Example crime and the justice system dissertation topic 2:

A critical study of feminist judging.

This dissertation looks at the core works of ‘feminist’ judging and aims to determine whether such judging produces more favourable judgments. Feminist judging inherently requires that the judge view the case in an unbiased manner, but specifically viewing all the issues from a feminist perspective. Can such a biased viewpoint produce more fair and coherent results or is it prone to unfair and unjust results? While many suggest that feminist judging usually only changes the manner in which the same decision is found, some results are vastly different. Do such varying judgments aid or hinder the justice system and to what extent does it matter how a judge gets to the judgement?

Suggested initial topic reading:

• Hunter, C and Fitzpatrick, B, ‘Feminist Judging and Legal Theory’ [2012] 46(3) TLT 255
• Hunter, R, McGlynn, C and Rackley, E, Feminist Judgements: From Theory to Practice (OUP 2010)
• Davies, M, ‘The Law Becomes Us: Rediscovering Judgement’ [2012] 20(2) FLS 167