comme l’ongle d’écorce d’orange.
— Parfait ! cela se trouve bien, je vous cherchais précisément pour
vous inviter à en manger un au bastidon…
Un civet au bastidon ! Ces seuls mots m’avaient mis l’eau à la
bouche. On est si bien là, loin de sa femme (car au bastidon la
femme ne pénètre point, et le plus débonnaire Provençal met à
défendre cet asile de paix contre l’invasion du sexe impur une
férocité mahométane !), on est si bien là dans l’unique pièce
parfumée d’aïoli qui sert à la fois de salle à manger et de cuisine,
tandis que les charbons du fourneau où le déjeuner mijote
s’obscurcissent et meurent en lançant une dernière bouffée chaude,
et qu’au dehors, sur les maigres pins du coteau crient
désespérément les cigales grillées. — Et quand le mangerons-nous,
ce civet ?… demain ? — Comme vous y allez ! Ne plaisantons pas :
j’ai visité hier la lapinière, il y a une mère qui, à mon compte, fera
ses petits avant deux jours. La race est précoce ; on peut donc fixer
le déjeuner à cinq semaines d’ici. — Va pour cinq semaines !…
soupirai-je un peu défrisé.
Ah ! par exemple, pendant ces cinq semaines je n’eus pas le
loisir d’oublier le lapin. Anselme, dès le lendemain venait m’en
apporter des nouvelles. La femelle avait mis bas : six lapereaux
superbes, un surtout, gris de poil avec le nez rose, qui déjà au seul
aspect d’un trognon de choux remuait l’oreille comme père et mère.
C’est celui-là qu’on mangerait ! Deux jours après ce fut une autre
gamme : le mâle, un enragé, dévorait ses enfants par jalousie ; on
avait dû le mettre en geôle, sous un panier renversé, avec une
grosse pierre dessus ; trois lapereaux avaient péri victimes de ce
nouveau Saturne, mais, par un hasard miraculeux, celui à poil gris et
à nez rose survivait. La semaine suivante, Anselme me déclara d’un
air affligé que trois petits, aussi drus et forts et tétant toujours
épuisaient la mère ; il allait en sacrifier deux : cela lui faisait de la
peine, mais le dernier aurait la part des autres et profiterait d’autant.
Dès ce moment, l’unique lapin suffit à remplir notre vie : au café,
à la promenade, Anselme ne me parlait que de lui, s’attendrissant
sur ses grâces enfantines, racontant ses caprices, constatant ses
progrès. Plus d’une fois même, à l’heure du départ pour les champs,
quand, dans la rue endormie encore, tintent au cou des chèvres et
des bourriquets quelques clochettes matinales, Anselme vint cogner
à mes vitres, en criant : « Tandis que vous voilà tranquille dans vos
draps, moi je vais couper pour notre lapin l’herbe qu’il aime, des
seneçons, des liserons… » Et il ajoutait en s’éloignant, pour prouver
son zèle : « J’étendrai un moment l’herbe au soleil, parce que les
lapins, la rosée les tue. » Dans les brumes de mon sommeil
interrompu, ce lapin m’apparaissait gigantesque !
Un matin, le lapin s’échappa. Anselme, tout ému encore, vint
chez moi me raconter la chose. A force de courir, il était parvenu à le
rattraper.
Enfin Anselme déclara que le lapin se trouverait à point dans huit
jours, ce qui mettait la fête un dimanche. En attendant, il allait vivre
au régime sec : plus d’herbage, plus de verdure, plus de ces plantes
gonflées d’eau qui font aux lapins leur chair fadasse et molle ; rien
que des lavandes, des marjolaines ; de temps en temps, mais pas
souvent, quelques brindilles de poivre-d’âne, toute une nourriture
odorante cueillie exprès par Anselme sur la montagne, car Anselme
pour tout au monde n’aurait chargé un autre que lui de ce soin.
Le dimanche arriva. Anselme voulut partir le premier, dès l’aube,
pour sacrifier la victime d’un coup sur l’oreille à la façon classique,
l’apprêter et la mettre en casserole ; moi, je devais venir après, tout
à mon aise, avec deux ou trois amis qui m’aideraient à porter le vin
et les autres provisions… Mais écoute la fin de l’histoire !
— Volontiers ; le lapin d’Anselme était-il bon ?
— Hélas ! mon ami, ce rare lapin, si gras, si rond, si bien nourri,
parfumé comme une cassolette, ce lapin n’avait jamais existé que
dans l’imagination d’Anselme. M’étant levé de très bonne heure ce
jour-là, le hasard fit que je surpris Anselme en train d’acheter son
lapin chez le marchand de lapins. Anselme ne possédait dans son
bastidon, je m’en suis assuré depuis, ni lapinière, ni mère lapine ; et
c’est uniquement pour le plaisir qu’un mois durant le brave garçon
m’avait menti, ajoutant chaque matin, avec une ingéniosité de poète
ou de romancier, un grain nouveau à son chapelet d’innocentes
impostures.
— Et tu en conclus ?…
— Tiens, c’est vrai ! où en étions-nous ? Ma foi avec ce lapin, cet
Anselme, j’ai un petit peu perdu le fil.
FRUITS DE MER.
Tout à coup mon ami le Capitaine s’écria :

