Amy Ronner

St. Thomas University, Florida, School of law, Faculty Member

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Amy D. Ronner, BA, MA, PhD, JD, is a professor of law (emeritus) who lives in Miami, Florida, and Aspen Colorado. She is the author of six books covering topics like law, therapeutic jurisprudence, LGBT rights, civil rights, and world literature.

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Charlotte J Patterson

University of Virginia

Kim Hai Pearson

Gonzaga University School of Law

Jay Michaelson

Emory University

Neal Devins

Mike R Allen

University of Wisconsin Milwaukee

SUNY: University at Buffalo

Teemu Ruskola

Emory University

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Papers by Amy Ronner

Bottoms v. Bottoms: The Lesbian Mother and the Judicial Perpetuation of Damaging Stereotypes

Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, 1995

Burger strikes an unfortunately common cord in Hardwick when he argues that the Georgia legislatu... more

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Let's Get the 'Trans' and 'Sex' Out of it and Free Us All

Social Science Research Network, Jul 22, 2013

This article, published in 16 The Journal of Gender Race & Justice, 101 (2013) and divided in... more This article, published in 16 The Journal of Gender Race & Justice, 101 (2013) and divided into four steps, broadly advocates jettisoning our fixation with defining sex and gender and assigning them to each individual. In Part I, I propose that we promote a new era in which individuals can either decline to name their sex and gender altogether or name them in any way they themselves deem appropriate.Part II embarks with a fresh look at the celebrated decision, Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228 (1989), in which the Supreme Court concluded that gender stereotyping is sex discrimination under Title VII. Here I suggest that the Price Waterhouse decision, by implicitly recognizing that all individuals have their own personality, mannerisms, preferences, and tastes, which are not yoked to a particular biological container, begins to liberate us.Part III turns to the plight of transsexuals, who seek to live as themselves. Ironically, the very despots that the Price Waterhouse Court started to topple -- stereotypes and "the intolerable and impermissible catch 22" -- tend to rule their lives. Implicit in the Price Waterhouse decision is the maxim that we, as human beings, flourish when we are neither forced to conform to stereotypes nor commanded to pay homage to contradictory mandates. The transsexual road is typically cobbled with these very things -- stereotypes and double binds. The article explores how they manifest themselves not just in the protocol for sex reassignment surgery, but also in family law cases and those dealing with discrimination in the work place.Part IV concludes with a disclosure of what can be and often is the ultimate tragedy in the life of a transsexual. Here, in lieu of a traditional conclusion, I write my own original short play. In this play, I give you a glimpse of my imagined future, the Twenty Third Century, in which all beings enjoy a self-identification or non-identification process, one which may or may not have anything to do with chromosomes, body parts, sexual functionality, attire, or modes of deportment.

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American Psychological Association eBooks, Aug 8, 2006

Dostoevskying the Law School Curriculum

Dostoevsky wrote Demons, A Writer's Diary, The Brothers Karamazov, and Crime and Punishment i... more Dostoevsky wrote Demons, A Writer's Diary, The Brothers Karamazov, and Crime and Punishment in the wake of Russia's legal reforms, which had a profound effect on his thinking. For example, Dostoevsky based Demons on the public trial of Bakunin's notorious protégé, Nechaev, who was convicted of ordering the murder of the student Ivanov. In A Writer's Diary, a mélange of fiction, journalism, and autobiography, Dostoevsky engrossed himself in jury trials and sporadically carped at legal outcomes, new defense strategies, and the then-fashionable treatment of hostile socioeconomic forces as the guilty culprits. Dostoevsky also denounced courtroom histrionics and the exploitation of rhetoric whereby deft lawyers could, by waxing poetic, effectively recast victims into perpetrators (or vice versa). Similarly, in The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky evokes humbling incertitude about crime, guilt, and a justice system comprised of players driven primarily by self-interest. Such critiques remain relevant today.

