Pascale Fournier

S.J.D. 2007

Dissertation

The Adjudication of Otherness in Constitutional Liberal States: a Critique of the (Multi)Cultural Encounter in the Enforcement of Mahr

In many constitutional liberal states, members of Muslim communities are demanding recognition of their religious particularity, either through the adjudicative process or by asking for a degree of autonomous jurisdiction in the regulation of marriage and divorce. Such demands are translated, understood, and produced, I argue, through the various lens of "liberalism", a discursive framework for the interaction between the Western state and minorities. If liberalism is committed to individual choice, it is also conventionally taken to be committed to freedom and equality. When faced with claims of subordinated groups, liberalism typically is asked to make secondary moves: de facto freedom for subordinated groups may require their specific regulation; and equality of their members may require active distributions in their favor. In exploring the distributional effects of liberalism, my dissertation will simultaneously explore the social consequences of liberalism's inherent contradictions in a conceptual framework attentive to the ultimate welfare of one subordinated group among many: married Muslim women, engaged in religiously structured marriages, and living in Canada, the US, or Germany. By focusing specifically on the enforcement of Mahr, my hope is to build a distributive analysis of the gendered lives of married Muslim women living in constitutional liberal states more generally.

Fields of Research and Supervisors

Social Movements and the Law, with Professor Janet Halley, Harvard Law School, Overall Faculty Supervisor
Jurisprudence, Social Theory, and the Economic Analysis of Law, with Professor Duncan Kennedy, Harvard Law School
American and Comparative Constitutional Theory, with Professor Frank Michelman, Harvard Law School
Islamic Law and Jurisprudence, with Professor Frank Vogel, Harvard Law School

Additional Research Interests

Identity Formation and the Law
Women's Rights and Islam
Constitutional Law and Family Law in the context of Globalization

Education

Harvard Law School, S.J.D. Candidate 2002-Present
Harvard Law School, LL.M. Program 2001-2002
University of Toronto, LL.M. Degree 2000
Laval University, LL.B. Degree 1997

Appointments and Fellowships

McGill University, Faculty of Law, Boulton Fellow, 2004-2005
University for Peace, San Jose (Costa Rica), Visiting Professor, Human Rights, Gender and Religion (DIL 6260), May 2005
Canadian Council for Muslim Women, Legal Consultant, 2004
Institute for Women's Studies and Research (Tehran, Iran), Visiting Professor, Women's Rights, December 2003
Harvard Law School, Graduate Program Fellow, Teaching Assistant to the LL.M. Writing Workshop, 2003-2004
Canada World Youth, Board of Directors, 2003-
Fondation Paul Gérin-Lajoie, Board of Directors, 2002-

Representative Publications

Unveiling Distribution: Muslim Women with Headscarves in France and Germany (with Gökçe Yurdakul), in Migration, Citizenship, Ethnos: Incorporation Regimes in Germany, Western Europe and North America, Y. Michal Bodemann and Gökçe Yurdakul (eds.), (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), forthcoming 2006
La réception de l'espace juridique islamique au Canada: La femme musulmane est-elle un être visible caché?, forthcoming in Revue Ethique publique, la religion dans l’espace public, vol. 8 no 1 (2006)
The Ghettoization of Difference in Canada: «Rape by Culture» or the Danger of a Cultural Defence in Criminal Law Trials, 29 Manitoba Law Journal (2002) 81-113
The Erasure of Islamic Difference in Canadian and American Family Law Adjudication, 10 Journal of Law and Policy (2001) 51-95