WOMEN'S RIGHTS IN INTERNATIONAL LAW (LAW301Y1Y)
Rebecca Cook

Both Terms: 4 credits; 2 hours First Term Schedule:  (M: 4:10 - 6:00) Note: First Term 3 credits: Second term 1 credit: one hour meeting every other week Schedule TBA Note: Students may find it helpful to have taken or be taking Public International Law and International Human Rights Law (or equivalent). Note: This course serves as a pre-requisite to some of the international human rights internships.

Max. Enrol: 10 5  JD 5  LLM/SJD/MSL/NDEGS/SJD U SUYRP Perspective Course

This is the full year version of Women’s Rights in International Law (LAW301H1F) which provides students the opportunity to further refine their work from the first term course.

This course addresses the challenges of achieving the international legal protection of the human rights of women. It reviews how international and regional human rights conventions have been applied to prevent, punish and remedy the violations of women's rights in international, regional and domestic forums. It examines how the norm of the prohibition of all forms of discrimination against women has been applied, and how it might be more effectively applied, particularly to subgroups of women such as those marginalized by race and ethnicity. It explores how feminist theories, empirical data and narratives might be used to expose women's experiences of injustice. The course aims to go beyond a formalistic understanding of international legal obligations in order to examine different approaches to fostering compliance with the human rights of women in different cultures and religious traditions.
During the second semester of this course students will meet every other week. The course will be structured around key research themes of interest to both the students and the instructor agreed at the end of the first semester. The aim is to enable students to develop their first semester work into papers of publishable quality for submission to a relevant law journal.

Evaluation: first semester: All students must complete four short assignments (3 pages) related to the readings (15%). The balance of the evaluation (85%) will be based on:
• a research paper or legal memorandum (approximately 20 pages), or
• a 48 hour take-home examination (100%) to be signed out from and returned to the Records Office. The examination may be taken during any 48 hour period between the first day of the examination period and due no later than the set deadline for written work in the applicable term (see Take-home Policy in the Syllabus for details).
A limited number of students may fulfill the Extended Paper requirement in this course.

Evaluation second semester: will be by students’ presentation of their papers in class (10%) and their developed research papers (90%).