Lolita Buckner Innis looks at Roxanne Shante’s 1989 song, “Independent Woman,” to reveal its trenchant critique of then prevailing limitations on the social roles of black women. In “Independent Woman,” Shanté speaks to black women who believe that success comes only from a man. During this era black women, in particular, faced difficult choices since neither law nor society had historically provided them with the opportunity to embrace personal domesticity or their roles as helpmates to black men. Shanté deploys one of second wave white feminism’s unofficial rallying cries, “You’ve come a long way baby,” with an ironic twist, noting that black women are “way behind.” Black women’s desire for helpmate status to black men was sometimes corrupted into a desire for self-abnegation of the lowest form–acting as the “loyal ho,” the black woman who sells herself to please a man. As the lyrics of “Independent Woman” describe, these “sales” occurred both outside of the law, when “bad” women worked as actual prostitutes, and within the law, where “good” women exchanged personal self-regard or ambition in the quest for a male-dominated domesticity.

In the rewritten judgments that follow in this volume, authors envision alternatives to existing property cases. In their work, the authors query interpretations in both iconic, well-known property cases and some lesser known cases – for all the cases, in large and small ways, have shaped legal doctrine, processes, and practices. The authors premise their work on the notion that in many instances, judges, despite widely asserted notions of judicial constraint, have choices to make when deciding cases. The adoption of a feminist legal theory (and they are plural), that is, an explicitly feminist consciousness, is one of those choices, and it is a vitally important and necessary choice. Though feminist legal theories frequently promote change to existing legal norms, they do so not only for the sake of change but also to mediate legal, political, social, and economic barriers that limit women’s advancement.1 Moreover, feminist legal theories often confront the political and moral issues that all too often remain unaddressed, all while, within this silence, these issues work to narrow women’s possibilities. Participant authors in this project engage in exercises that are at once pointed and practical critiques of the law as it is, and also theoretical expositions of what the law could be.