Analysing Judgments from a Feminist Perspective

This article, by Rosemary Hunter, is based on a presentation given at the national training day on Law, Gender and Sexuality: Sources and Methods in Socio-Legal Research in May 2014, jointly sponsored by the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, the Socio-Legal Studies Association and the British Library. She begins by describing the uses of judgments as sources within feminist research on judging, and then outlines three different methods of analysis employed within this research: quantitative analysis, qualitative analysis, and the newest method, that of rewriting judgments. Rosemary Hunter is Professor of Law and Socio-Legal Studies at Queen Mary, University of London, where she teaches family law, feminist jurisprudence and research methods. Her research focuses on family law processes, access to justice, and feminist judging. She was one of the organisers of the UK Feminist Judgments Project, and is the current chair of the Socio-Legal Studies Association.