Max Waltman
My research addresses fundamental problems in democratic theory related to the meaning of citizenship, equality, and freedom. It is problem-driven and seeks to understand and explain the obstacles and potential for political systems to tackle exploitation, violence, and discrimination productively. My book, published by Oxford University Press (New York, 2021), offers an interdisciplinary analysis of how the explosive spread of pornography contributes to violence against women, including prostitution, and constructs a political theory on how to address the problem consistent with legal free speech guarantees. The research is comparative, situated within the fields of politics and gender, political theory, specifically democratic theory, and constitutional, civil, and criminal law and courts. It is strongly related to human rights.
My work appears in Harvard Journal of Law & Gender, Political Research Quarterly, Michigan Journal of International Law, Women’s Studies International Forum, Law & Inequality: A Journal of Theory and Practice, and Wisconsin Journal of Law, Gender & Society, as well as in other publications. My op-eds have been published in the New York Times, Toronto Star, in Swedish newspapers (e.g., DN, SvD, GP), and various online news sites. In addition, legislative bodies domestically and abroad have consulted me, and I work on policy initiatives with prostitution survivors and feminist groups.
During the academic year 2016–2017, I was a visiting researcher and fellow at Harvard University, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. During the academic year 2017–2018, I was a visiting researcher at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor). I have received post-doctoral research funds from the Wenner-Gren Foundations (Sweden) and was awarded the Sweden-America Foundation’s Prins Bertil fellowship 2016. I hold a Ph.D. in political science from Stockholm University.
My work appears in Harvard Journal of Law & Gender, Political Research Quarterly, Michigan Journal of International Law, Women’s Studies International Forum, Law & Inequality: A Journal of Theory and Practice, and Wisconsin Journal of Law, Gender & Society, as well as in other publications. My op-eds have been published in the New York Times, Toronto Star, in Swedish newspapers (e.g., DN, SvD, GP), and various online news sites. In addition, legislative bodies domestically and abroad have consulted me, and I work on policy initiatives with prostitution survivors and feminist groups.
During the academic year 2016–2017, I was a visiting researcher and fellow at Harvard University, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. During the academic year 2017–2018, I was a visiting researcher at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor). I have received post-doctoral research funds from the Wenner-Gren Foundations (Sweden) and was awarded the Sweden-America Foundation’s Prins Bertil fellowship 2016. I hold a Ph.D. in political science from Stockholm University.
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Books by Max Waltman
This book assesses American, Canadian, and Swedish legal challenges to the explosive spread of pornography within their significantly different democratic systems, and constructs a political and legal theory for effectively challenging the sex industry under law. The obstacles to this challenge are exposed as more ideological and political than strictly legal, although they often play out in the legal arena. Legal challenges to the harms are shown to be more effective under legal systems that promote equality and when the laws empower those most harmed, in contrast to state-enforced regulations (e.g., criminal obscenity laws). Drawing on feminist and intersectional theory, among others, this book argues that pornography is among the linchpins of sex inequality, contending that civil rights legislation and a civil society forum can empower those harmed with representatives who have more substantial incentives to address them.
This book explains why democracies fail to address the harms of pornography and offers a political and legal theory for changing the status quo. These insights can be applied to other intractable problems associated with hierarchies and will appeal profoundly to political theorists and those invested in civil and human rights.