— Je crève de rire… Puis sans remarquer mon air étonné,
toujours sérieux comme un pape, il ajouta : — … Je crève de rire
quand je vois des huîtres, parce que cela me rappelle la seule fois
que nous en mangeâmes, à Antibes. Là-bas les coquillages ne
manquent point ; nous avons toutes sortes de fruits de mer : les
praires de Toulon, les clovisses, les moules, et les oursins que
j’oubliais, les oursins qu’on pince au fond de l’eau, quand ils se
promènent, à la pointe d’un roseau fendu. Pour d’huîtres, par
exemple, bernique ! De temps en temps les maîtres d’hôtels en font
bien venir un panier ou deux de Marennes ou de Cancale, mais
celles-là, d’abord les Anglais les accaparent, et puis il ne serait pas
agréable de manger au bord de la Méditerranée des choses
poussées dans l’Océan.
Et le Capitaine, répondant à l’invisible interlocuteur que tout bon
méridional porte en soi, conclut philosophiquement : — Eh, té, on
s’en passe de vos huîtres !… Puis il continua après un soupir :
— Le plus pénible dans tout ça, c’est qu’à l’entrée du port, à deux
pas de la Porte-Marine, il y a des millions et des milliards d’huîtres,
de quoi nourrir plusieurs régiments, un banc énorme qui s’en va
sous l’eau jusqu’à moitié chemin de la Corse.
— Pourquoi ne les pêchez-vous pas !
— Parce que c’est trop bas, coquin de sort : au moins à vingt
brasses. Seulement on les aperçoit distinctement, par une belle mer,
dans les jours calmes. Et quelles huîtres, mon ami ! larges comme
ce chapeau, blanches, grasses ! Aussi, quand je m’en allais par là,
près de la bouée de Cinq-cents-francs, entre le phare et le fort
Carré, tendre mes palangrotes aux castagnores, cela me faisait
frémir de les voir bâiller. Savoir qu’on a une mine d’huîtres sous son
bateau et ne pas pouvoir en goûter une ! Je leur montrais le poing au
fond de l’eau, oubliant tout, même les castagnores, quoique la
castagnore soit un joli poisson avec la peinture de ses écailles, et
ses nageoires qui ont l’air découpées au ciseau.
Là-dessus, mon ami le Capitaine, bien que je n’eusse soufflé
mot, m’interpella furieusement :
— Ainsi tu ne crois pas que j’en aie mangé de ces huîtres ?
— Voyons, qui te dit ?…
— Non, tu ne le crois pas !… J’en ai mangé pourtant, moi ; mais il
fallait un de ces hasards qui n’arrivent que tous les cent ans, un
véritable coup de la Providence. Figure-toi… C’était précisément en
cette saison, un lendemain de tempête. La mer avait été mauvaise
trois jours, et, trois jours durant, d’énormes vagues venues droit
d’Afrique s’étaient amusées à jouer au cheval fondu par dessus le
môle et les remparts. Après mon bureau, au lieu de faire le tour de
ville, l’idée me vint d’aller, de l’autre côté de l’anse Saint-Roch,
regarder la plage. C’était superbe. Le fond de la mer avait dû être
retourné sens dessus dessous comme un gant. Le rivage blanc d’os
de seiche, couvert d’éponges, de pierres ponces, et puis du corail,
toutes sortes de coquillages ! Je ne connais rien à ces bêtises, mais
