The Feminist Judgements Podcast - Tackling the myth of neutrality

The first episode of the Scottish Feminist Judgments Podcast is launching on Thursday 20 August and will be available on all the usual podcast streaming platforms.

The podcast is based on the legal research project of the same name, and is directed at lay-people, as an accessible way to engage with law, and think about its opportunities and limitations from a feminist perspective.

While the content of the podcast focuses on the Scottish legal system, the ideas and challenges discussed are widely applicable to all legal systems, as well as all endeavours that pertain to social justice and equity.

At its core, the podcast is an exploration of how supposedly neutral and unbiased systems - like the Scottish legal system - can in fact be profoundly rooted and perpetuating oppressive norms (in this case, patriarchal norms).

By exploring this system through a feminist lens, we unveil different ways in which we can shake this patriarchal standpoint, and move towards a system that is more equitable and just.

The podcast delves into 3 of the feminist judgements from the book, to explore different facets of this issue:

● Episode 1 covers the impact of history and cultural legacies on our present day legal system, through a case involving femicide.

● Episode 2 discusses the impact of silencing women's stories and lived experiences in court. This is discussed through a case involving domestic abuse.

● Episode 3 touches on how, even when law has the potential to be egalitarian, the way it is applied can hinder that potential. Here, we look at a financial provision on divorce case, and focus on the valuation of unpaid work.

Stay up to date

Episode 1 will be launching on Thursday 20 August. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to keep up to date with the project.

If you have any questions about episode 1, come ask them during our social media take-over of the YWCA’s Instagram on 27 August and your question might be answered by the editors in our bonus episode!

How the Feminist Judgements Projects work  

Feminist Judgements Projects originated in Canada, and iterations of it have been done around the world. The idea is to get legal practitioners and academics to re-write old legal judgements from a feminist perspective.

The only rule is: in your re-writing, you can only use tools that would have been at your disposal at the time of the original judgement. This means you could only use laws, evidence, and social understanding of the world that could have been accessed by the original judge and jury.

After that, all they had to do was to re-visit these cases through a feminist lens, and see where this would take them.

Sometimes, it led them to re-write the judgement’s reasoning and arguments. Sometimes, this also led them to a completely different verdict. Every time though, it shone a light on how legal systems, far from being neutral, are deeply rooted in patriarchal norms.