Peer- & Law Review Articles by Max Waltman
This article analyzes in depth the prospect of holding authoritative actors accountable for legalized prostitution under the international legal rubric of crimes against humanity. It documents that legalized and fully decriminalized prostitution release a tsunami of crimes against humanity for which these policies guarantee domestic impunity. Empirical evidence marshaled shows that legal prostitution exponentially increases “widespread” and “systematic attacks” against prostituted persons, including “rape, enforced prostitution, enslavement, human trafficking, sexual slavery,” and other atrocities enumerated under international law and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Parts I and II demonstrates how Toward departed from conventional epistemologies, in part explaining its revolutionary appeal to students, practitioners, and scholars. Part III continues the analysis by using real world applications of its approach to pornography and prostitution, beginning with the anti-pornography civil rights ordinances drafted by Catharine A. MacKinnon and writer Andrea Dworkin in 1983, six years before the publication of Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. Part III illustrates how the ordinances mobilized MacKinnon’s same cutting-edge approach to advancing women’s legal substantive equality about which she later theorized. A similar approach was instrumental in grounding a substantive equality prostitution law, proposed by MacKinnon in a public speech in Stockholm, Sweden, November 2, 1990, situating that law within her broader approach to equality. The Swedish national umbrella organization for women’s shelters, ROKS, lobbied for the law and rallied other actors to support it, precipitating its passing in Parliament in 1998, with the law taking effect in 1999. Similar laws have now been adopted by many more countries (attesting to MacKinnon’s extraordinary influence as a legal and social theorist), although not until ten years or more after Sweden’s law, which makes Sweden’s unique data availability a “revelatory case.” Part III concludes by analyzing its comparative impact in terms of reducing sexual exploitation and abuse and offering an exit for people in prostitution, thus promoting substantive equality.
The article shows that Sweden has significantly reduced the occurrence of trafficking in Sweden compared to neighboring countries. It also scrutinizes some misinformation of the law's impact, showing for instance that claims alleging a more dangerous situation for those still in prostitution after 1999 were unfounded. In addition, the article addresses remaining obstacles to the law's effective implementation, arguing that in order to realize the law's full potential to support escape from trafficking, the civil rights of prostituted persons under current law should be strengthened to enable them to claim damages directly from the purchasers for the harm to which they have contributed, and for the violation of the prostituted persons' equality and dignity - a position now recognized by the government to some extent by clarifying amendments made in 2011.
PhD Dissertation by Max Waltman
The dissertation analyzes obstacles and potential in democracies, specifically Canada, Sweden, and United States, to effectively address empirically documented harms of pornography. Legislative and judicial challenges under different democratic and legal frameworks are compared.
Adopting a problem-driven theoretical approach, the reality of pornography’s harms is analyzed. Evidence shows its production exploits existing inequalities among persons typically drawn from other forms of prostitution who suffer multiple disadvantages, such as extreme poverty, childhood sexual abuse, and race and gender discrimination, making survival alternatives remote. Consumption is also divided by sex. A majority of young adult men consumes pornography frequently; women rarely do, usually not unless initiated by others. After consumption, studies show many normal men become substantially more sexually aggressive and increasingly trivialize and support violence against women. Vulnerable populations—including battered, raped, or prostituted women—are most harmed as a result.
The impact of attempts to address pornography’s harms on democratic rights and freedoms, specifically gender equality and speech, is explored through the case studies. Democracies are found to provide more favorable conditions for legal challenges to pornography’s harms when recognizing substantive (not formal) equality in law, and when promoting representation of perspectives and interests of groups particularly injured by pornography. State-implemented approaches such as criminal obscenity laws are found less effective. More victim-centered and survivor-initiated civil rights approaches would be more responsive and remedial—a finding with implications for other politico-legal problems, such as global warming, that disproportionately affect disadvantaged populations traditionally largely excluded from decision-making.
Selected Op-Eds by Max Waltman
Papers by Max Waltman
This book assesses American, Canadian, and Swedish legal challenges to the explosive spread of pornography within their significantly different democratic systems, and constructs a political and legal theory for effectively challenging the sex industry under law. The obstacles to this challenge are exposed as more ideological and political than strictly legal, although they often play out in the legal arena. Legal challenges to the harms are shown to be more effective under legal systems that promote equality and when the laws empower those most harmed, in contrast to state-enforced regulations (e.g., criminal obscenity laws). Drawing on feminist and intersectional theory, among others, this book argues that pornography is among the linchpins of sex inequality, contending that civil rights legislation and a civil society forum can empower those harmed with representatives who have more substantial incentives to address them.
