Law and Morality Lecture
February 16, 2011
Catherine MacKinnon- The Liberal State
1.Dillema of Feminist theory
•She thinks feminist theory has moved between a leftist critique
of the state
•It can’t decide between a liberal theory of the state and leftists
•The liberal holds that the state is a neutral arbitror of
conflicting interests- laws are not predisposed to any particular
outcome
•Liberalism treats the state and law as a tool of betterment but
in the process of doing this they fail to critique the very legal
concepts that have contributed to women’s oppression- concepts
such as a legal right
•The leftist critique of the state treats the state and laws as a
kind of tool of dominance and repression
•Feminist theorists on the leftist side tend to assume law is just a
kind of screen or set of pretentions of what is really a type of
power of asserting your interests on others
•Women have been deprived of resources and power and all of
this has happened prior to the operation of the law in intimate
context
•Prior to the law’s operation, women and men are not equal
•This means that when the law purports to be neutral and to give
them the same legal rights or treat them as equals by assuming
their in the same position, it actually works to perpetuate
inequalities because its own apparent neutrality masks these
preexisting inequalities
•Law uses concepts such as a personal right or concept of reason
or reasonable person
•And all these claim to not privilege any particular point of view
•Seem legitimate but McKinnon says it prevents us from seeing
or changing very real social inequalities
•Ex. Maternity leave- for both male and female; after parental
leave, there is a greater inequality because you have female
faculty that have been doing nothing and male that have been
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