Homophobia: In the Closet and in the Coffin

Law and Inequality, 2003

Beloit College. I dedicate this article to the University of Miami Law School Dean, Dennis 0. Lyn... more Beloit College. I dedicate this article to the University of Miami Law School Dean, Dennis 0. Lynch, who has helped me and so many others self-actualize. I would like to extend special appreciation to Terry J. Barnett of the law firm Rumbaugh, Rideout & Barnett in Tacoma, Washington. Mr. Barnett did a superb job representing Frank Vasquez in the Vasquez v. Hawthorne case, which is discussed in this article, and he also generously gave me his time and the benefit of his perspective. I am also grateful to my research assistants, Dennis O'Connor and

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Homophobia and the law

American Psychological Association eBooks, 2005

ESSAY: Voiceless Billy Budd: Melville's Tribute to the Sixth Amendment

California western law review, 2004

(suggesting that Vere is modeled after Melville's father-in-law, whose "duties required him to re... more

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Husband and Wife are One - Him: Bennis v. Michigan as the Resurrection of Coverture

Michigan journal of gender & law, 1996

BENNIS v. MICHIGAN AS THE RESURRECTION OF COVERTURE t-,fmy 'D. Reonner* INTRODUCTION. 129 I. THE ... more BENNIS v. MICHIGAN AS THE RESURRECTION OF COVERTURE t-,fmy 'D. Reonner* INTRODUCTION. 129 I. THE MYTHS OF COVERTURE AND GUILTY PROPERTY • 132 A. The Coverture Myth. 132 B. The Guilty Property Myth. 135 II. THE DISABLING OF THE GUILTY PROPERTY MYTH IN AUSTIN V. UNITED STATES. 141 A. The Austin Decision. 141 B. The Disabling of the Guilty Property Myth. 145 III. BFjNIS AS THE RESURRECTION AND FUSION OF BOTH THE GUILTY PROPERTY MYTH AND COVERTURE • 148 A. The Bennis Decision • 148 1. The Background. 148 2. The United States Supreme Court Decision-150 3. The Concurring Opinions. 152 4. The Dissenting Opinions • 154 B. The Resurrection and Fusion of Both the Guilty Property and Coverture Myths. 157 CONCLUSION-166

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Brockmeyer v. Dun & Bradstreet : The Narrow Public Policy Exception to the Terminable-At-Will Rule

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Good Fences Make Bad Neighbors: Is The North American Free Trade Agreement a Lie for Lawyers?

Connor practiced law in Canada for six years in the area of Wills and Estates. He is presently a ... more

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Prometheus Unbound: Accepting a Mythless Concept of Civil In Rem Forfeiture with Double Jeopardy Protection

Buffalo Law Review, 1996

Fall 1996] CIVIL IN REM FORFEITURE 657 the very offense at issue in the civil suit." As this arti... more Fall 1996] CIVIL IN REM FORFEITURE 657 the very offense at issue in the civil suit." As this article will show, the historical inapplicability of constitutional provisions to civil forfeiture, the process by which the government confiscates property through an in rem action, is especially troubling for many reasons. Because civil forfeiture features so prominently in federal law and is highly profitable, the government's use of the congenial forfeiture mechanism is widespread. 9 Also, as one commentator has explained, one of the things that makes "[c]ivil forfeiture. .. especially attractive to law enforcement agencies ... [is that] success demands very little in the way of proof or connection to actual wrongdoing." 10 While there are at least one hundred different statutes authorizing civil forfeiture in a variety of criminal contexts," the 8. See supra note 6 (decisions deeming double jeopardy principles to be inapplicable to civil sanctions did not hinge on whether they preceded or followed criminal punishment). See also infra note 119. 9. See generally T.