elles m’amusent ; après deux ou trois petites heures, j’en avais mes
poches remplies au point de ne plus pouvoir marcher. J’allais
retourner sur mes pas, quand, un peu en avant dans l’eau, j’aperçus
un rocher d’aspect bizarre. Et dire que j’hésitai un instant à me
mouiller les pieds, dire que je faillis passer sans regarder à côté
d’une telle trouvaille ! car c’était une vraie trouvaille : je ne sais
combien d’huîtres, ensemble accrochées et soudées, un aggloméré,
un béton d’huîtres, ne formant plus qu’un bloc, déraciné sans doute
la veille et ramené du fond par le gros temps. Tu devines ma joie,
mais que faire de mon épave ? J’essayai de l’emporter : trop lourd !
Laisser là les huîtres et m’en aller chercher secours eût été d’une
souveraine imprudence : un passant n’aurait eu qu’à mettre la main
dessus. Pour comble de malheur, la nuit tombait. Ma résolution fut
bientôt prise : j’avais du tabac, une pipe, et je m’établis dans un
creux d’où je pouvais surveiller, rien qu’en ouvrant la moitié d’un œil,
mon trésor caressé par les flots et gardé par le clair de lune. Toute la
nuit, je rêvai d’huîtres ; et quand je me réveillai, un peu engourdi par
l’air frisquet, mes huîtres étaient là, le soleil levant perçait la brume
et les bateaux-pêcheurs sortaient du port. A force de héler, un de
ces pêcheurs m’entendit. « Comment ! c’est vous, monsieur le
Capitaine, mais tout le monde vous croit noyé ! — Laisse-les croire
et aide-moi à embarquer ça ! — Une pêche rare, monsieur le
Capitaine, qui fera du bruit dans la ville ! »
Et je te crois, qu’elle fit du bruit ! Un grand déjeuner fut servi au
cercle, avec mon bloc d’huîtres tout entouré de fleurs, au milieu de la
table ; car, afin que chacun pût jouir du coup d’œil, on devait le
dépouiller peu à peu en mangeant, et n’ouvrir les huîtres qu’une à
une. Nous étions quarante convives : il y eut des huîtres pour tous.
Et, chose étrange, à mesure que le bloc se décroûtait de ses huîtres,
on le voyait progressivement prendre une forme régulière. « C’est un
rocher rond… » disaient les autres. Moi, je voyais bien que ce n’était
pas un rocher rond. Soudain je pousse un cri de joie : le prétendu
rocher se trouvait creux, avec autant d’huîtres au dedans qu’on en
avait enlevé au dehors. Et dures, et serrées ! pour les avoir, ce fut le
diable ! Sans compter que le président de la Société archéologique
me criait tout le temps :
« Prends bien garde ! n’abîme rien, c’est une urne ; j’en vois
l’émail ! une urne antique tombée de quelque galère et vieillie sous
la mer ; nous en ferons hommage au Musée. » Va pour une urne !
mais les urnes de cette espèce, tout honnête homme en a dans sa
chambre, et on les fabrique à Valauris.
Ce qui n’empêche pas, ajouta mon ami le Capitaine en manière
de conclusion, que tout le monde redemanda des huîtres et que, moi
d’abord, je fis honneur à cette seconde tournée.
ESCARGOTS D’AFRIQUE.
Si vous avez froid, si l’hiver vous paraît long et Paris monotone,

