Our Students
Edith Celine Marie Kinney
Year: Advanced to Candidacy (ABD) - JSP
Email: edi.kinney@gmail.com
Education:Ph.D. Candidate, Jurisprudence & Social Policy, University of California, Berkeley
J.D., Class of 2006, Berkeley Law
B.A., Baylor University, 1999, Double Majors in Philosophy and Sociology, Minors in English and Religion, Emphasis in Gender Studies
Law and Social Movements
Crime, Punishment, and Governance
International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law
Feminist Jurisprudence
Empirical Legal Studies
Gender, Sexuality and the Law
Immigration Law & Policy
Globalization, Development, Migration and the Politics of Rights
Torts
Family Law
Community Property
Welfare Law
Juvenile Justice
International Law and International Relations
Development Studies
Legal Consciousness & Legal Mobilization
Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor (2007-2008)
Prosser Prize, Social Justice Writing (2005)
Fulbright Fellowship, Thailand (2004-2005)
Equal Justice Works Public Interest Fellowship (2002)
Phi Beta Kappa
National Merit Scholar
Law and Society Association Conference Presentations (2004, 2009)
Stanford E-Commerce Best Practices Conference, Stanford Law School (2006)
International Conference on Transborder Issues in the Greater Mekong Sub-Region, Mekong Sub-Regional Social Research Center, Ubon Ratchathani University, Thailand (2005)
Commentary Editor, Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice (2005-2006)
Research Assistant, Professor Kathryn Abrams, Prostitution Policy and Legal Debates: Sex Worker Unionization
Graduate Student Instruction, Legal Studies Program, UC Berkeley
Courts and Social Policy
Juvenile Justice
Family Law
Feminist Jurisprudence
Comparative Constitutional History – Politics and Economics of the European Union
Punishment, Culture, and Society
Undergraduate Peer Instructor, Baylor University
Introduction to Sociology
Women in American Society
Social Problems
Bar Admissions
State Bar of California
U.S. District Court, Northern District of California
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
“Stuck in Traffic: Feminist Governance and Criminal Injustice in Anti-Trafficking Social Movements”
As a consequence of global feminist advocacy since the 1980s against the trafficking and exploitation of women and children, more than one hundred countries have now ratified international agreements and passed domestic legislation to fight trafficking and transnational organized crime and to protect the rights of victims. What is less known is how these anti-trafficking measures stack up in the face of criminal-justice minded local politics in the developing world. This dissertation argues, at its core, that while policy makers and social movement organizations use the language of women’s rights to frame interventions, advance political goals, and attract media attention and financial resources, anti-trafficking initiatives often operate to the detriment of those women they seek to serve.
Specifically, the dissertation analyzes the global “war on trafficking” on two levels. First, I explain the role of women’s rights advocates in drafting anti-trafficking laws, and the contentious debates between feminist factions regarding the nature of commercial sex and its relation to trafficking. Second, I show how these competing frames inform the implementation of anti-trafficking interventions on the ground. Based on a year of field research in Thailand and fifty in-depth interviews with NGO activists, UN officials, prosecutors, and police there, I demonstrate that the institutional culture of criminal justice agencies and officials’ competing mandates often thwart the “victim sensitive,” rights-based reforms they seek to promote.
This dissertation unravels the complex and understudied relationship between state agents, NGOs, and migrants in the developing world, revealing how efforts to advance women’s rights through criminal justice interventions often create collateral consequences for the very groups they intend to assist and empower.
