The focus of Professor Pruitt’s scholarship is the intersection of law with rural livelihoods. Her work considers a range of ways in which rural places and populations are distinct from what has become the implicit urban norm in lawmaking and legal scholarship. Pruitt reveals how the spatial, economic, and social features of rural locales profoundly shape the lives of residents there, including the junctures at which they encounter the law. Some of Pruitt’s most recent work considers how rural spatiality inflects dimensions of gender, race, and ethnicity. In it, Pruitt challenges the association of the rural with the local by revealing the ways in which rural lives and rural places are enmeshed with national and global forces, including legal ones. Other recent papers explore social problems in rural contexts in an effort to determine what characteristics of rural societies influence not only the occurrence of crimes such as domestic violence and drug offenses, but also their handling by the criminal justice system. In these, Pruitt explores the possibilities presented by rural-specific policies and services.
Crime
The Forgotten Fifth: Rural Youth and Substance Abuse, Stanford Law & Policy Review (2009)
This Article seeks to raise the visibility of the roughly twenty percent of the U.S....
Place Matters: Domestic Violence and Rural Difference, Forthcoming in the Wisconsin Journal of Law, Gender & Society (2008)
Defamation
Her Own Good Name: Two Centuries of Talk about Chastity, Maryland Law Review (2004)
Since the earliest days of U.S. legal history, women have sought legal redress for statements...
"On the Chastity of Women all Property in the World Depends": Injury from Sexual Slander in the Nineteenth Century, Indiana Law Journal (2003)
In this Article, Professor Pruitt discusses conceptions of the injury associated with defamation law, focusing...
Law Review Story, Arkansas Law Review (1997)
The Law of Defamation: An Arkansas Primer, Arkansas Law Review (1989)
Development
Migration, Development and the Promise of CEDAW for Rural Women, 30 Michigan Journal of International Law (2009)
This Article explores the potential of international development efforts and human rights law to enhance...
Families
Gender, Geography & Rural Justice, Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice (2009)
Like other legal scholars, feminists often think about social change over time, using history as...
Migration, Development and the Promise of CEDAW for Rural Women, 30 Michigan Journal of International Law (2009)
This Article explores the potential of international development efforts and human rights law to enhance...
Spatial Inequality as Constitutional Infirmity: Equal Protection, Child Poverty and Place (2009)
This is the first in a series of articles that maps legal conceptions of (in)equality...
Place Matters: Domestic Violence and Rural Difference, Forthcoming in the Wisconsin Journal of Law, Gender & Society (2008)
Rural Families and Work-Family Issues, Forthcoming in Sloan Work and Family Encyclopedia (2008)
International and Transnational
Migration, Development and the Promise of CEDAW for Rural Women, 30 Michigan Journal of International Law (2009)
This Article explores the potential of international development efforts and human rights law to enhance...
No Black Names on the Letterhead? Efficient Discrimination and the South African Legal Profession, 23 Michigan Journal of International Law (2002)
Juvenile Justice
The Forgotten Fifth: Rural Youth and Substance Abuse, Stanford Law & Policy Review (2009)
This Article seeks to raise the visibility of the roughly twenty percent of the U.S....
Legal Education and the Legal Profession
No Black Names on the Letterhead? Efficient Discrimination and the South African Legal Profession, 23 Michigan Journal of International Law (2002)
Law Review Story, Arkansas Law Review (1997)
Migration
Latina/os, Locality, and Law in the Rural South, Harvard Latino Law Review (2009)
In this era of municipal anti-immigrant ordinances and federal-local cooperation to enforce immigration laws, legal...
Migration, Development and the Promise of CEDAW for Rural Women, 30 Michigan Journal of International Law (2009)
This Article explores the potential of international development efforts and human rights law to enhance...
Race/Ethnicity
Latina/os, Locality, and Law in the Rural South, Harvard Latino Law Review (2009)
In this era of municipal anti-immigrant ordinances and federal-local cooperation to enforce immigration laws, legal...
No Black Names on the Letterhead? Efficient Discrimination and the South African Legal Profession, 23 Michigan Journal of International Law (2002)
Rural
Gender, Geography & Rural Justice, Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice (2009)
Like other legal scholars, feminists often think about social change over time, using history as...
Latina/os, Locality, and Law in the Rural South, Harvard Latino Law Review (2009)
In this era of municipal anti-immigrant ordinances and federal-local cooperation to enforce immigration laws, legal...
Migration, Development and the Promise of CEDAW for Rural Women, 30 Michigan Journal of International Law (2009)
This Article explores the potential of international development efforts and human rights law to enhance...
Spatial Inequality as Constitutional Infirmity: Equal Protection, Child Poverty and Place (2009)
This is the first in a series of articles that maps legal conceptions of (in)equality...
The Forgotten Fifth: Rural Youth and Substance Abuse, Stanford Law & Policy Review (2009)
This Article seeks to raise the visibility of the roughly twenty percent of the U.S....
Welfare
Spatial Inequality as Constitutional Infirmity: Equal Protection, Child Poverty and Place (2009)
This is the first in a series of articles that maps legal conceptions of (in)equality...
Missing the Mark: Welfare Reform and Rural Poverty, The Journal of Gender, Race & Justice (2007)
Women
Gender, Geography & Rural Justice, Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice (2009)
Like other legal scholars, feminists often think about social change over time, using history as...
Migration, Development and the Promise of CEDAW for Rural Women, 30 Michigan Journal of International Law (2009)
This Article explores the potential of international development efforts and human rights law to enhance...
Place Matters: Domestic Violence and Rural Difference, Forthcoming in the Wisconsin Journal of Law, Gender & Society (2008)
Rural Families and Work-Family Issues, Forthcoming in Sloan Work and Family Encyclopedia (2008)
Toward a Feminist Theory of the Rural, Utah Law Review (2007)
Feminists have often criticized law’s ignorance of women’s practical, lived experiences, even as they have...