faites comme j’ai fait l’autre soir, assistez à un dîner d’explorateurs.
Là, dans quelque salon orné de nattes aux couleurs vives, décoré
bizarrement de panoplies sauvages et de costumes primitifs en
plumes de perroquet, au milieu d’une conversation où s’entremêlent
les longitudes et les latitudes, les gommes et la poudre d’or, les
plumes d’autruche et l’ivoire, vous pourrez, tandis qu’au dehors la
neige cristallisée brille, et tout en savourant un moka qui vient de
Moka, parfumé de tafia d’origine, vous procurer gratis et sans
danger la sensation d’un grand voyage aux heureux pays du soleil.
La belle flamme et quelle verve, et les mirifiques aventures dans
cette Afrique, mère des monstres, qui cache encore tant de secrets !
Pour nous l’ouvrir, des héros sont morts !
Cependant les escargots du Marseillais cheminent lentement à
travers des régions non visitées, et, comme ces voyageurs d’un
nouveau genre portent leur maison sur le dos et n’ont à
s’embarrasser ni de bagages ni de tentes, tout donne lieu de croire
qu’ils arriveront les premiers.
— Quels escargots ?… quel Marseillais ?…
— C’est une histoire qu’au dessert mes explorateurs racontèrent
et que je vais à mon tour vous raconter.
Du temps que les escargots étaient inconnus dans l’Afrique
australe (il y a bien sept ans de cela, comme chacun sait), un
Marseillais vivait à la ville du Cap. Commerçant toute la semaine, il
s’était fait bâtir, pour y passer ses dimanches, sur les flancs de la
montagne de la Table, à l’endroit le plus sec et le plus rocheux, un
petit cabanon horriblement blanc qui lui rappelait son cher Marseille.
Là, une fois tous les huit jours, grillé du soleil, mais heureux, il se
confectionnait un bel aïoli et le mangeait tout seul en regardant la
mer. L’aïoli mangé dans ces conditions le consolait un peu de la
patrie absente. Hélas ! le cœur de l’homme est insatiable. Que
signifie d’ailleurs un aïoli sans son accompagnement d’escargots ?
Et le bon Marseillais, redevenu mélancolique, s’attendrissait
obstinément au souvenir des escargots mangés sur place après
qu’on les avait dénichés dans les éboulis des murs en pierre sèche
qui soutiennent les jardins de Menpenti et du Roucas-Blanc. Un jour,
le Marseillais n’y tint plus ; il écrivit à un compatriote resté là-bas, fait
pour le comprendre, et deux mois plus tard, par le retour du courrier,
arrivait à la douane de Cape-Town une caisse carrée, percée de
mille trous, et répandant une odeur étrange. Cette caisse renfermait
dix mille escargots, de ces fins petits escargots gris qui, selon la
prétention des Provençaux, sont aux escargots de Bourgogne ce
qu’est au lapin de garenne un maigre lièvre montagnard nourri de
lavande et de thym. Quatre mille escargots étaient
malheureusement morts en route. Sur les six mille survivants, notre
Marseillais en choisit trois mille qu’il réserva pour être mangés, et
plaça les autres dans un petit parc abondamment pourvu de
légumes frais et de tout ce qui peut, en général, rendre aux
escargots la vie douce. Le Marseillais avait son idée ; et quand ces
derniers lui parurent remis des fatigues de la traversée et
suffisamment restaurés, chaque soir il en prenait quelques-uns des
plus gaillards et, se perdant dans les milles sentiers entourés de
jardins et de villas qui serpentent autour de la montagne, il les
déposait dans un trou de mur ou sur la plate-bande d’un potager, à
travers les barreaux d’une grille : — « Nous avons ici un climat béni,
se disait-t-il, tous les légumes d’Europe y prospèrent ; c’est bien le
