Why Feminist Legal Scholars Should Write Judgments: Reflections on the Feminist Judgments Project in England and Wales

The Feminist Judgments Project was a collaboration in which a group of feminist legal scholars wrote alternative feminist judgments in significant legal cases in England and Wales. Rather than simply producing academic critiques of existing judgments, the participants, following in the footsteps of the Women's Court of Canada, engaged in a practical, "real world" exercise of judgment writing. By putting feminist theory into judgment form, the Feminist Judgments Project sought to harness the power and distinctiveness of judgment writing in order to demonstrate in a sustained and disciplined way how the cases could have been decided and how the judgments could be written differently. To date, academic commentary has primarily focused on the feminist substance of the alternative judgments or, more broadly, on what makes judgments feminist, rather than on the significance of feminist scholars writing judgments. Drawing on examples from the Feminist Judgments Project, this article argues that, in addition to seeing how feminist theoretical insights can (and should) play out "in practice," the Feminist Judgments Project and Women's Court also raise questions about the nature and possibilities of judgment writing for feminist legal scholarship. In considering the value of judgment writing as a form of feminist critical scholarship, the article takes up the presentation of the Feminist Judgments Project as a form of "academic activism" to argue that there are strong academic, educational, and political reasons why feminist legal scholars should write judgments.