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.
Gender
The Good The Bad and The Ugly, University of Missouri Kansas City Law Review (2012)
This is a contribution to a collection of reflections by former chairs of the AALS...
CEDAW and Rural Development: Empowering Women with Law from the Top Down, Activism from the Bottom Up, Baltimore Law Review (2011)
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is one...
Deconstructing CEDAW’s Article 14: Naming and Explaining Rural Difference, William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law (2011)
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is the...
Judging Parents, Judging Place: Poverty, Rurality, and Termination of Parental Rights (with Janet L. Wallace), Missouri Law Review (2011)
Parents are judged constantly, by fellow parents and by wider society. But the consequences of...
The Geography of the Class Culture Wars, Seattle University Law Review (2011)
This Essay is a contribution to a colloquy about Joan C. Williams’s book, Reshaping the...
Migration
Deconstructing CEDAW’s Article 14: Naming and Explaining Rural Difference, William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law (2011)
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is the...
Human Rights and Development for India's Rural Remnant: A Capabilities-Based Assessment, U.C. Davis L. Rev. (2011)
The cachet that India currently enjoys on the world stage is linked largely to the...
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, Michigan Journal of International Law (2009)
This Article explores the potential of international development efforts and human rights law to enhance...
Rural
CEDAW and Rural Development: Empowering Women with Law from the Top Down, Activism from the Bottom Up, Baltimore Law Review (2011)
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is one...
Deconstructing CEDAW’s Article 14: Naming and Explaining Rural Difference, William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law (2011)
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is the...
Human Rights and Development for India's Rural Remnant: A Capabilities-Based Assessment, U.C. Davis L. Rev. (2011)
The cachet that India currently enjoys on the world stage is linked largely to the...
Judging Parents, Judging Place: Poverty, Rurality, and Termination of Parental Rights (with Janet L. Wallace), Missouri Law Review (2011)
Parents are judged constantly, by fellow parents and by wider society. But the consequences of...
The Geography of the Class Culture Wars, Seattle University Law Review (2011)
This Essay is a contribution to a colloquy about Joan C. Williams’s book, Reshaping the...
Socioeconomic Class and Welfare
CEDAW and Rural Development: Empowering Women with Law from the Top Down, Activism from the Bottom Up, Baltimore Law Review (2011)
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is one...
Deconstructing CEDAW’s Article 14: Naming and Explaining Rural Difference, William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law (2011)
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is the...
Human Rights and Development for India's Rural Remnant: A Capabilities-Based Assessment, U.C. Davis L. Rev. (2011)
The cachet that India currently enjoys on the world stage is linked largely to the...
Judging Parents, Judging Place: Poverty, Rurality, and Termination of Parental Rights (with Janet L. Wallace), Missouri Law Review (2011)
Parents are judged constantly, by fellow parents and by wider society. But the consequences of...
The Geography of the Class Culture Wars, Seattle University Law Review (2011)
This Essay is a contribution to a colloquy about Joan C. Williams’s book, Reshaping the...
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)
This essay is the story of the author’s election as editor-in-chief of the Arkansas Law...
The Law of Defamation: An Arkansas Primer, Arkansas Law Review (1989)
This article is a mini-treatise on the law of defamation in Arkansas.
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, Wisconsin Journal of Law, Gender & Society (2008)
This Article considers the phenomenon of domestic violence in relation to the rural-urban axis. Written...
Families
Judging Parents, Judging Place: Poverty, Rurality, and Termination of Parental Rights (with Janet L. Wallace), Missouri Law Review (2011)
Parents are judged constantly, by fellow parents and by wider society. But the consequences of...
The Geography of the Class Culture Wars, Seattle University Law Review (2011)
This Essay is a contribution to a colloquy about Joan C. Williams’s book, Reshaping the...
Spatial Inequality as Constitutional Infirmity: Equal Protection, Child Poverty and Place, Montana Law Review (2010)
This is the first in a series of articles that maps legal conceptions of (in)equality...
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, Michigan Journal of International Law (2009)
This Article explores the potential of international development efforts and human rights law to enhance...
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....
International and Transnational
CEDAW and Rural Development: Empowering Women with Law from the Top Down, Activism from the Bottom Up, Baltimore Law Review (2011)
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is one...
Deconstructing CEDAW’s Article 14: Naming and Explaining Rural Difference, William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law (2011)
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is the...
Human Rights and Development for India's Rural Remnant: A Capabilities-Based Assessment, U.C. Davis L. Rev. (2011)
The cachet that India currently enjoys on the world stage is linked largely to the...
Migration, Development and the Promise of CEDAW for Rural Women, 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, Michigan Journal of International Law (2002)
Although there have long been black lawyers in South Africa, during apartheid only a handful...
Development
CEDAW and Rural Development: Empowering Women with Law from the Top Down, Activism from the Bottom Up, Baltimore Law Review (2011)
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is one...
Deconstructing CEDAW’s Article 14: Naming and Explaining Rural Difference, William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law (2011)
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is the...
Human Rights and Development for India's Rural Remnant: A Capabilities-Based Assessment, U.C. Davis L. Rev. (2011)
The cachet that India currently enjoys on the world stage is linked largely to the...
Migration, Development and the Promise of CEDAW for Rural Women, Michigan Journal of International Law (2009)
This Article explores the potential of international development efforts and human rights law to enhance...
Race/Ethnicity
The Geography of the Class Culture Wars, Seattle University Law Review (2011)
This Essay is a contribution to a colloquy about Joan C. Williams’s book, Reshaping the...
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...
A Kinder, Gentler Law School? Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Legal Education at King Hall, UC Davis Law Review (2005)
Diversity is touted as a preeminent concern and important goal of the legal profession generally...
No Black Names on the Letterhead? Efficient Discrimination and the South African Legal Profession, Michigan Journal of International Law (2002)
Although there have long been black lawyers in South Africa, during apartheid only a handful...
Legal Education and the Legal Profession
The Good The Bad and The Ugly, University of Missouri Kansas City Law Review (2012)
This is a contribution to a collection of reflections by former chairs of the AALS...
How You Gonna’ Keep Her Down on the Farm, University of Missouri, Kansas City Law Review (2010)
This is a contribution to a collection of autobiographical essays, “One-L Revisited,” in which authors...
A Kinder, Gentler Law School? Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Legal Education at King Hall, UC Davis Law Review (2005)
Diversity is touted as a preeminent concern and important goal of the legal profession generally...
No Black Names on the Letterhead? Efficient Discrimination and the South African Legal Profession, Michigan Journal of International Law (2002)
Although there have long been black lawyers in South Africa, during apartheid only a handful...
Law Review Story, Arkansas Law Review (1997)
This essay is the story of the author’s election as editor-in-chief of the Arkansas Law...