diable si mes escargots ne multiplient pas ! »
En effet, les escargots multiplièrent, et, dès lors, par les belles
nuits australes, sous les reflets de diamant de la Croix du Sud,
l’heureux Marseillais, un panier au bras, put faire mystérieusement
d’abondantes et savoureuses récoltes.
Pendant quelque temps, tout alla bien. Par malheur, les
escargots, à qui le sol convenait, multipliant, multipliant toujours,
finirent par déborder les jardins, contournèrent stratégiquement les
murs de la ville et, peu à peu, se trouvèrent occuper toute la riche et
grasse presqu’île : les aristocratiques cottages de Rosebank,
ombragés de chênes, et les coteaux cuits du soleil où mûrit le vin de
Constance.
La chose ne se passa point cette fois sans attirer l’attention
publique : un beau jour, les bons vignerons hottentots au service des
propriétaires hollandais arrivèrent tout effarés à la ville racontant que
des animaux étranges, sans pattes, quatre fois cornus, et tels que
les anciens ne se rappelaient pas en avoir jamais vu les pareils dans
le pays, dévastaient les vignes, hachaient les pampres et les
grappes, et revenaient plus affamés et plus nombreux à mesure
qu’on les détruisait.
Le directeur du Muséum, à qui un spécimen fut apporté, reconnut
avec stupéfaction dans le monstre tous les caractères de l’Helix
Cochlearia, du vulgaire escargot d’Europe.
L’importateur ne soufflait mot ; mais on apprit son nom par les
registres de la douane. Grande émotion, fureur des journaux !
Pendant quelques jours la vie du Marseillais fut menacée.
Cependant, tandis que la colonie ne parlait que d’eux et que les
Magazines publiaient leur portrait avec des cornes
intentionnellement exagérées, les escargots marchaient toujours. Un
obstacle les arrêta, à l’entrée de l’isthme : les Flats, vaste étendue
de marécages et de sable, fleurie d’orchidées multicolores, de
bruyères lilas et roses, domaine familier des serpents et des canards
sauvages, mais que les escargots ne pouvaient traverser sans se
noyer ou s’enliser. Patients et têtus, ils attendirent ; puis, un chemin
de fer ayant été construit pour relier la ville avec l’intérieur, ils se
glissèrent prudemment, silencieusement le long des rails et
envahirent les riches exploitations du Coin français et les vignobles
de la Perle.
Les escargots iront plus loin encore, poussés au Nord par un
vague instinct, on dirait presque par un désir de se rapprocher de la
patrie. Ils seront demain aux Champs de diamants ; les voies ferrées
aidant, ils atteindront un jour le Zambèze… — « Qui sait ? dit en
terminant le voyageur qui faisait ce récit, dans vingt ans, dans trente
ans peut-être, un Caillié ou un Livingstone, arrivant dans le dernier
coin inexploré du continent africain, éprouvera la douloureuse
surprise de voir qu’il a été précédé par les escargots partis du Cap. »
— Et le Marseillais ?
— Les habitants, pour toute vengeance, ont donné son nom
(Lavertpilière ou Cazenavette) au gastéropode qu’il importa. Nom
maudit aujourd’hui par toute la colonie, mais qui sera béni demain
s’il est vrai, comme le Cape-Times l’annonce, que la seule présence
de l’escargot suffit à détruire le fléau des terres australes, plus
terrible que notre phylloxera : la punaise blanche d’Australie ! Ce qui
prouve qu’on peut devenir bienfaiteur de l’humanité sans le savoir et
par pure gourmandise, et qu’il suffit parfois de laisser les choses
aller pour que tout s’arrange et soit pour le mieux dans le meilleur
des mondes.
LES SAULES DE M. SÉNEZ.
M. Sénez aime la nature.

