Gendering Public and Private International Law: Transversal Legal Histories of the State, Market and Women’s Private Property Rights

• This essay takes on Karen Knop’s suggestion to engage private international law (PIL) as ‘a lost side of international law’ (IL) to promote new transversal and disciplinary insights on gender and international legal history. It joins a growing scholarship on the interface of public and private law as mutually constituting dynamics, reconsidering the relationship between the state and the market, imperium and dominium. Its’ focus is on the changing fortunes (literally) of women’s private property rights in the long nineteenth century – a period characterized by the divestment and reinstatement of such rights in national law for both married and unmarried women. Often considered a domestic law matter - and a matter of the home (oikos), the private domain, of dominum - both within legislative frameworks and the academic literature, the differences and frictions in national law regarding the regulation of private property for women were brought to the fore through cross-border transactions, relationships and disputes related to marriage, succession etc. Drawing on Knop’s work, we take the development of women’s property law rights through PIL during the 19th Century in - focusing on Nordic legal history. We ask: what are the mutually constituting dynamics between PIL and IL in this development? And how should we understand the gendered aspect of the private (oikos)/public (polis) divide in relations between dominium and imperium in these transversal legal histories of women’s property rights? Tracing the PIL aspects of gender and property rights during this era not only expands the historical feminist legal cartography and its primary vocabulary of public law, but seeks to uncover new transnational legal elements to the history of women’s property rights.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Juridik (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Law (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap -- Genusstudier (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences -- Gender Studies (hsv//eng)

Keyword

private international law

international law

Karen Knop

feminist international law

women's property law

international legal history

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)