This book explains why democracies fail to address the harms of pornography and offers a political and legal theory for changing the status quo. These insights can be applied to other intractable problems associated with hierarchies and will appeal profoundly to political theorists and those invested in civil and human rights.
This article analyzes in depth the prospect of holding authoritative actors accountable for legalized prostitution under the international legal rubric of crimes against humanity. It documents that legalized and fully decriminalized prostitution release a tsunami of crimes against humanity for which these policies guarantee domestic impunity. Empirical evidence marshaled shows that legal prostitution exponentially increases “widespread” and “systematic attacks” against prostituted persons, including “rape, enforced prostitution, enslavement, human trafficking, sexual slavery,” and other atrocities enumerated under international law and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Parts I and II demonstrates how Toward departed from conventional epistemologies, in part explaining its revolutionary appeal to students, practitioners, and scholars. Part III continues the analysis by using real world applications of its approach to pornography and prostitution, beginning with the anti-pornography civil rights ordinances drafted by Catharine A. MacKinnon and writer Andrea Dworkin in 1983, six years before the publication of Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. Part III illustrates how the ordinances mobilized MacKinnon’s same cutting-edge approach to advancing women’s legal substantive equality about which she later theorized. A similar approach was instrumental in grounding a substantive equality prostitution law, proposed by MacKinnon in a public speech in Stockholm, Sweden, November 2, 1990, situating that law within her broader approach to equality. The Swedish national umbrella organization for women’s shelters, ROKS, lobbied for the law and rallied other actors to support it, precipitating its passing in Parliament in 1998, with the law taking effect in 1999. Similar laws have now been adopted by many more countries (attesting to MacKinnon’s extraordinary influence as a legal and social theorist), although not until ten years or more after Sweden’s law, which makes Sweden’s unique data availability a “revelatory case.” Part III concludes by analyzing its comparative impact in terms of reducing sexual exploitation and abuse and offering an exit for people in prostitution, thus promoting substantive equality.
The article shows that Sweden has significantly reduced the occurrence of trafficking in Sweden compared to neighboring countries. It also scrutinizes some misinformation of the law's impact, showing for instance that claims alleging a more dangerous situation for those still in prostitution after 1999 were unfounded. In addition, the article addresses remaining obstacles to the law's effective implementation, arguing that in order to realize the law's full potential to support escape from trafficking, the civil rights of prostituted persons under current law should be strengthened to enable them to claim damages directly from the purchasers for the harm to which they have contributed, and for the violation of the prostituted persons' equality and dignity - a position now recognized by the government to some extent by clarifying amendments made in 2011.
The dissertation analyzes obstacles and potential in democracies, specifically Canada, Sweden, and United States, to effectively address empirically documented harms of pornography. Legislative and judicial challenges under different democratic and legal frameworks are compared.
Adopting a problem-driven theoretical approach, the reality of pornography’s harms is analyzed. Evidence shows its production exploits existing inequalities among persons typically drawn from other forms of prostitution who suffer multiple disadvantages, such as extreme poverty, childhood sexual abuse, and race and gender discrimination, making survival alternatives remote. Consumption is also divided by sex. A majority of young adult men consumes pornography frequently; women rarely do, usually not unless initiated by others. After consumption, studies show many normal men become substantially more sexually aggressive and increasingly trivialize and support violence against women. Vulnerable populations—including battered, raped, or prostituted women—are most harmed as a result.
The impact of attempts to address pornography’s harms on democratic rights and freedoms, specifically gender equality and speech, is explored through the case studies. Democracies are found to provide more favorable conditions for legal challenges to pornography’s harms when recognizing substantive (not formal) equality in law, and when promoting representation of perspectives and interests of groups particularly injured by pornography. State-implemented approaches such as criminal obscenity laws are found less effective. More victim-centered and survivor-initiated civil rights approaches would be more responsive and remedial—a finding with implications for other politico-legal problems, such as global warming, that disproportionately affect disadvantaged populations traditionally largely excluded from decision-making.