Vers la fin de l’hiver dernier, ayant appris que j’habitais, au pied
des Alpes, une bourgade perdue, dans les torrents, les rochers et la
lavande, M. Sénez débarqua chez moi un beau matin en costume
pastoral, par le petit coupé à deux places qui fait le service
d’Avignon.
Avec son chapeau rustique et son sac de nuit, M. Sénez
apportait, réglé d’avance, un idéal de campagne. Il voulait
simplement, me dit-il, une maisonnette au regard du soleil couchant,
précédée d’un bassin où tremperaient deux saules pleureurs et où
chanterait une grenouille.
M. Sénez ne chercha pas longtemps son idéal ; il l’avait trouvé le
soir même.
Figurez-vous une de ces petites maisons cubiques, blanchies à
la chaux et entourées d’un mur de pierres sèches, où les bons
Provençaux, qui sont de la nature des cigales, vont par bandes, le
dimanche, se réjouir à l’ombre d’un pin ou d’un olivier, ombre aussi
claire, d’aussi fine trame et aussi percée de trous ensoleillés que le
manteau du philosophe Antisthène. Tout semblait nu et froid encore
à cause de la saison ; mais grâce à ma double vue de Provençal et
de poète, je vis le bastidon tel qu’il serait un mois plus tard, et je
sentis passer dans l’air comme un parfum de vin muscat, d’aïoli et
d’escargots de vigne.
Autres étaient les impressions de M. Sénez.
Ce qui du premier coup l’avait séduit là-dedans, ce que sa vive
imagination se représentait par avance, ce n’étaient pas le mur
blanc, les cigales, l’herbe brûlée, l’ombre noire des artichauts
projetant en ligne sur le sol leurs fruits de forme classique pareils au
thyrse de Bacchus et leurs larges et belles feuilles contournées
comme des acanthes, rien enfin de cet assoupissant poëme de la
chaleur et de l’été, avec les ortolans qui chantent, les blés trop mûrs
qui se froissent bruyamment et les grands chemins qui poudroient ;
ce que voyait M. Sénez, ce qui seul le faisait rêver, c’était une chose
si ridiculement attendrissante en pareil endroit, que d’abord je ne
l’avais pas aperçue : le bassin ! un bassin rond grand comme la
main, bordé de buis, épais de mousse, égayé d’un mince jet d’eau
qui sautait de côté à un pied en l’air avec de petits mouvements
asthmatiques, et ombragé en espérance par deux saules, manches
à balai jaunes pour le quart d’heure, mais qui promettaient d’être, la
saison aidant, de magnifiques saules pleureurs.
— Il y a une grenouille ! me disait M. Sénez ravi.
— Elle doit se trouver bien malheureuse.
— Ne plaisantons pas. Et les saules ? Savez-vous seulement
combien c’est joli les saules qui poussent ? les saules pleureurs,
bien entendu ! D’abord, tout autour des rameaux, commence à flotter
une verdure tendre, un nuage, un brouillard, une fumée de verdure,
comme si on les avait très légèrement poudrés d’or vert. Ils vous ont
un parfum de miel, avec cela ! Puis la verdure croît, les longues
feuilles déroulées retombent au bout des longues branches,
descendant un peu chaque jour, jusqu’à ce que leur bout fin trempe
dans l’eau et se soude à son propre reflet. Inextricable labyrinthe où
se confondent le bleu du ciel et les éclairs de l’eau, les mousses et
les rayons, les vrais saules et leurs images.
M. Sénez était fou de ses saules.
Pendant quinze jours il ne les quitta pas, perdant le boire et le
manger, épiant l’apparition du premier bourgeon avec une joyeuse
inquiétude.
— Mes saules poussent ! mes saules poussent ! disait-il tous les
soirs quand il rentrait. Il se couchait de bonne heure pour rêver
d’eux.
Puis un jour, subitement, M. Sénez devint sombre ; il ne parlait
plus des saules, il ne voulait plus qu’on lui en parlât.
Et cependant, en plein mois de mars, devaient-ils avoir assez de
feuilles !
Je flairais un drame dans ces saules ! Je voulus les voir de mes
yeux ; sans avertir M. Sénez, je me rendis à la maisonnette.
Pauvre ami ! Pauvre M. Sénez ! Alors je compris ses tristesses.
Le paysage idéal était là ; le soleil couchant se couchait ; la
grenouille chantait sous le jet d’eau ; mais les saules, les fameux
saules, qu’il avait rêvés échevelés et blonds comme une jeune fille
d’Allemagne, les saules pleureurs, hélas ! ne pleuraient pas :
horribles, hérissés, ils portaient fièrement la chevelure en broussaille
du salix vulgaris, des simples saules, ces écoliers mal peignés de la
végétation.
Ce fut navrant.
On m’a volé, disait M. Sénez ; la campagne n’a plus de charme
pour moi ! Je partirai demain.
M. Sénez faisait déjà ses paquets.
Pourtant le lendemain M. Sénez ne partit pas, le surlendemain
non plus, ni les jours suivants. Peu à peu sa joie lui revint ; il
retourna au bastidon.
Une après-midi, plus joyeux encore qu’à l’ordinaire, mais joyeux
de cette joie discrète des inventeurs qui ont trouvé :
— Venez avec moi, me dit-il mystérieusement, je veux vous
montrer quelque chose.
Ce qu’il me montra, jamais je ne l’oublierai.
Au dessus du petit bassin, les deux saules, liés par la tête et
rappelant dans cette attitude contrainte les combats de boucs et
d’ægipans debout sur leurs pieds de derrière et se heurtant du front
qui servent de culs-de-lampe aux belles éditions du dix-septième
siècle, les deux saules, courbés, tordus, garrottés, dessinaient l’arc
rêvé par M. Sénez, tandis que des ficelles supplémentaires tiraient
en bas les maîtresses branches et les faisaient tremper dans l’eau.
O puissance de l’invention ! les saules mal peignés étaient
devenus, par force, de superbes saules pleureurs, et M. Sénez, en
possession de son idéal, pleurait de joie en regardant pleurer ses
saules.
LE MOULIN DE FUSTON.
Tout le monde l’enviait, Fuston !

