ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses upon the legal framework proposed by feminist legal theorist Drucilla Cornell, whose practical proposals for changes in law are derived from her theoretical analysis of personhood. Cornell’s work has a wide application but I will focus upon her contribution to the law of tort. Whilst Cornell is writing in the US, her legal claim for particular rights based upon personhood is intended to have universal application. In particular, she provides answers to the equality/difference debate and to feminist concerns that in making claims for (or analysing the position of) women as a group they may thereby reinforce stereotypes of women. These were the worries that prompted ideas around strategic essentialism, that were introduced in Chapter 1.
