Seminar with Professor Susan H. Williams

Customary Law, Gender Equality, and Constitutional Design: Feminist Theory and Women as Norm-Creators

Abstract

Customary and religious law systems are protected by constitutions in many countries around the world. Such protection is important to providing equality and justice for minority ethnic and religious communities, but these systems often create tension with the constitutional protection for gender equality. In this talk, I will outline the nature of this conflict, using examples from the countries in which I have worked as a constitutional advisor. I will then examine some of the constitutional design solutions that have been offered and attempted, and suggest a new approach. Drawing on feminist political theory, I will argue that the solution requires constitutional designers to see women not merely as rights-holders, but also as norm-creators and to write constitutions in ways that support that role.

Bio

Professor Susan H. Williams is the Walter W. Foskett Professor of Law and the Director of the Center for Constitutional Democracy at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law. She has visited at  the University of Paris II (Pantheon-Assas), Cambridge University (Wolfson College), and the European University Institute in Italy. She is the author of Truth, Autonomy, and Speech: Feminist Theory and the First Amendment (NYU Press 2004) and the editor of two books on constitutional design: Constitutionalism and Social Difference in Pan Asia (Cambridge University Press 2013) and Constituting Equality: Gender Equality and Comparative Constitutional Law (Cambridge University Press, 2009) (paperback edition 2011). She has written numerous articles and book chapters on constitutional law, constitutional design, and feminist theory.

Professor Williams is actively engaged in advising constitutional reformers in several countries. She has worked with ethnic minority groups and women’s organizations in Burma for over twenty years;  advised the Law Reform Commission of Liberia on potential constitutional amendments; and worked with civil society groups in Libya to provide capacity building for leaders and to educate the public about constitutional drafting. She has run programs for the Constitutional Court of Jordan and is currently the convener of an annual conference for the women serving as judges on the high courts of the MENA region.

Prof. Williams teaches courses on the First Amendment, feminist jurisprudence, and constitutional design.