Il possédait, non loin de la ville, le plus joli moulin du monde : un
de ces moulins qu’on rêve, aux heures de mélancolie, pour y élever
des canards et vivre heureux.
L’écluse n’en était pas large, mais ombragée d’arbres si beaux et
peuplée de tant de grenouilles ! Sa grande roue ne tournait guère,
mais de si vertes mousses y pendaient !
Jamais, de mémoire d’homme, le moulin de Fuston n’avait
marché ; on rencontre, comme cela, pas mal de moulins en haute
Provence. L’écluse, la grande roue, dormaient inutiles ; inutiles aussi
dormaient les pièces de l’aménagement intérieur : meules frais
taillées, blutoirs à la soie jaune, toute neuve, poche de toile tombant
du plafond par où le blé descend comme une averse de grains d’or,
tiroirs énormes au fond desquels s’amasse la fine farine tamisée.
Bâti sur le versant nord d’une colline, en plein courant d’air d’un
étroit vallon, ce moulin plaisant et paradoxal était censé alimenter sa
chute d’eau par le moyen d’un important barrage.
Soyez tranquilles ! le barrage existait à un demi kilomètre au-
dessus du moulin : barrage d’ailleurs pittoresque, fait de pieux
plantés dans le gravier, de pousses d’osier noir entrelacées au
travers des pieux, et qui tenait superbement toute la largeur de la
rivière.
Par malheur, en été, aux mois où la rivière baisse, le peu d’eau
qui restait préférait passer par dessous le barrage et se frayer un
frais chemin, loin du soleil et loin des hommes, dans l’épaisseur du
lit de galet. L’hiver, c’était une autre histoire : coulant claire, vive, à
pleine rives, la rivière d’abord emplissait le canal modeste et
l’écluse. Mais aussitôt l’écluse emplie et quand la roue allait
s’émouvoir, toujours un vent âpre arrivait qui, dans cet entre-deux de
montagnes, pour plus de trois mois sans soleil, glaçait le canal et
l’écluse, et figeait la bruyante chute d’eau en immobiles stalactites.
Fuston pendant plus de vingt années, n’avait pas moulu la valeur
d’un sac.
Cela ne l’empêchait pas d’être meunier, et de s’habiller en
meunier, et de mener la vie de meunier. Tout en drap gris, avec
l’indispensable chapeau gris, d’un gris presque blanc et comme
poudré de farine, il remplissait de son importance les marchés et
foires de la contrée, parlant grains, raisonnant d’« issues. »
Aimé de tous, même des meuniers ses confrères qu’une
concurrence aussi platonique n’effrayait point, les bons déjeuners,
chez lui dans ce moulin silencieux, autour duquel les infiltrations de
l’écluse faisaient régner, aux mois les plus chauds, une sorte de
verdure relative !
Faute de pêche, on avait la chasse ; et pour arroser les perdrix et
les lièvres courtauds de la côte, un petit vin sec, à parfum de
cailloux, que le bon Fuston, de ses propres mains, mettait fraîchir
sous la grand’roue.
Je l’entends encore, ce Fuston ! j’entends l’éloge de son moulin :
— « Vous pouvez aller de Gap à Marseille avant de rencontrer
pareilles meules. C’est franc, solide, bien établi. Ça tourne rond et ça
broie net, sans s’échauffer ni rien brûler. Ça vous avale un sac, deux
sacs, comme je vous avale ce verre. » Et il s’exaltait au dessert,
croyant entendre son moulin revivre, souriant au bruit, flairant la
farine, voyant de la grand’roue en mouvement mille perles jaillir sur
le gazon des berges, tandis que de longs fils d’argent coulent au
bout de ses mousses reverdies.
Et que manquait-il à Fuston pour réaliser son rêve ? Peu de
chose, en somme : un été qui ne fût pas sec, un hiver qui ne fût pas
froid.
Fuston, au courant de sa vie, ne rencontra jamais ni cet été ni cet
hiver. Tranquille en un moulin muet, la chose d’ailleurs le chagrinait

