An OCU Law professor is publishing her second book.
Law professor Carla Spivack’s book, “Feminist Judgements: Rewritten Trusts and Estates Opinions,” will be released this September. It consists of rewritten legal opinions and explanations judges may attach to cases explaining their rulings. Spivack edited the book along with Deborah S. Gordon from Drexel University and Browne C. Lewis from North Carolina Central University.
“We took several opinions that had gender issues in them, and then we rewrote the opinion to come out the other way and sort of bring out the gender issues. Then someone else wrote a commentary on the rewritten opinion, sort of explaining how it expressed the gender issues and providing legal context for it,” she said.
“Feminist Judgements” is part of a larger body of work, Spivack said.
“‘Feminist Judgements’ is part of a series published by Cambridge University Press,” she said. “This is maybe the third or fourth book of supreme court opinions dealt with the same way. There are family law opinions, property law, a whole bunch of other stuff. One of the series editors suggested to me and a couple other people that we might do that.”
Spivack published her first book, “The Smart Woman’s Guide to Property Law,” last spring.
“It’s sort of a legal guide for women to keep from losing property that they have a right to,” Spivack said. “The basic point of the book is that law looks like it treats people equally on the surface, but when it’s applied to people it can come out with really unequable results, since men’s and women’s social positions are so different. We were thinking people need to be aware of that and protect themselves from it.”
Spivack said her students support her work.
“A lot of my students bought it, and someday I may even autograph it for them since they can’t get in the building,” she said. “People might be put off because it’s a law book, but it’s not written like a law book at all. It tells stories of things that happened to people, and it’s super readable.”
Spivack said she was inspired by the world around her to study law.
“I just thought it was a good skillset to have. If you’re actually trying to help people deal with injustice and even make change to make things more fair, then law is the way to do that,” she said. “One of the things that I talk about in the intro to the book is something that my mom went through. My parents were both professors, and they were hired at the same institution, and at that time, it was the university policy to pay women half the salary of the man if they worked in the same department. A couple years later, the Title VII act was passed.”
Spivack said she had personal experiences with the inequities of property law.
“My parents had divided financial responsibilities in the house. One spouse handles part of the finance, and they don’t really do it together. What my dad did was taxes, and my dad did not like paying taxes. So, he found all of these semi-unacceptable ways around to get deductions that his accountant told him not to do, but he did anyway,” she said. “It takes the IRS a few years to catch those things, so when he died my mother was left with this tax bill, and she had no idea.”
Jessica Brown, law alumna, said Spivack made a positive impact on her life.
“Whenever I got her book, I saw she had thanked me in the foreword, and I cried. Professor Spivack was my adviser, and she’s amazing. There’s a number of law students that came out with me who were assigned to other advisers, and she sort of adopted them,” Brown said. “She was a fierce advocate for me and a huge proponent for not only women, but people in general. She treats everyone like a human.”
Brown said Spivack’s book is important because it shines a light on the current world.
“She highlights the inequities that exist in the law and how societal stereotypes are and ways to avoid that,” she said.
Spivack said the point of the book is to prepare women for difficult situations.
“One thing I say in the book a lot is that you need to pay attention to these things,” she said. “Dividing up the finances isn’t enough, and you need to actually know what’s going on.”
“Feminist Judgments” is now available on the Cambridge University Press website.
Leave a Reply