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The Learned-Helpless Lawyer: Clinical Legal Education and Therapeutic Jurisprudence as Antidotes to Bartleby Syndrome

Touro law review, 2013

In four parts, this interdisciplinary Article connects literature, therapeutic jurisprudence, and... more In four parts, this interdisciplinary Article connects literature, therapeutic jurisprudence, and clinical legal education. Part I examines Herman Melville's Bartleby, a story about a withdrawn Wall Street scrivener who responds to his employer's commands with four words-"I prefer not to. " Although Bartleby and his colleagues toil away in the mid-nineteenth century, we can neither dismiss Melville's law office as some curio of an antediluvian past predating the abolition of the separate chancery court nor relegate it to an oldfangled time when Wall Street cranked on without computers, e-mail, faxes, and the Internet. Melville's Bartleby, with his "pallid" scrivener, although a product of a gone century, falls squarely within the present campaign to reform legal practice and make it a better place for new lawyers. Part II suggests that Bartleby is surely no hero, but rather the proverbial victim of a dehumanizing work place. In order to really explain what has sucked the very life force out of the pale scrivener, this Article integrates into the fabric of its analysis some basic tenets of therapeutic jurisprudence, which is a relatively new field of legal study that has already had an impact on the courts and on nearly all .

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Dostoyevsky and the Therapeutic Jurisprudence Confession, 40 J. Marshall L. Rev. 41 (2006)

The John Marshall law review, 2006

In Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment,' Rodion Raskolnikov murders an old woman, a moneyle... more In Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment,' Rodion Raskolnikov murders an old woman, a moneylender: At that point, with all his might, he landed her another blow, and another, each time with the butt and each time on the crown of the head. The blood gushed out as from an upturned glass, and her body collapsed backwards. He stepped back, allowed her to fall and at once bent down over her face: she was dead. Her eyes were goggling out of her head as though they might burst from it, while her forehead and all the rest of her features were crumpled and distorted in a convulsive spasm. When the victim's stepsister unexpectedly intrudes, Raskolnikov again wielding his axe, makes it a double murder and absconds with the valuables. About twelve days later, Raskolnikov turns himself in and confesses to the police. Raskolnikov is tried, convicted, and sentenced to eight years of penal servitude in Siberia.

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The letters and the law: legal and literary culture in late imperial Russia

Canadian Slavonic papers, Oct 2, 2022

Work

American Psychological Association eBooks, Aug 8, 2006

Children

American Psychological Association eBooks, Aug 8, 2006

Death

American Psychological Association eBooks, Aug 8, 2006

Introduction: Making Sense Out of It

American Psychological Association eBooks, Aug 8, 2006

Conclusion: Making Hope Out of It

American Psychological Association eBooks, Aug 8, 2006

Destructive Rules of Certainty and Efficiency: A Study in the Context of Summary Judgment Procedure and the Uniform Customs and Practice for Documentary Credits

Loyola of Los Angeles law review, 1995

the nineteenth-century British poet, once described achievement as follows: [S]everal things dove... more the nineteenth-century British poet, once described achievement as follows: [S]everal things dovetailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously-I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. 1 Keats' epiphany about literary attainment and the equation of greatness with "negative capability" or the capacity "of being in uncertainties" appears almost antipodal to what has become a predominant jurisprudential pursuit-the quest for certainty. In many areas of the law there is a resolve to accomplish what is, of course, virtually impossible-namely the eradication of mystery and doubt and instead, create rules of ostensible certainty, ones which are supposed to foster the swift and efficient resolution of disputes. As such, the negative capability that Keats worshipped is precisely what the law abhors. Although the quest for certainty and efficiency manifests itself in many different areas of the law, it is strikingly apparent in the more frequent use of summary judgment procedure. Before the trilogy in

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Bottoms v. Bottoms: The Lesbian Mother and the Judicial Perpetuation of Damaging Stereotypes

Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, 1995

Burger strikes an unfortunately common cord in Hardwick when he argues that the Georgia legislatu... more

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Let's Get the 'Trans' and 'Sex' Out of it and Free Us All

Social Science Research Network, Jul 22, 2013