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Feminist Judgments Rewritten Property

Opinions 1st Edition Eloisa C.

Feminist Judgments Rewritten Employment Discrimination

Feminist Judgments Rewritten Tax Opinions 1st Edition

Feminist Judgments Family Law Opinions Rewritten 1st

Feminist Judgments Rewritten Trusts and Estates

Feminist Judgments Rewritten Opinions of the United

Feminist Judgments Health Law Rewritten 1st Edition

Feminist Judgments Reproductive Justice Rewritten 1st

Not That Duke First Edition Eloisa James

Eloisa C. Rodriguez-Dod is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of

Kathryn Abrams, Herma Hill Kay Distinguished Professor of Law, University

Rachel Moran, Michael J. Connell Distinguished Professor of Law and Dean

Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Dean and Professor of Law, Boston University

Nancy D. Polikoff, Professor of Law, American University Washington

Daniel B. Rodriguez, Dean and Harold Washington Professor, Northwestern

Verna L. Williams, Dean and Nippert Professor of Law, University of

ELENA MARIA MARTY-NELSON

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

1 Introduction to Feminist Judgments: Rewritten

2 Property Law Revolution, Devolution, and Feminist

3 Incorporating Feminist Perspectives throughout Law

part ii allocation of rights 33

4 Johnson v. M’Intosh, 21 U.S. 543 (1823) 35

5 Botiller v. Dominguez, 130 U.S. 238 (1889) 61

6 Pierson v. Post, 3 Cai. R. 175 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1805) 90

part iii patents, publicity rights, and trademarks 119

7 Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics,

8 White v. Samsung Electronics America, Inc., 971 F.2d 1395

part iv condemnation and adverse possession 177

10 Tate v. Water Works & Sewer Board of City of Oxford,

part v gifts and future interests 225

11 Gruen v. Gruen, 496 N.E.2d 869 (N.Y. 1986) 227

part vi tenancy in common, joint tenancy,

12 Sawada v. Endo, 561 P.2d 1291 (Haw. 1977) 253

13 Taylor v. Canterbury, 92 P.3d 961 (Colo. 2004) 283

14 Coggan v. Coggan, 239 So. 2d 17 (Fla. 1970) 293

part vii exclusionary zoning 309

15 Moore v. City of East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494 (1977) 311

part viii evictions 343

16 Phillips Neighborhood Housing Trust v. Brown,

17 Blake v. Stradford, 725 N.Y.S.2d 189 (Dist. Ct. 2001) 371

part ix landlord–tenant premises liability 397

18 Bartley v. Sweetser, 890 S.W.2d 250 (Ark. 1994) 399

Kristen Barnes, Professor of Law, Syracuse University College of Law

Marc-Tizoc González, Professor of Law, The University of New Mexico

Elena Maria Marty-Nelson, Associate Dean for Diversity, Inclusion, and

On the cover, Assembly © Jose Rodriguez-Dod

Introduction to Feminist Judgments: Rewritten

eloisa c. rodriguez-dod and

in Phillips Neighborhood Housing Trust, an entire family was evicted, pushing

the feminist judgments property project

Ireland,9 and Scotland,10 as well as a project devoted to the ﬁeld of inter-

organizing the cases for the feminist rewrite

All of the feminist judgments and commentaries in this property volume

Property Law Revolution, Devolution, and Feminist

lolita buckner inniss

revolution and devolution in property law