Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

DOI

10.15779/Z38ST7DZ9H

Abstract

Contemporary research and citation practices are often unjust. Data cartels like Westlaw and Lexis have parent companies that prioritize profits in ways that threaten immigrants. Even before the Dobbs decision, search engines could be deployed to weaponize data against pregnant people seeking reproductive care. Women and people of color have been legal scholars for more than a century but, as many scholars have observed, colleagues consistently under-cite, mis-cite or appropriate those scholars’ work with minimal recourse. Citation materials are often inaccessible to disabled people, poor people, or the public due to poor design, paywalls, or unpreserved content that falls prey to link rot. Yet many scholars and students still misunderstand citation practices as “just” research and citation—as in merely sourcing—and unknowingly perpetuate biased research practices. While resisting the “status quote” is imperative for many of these scholars, they simply haven’t been trained in just research and citation methods.

This Essay provides a framework for that training. Given how much legal research and citation is digital, that framework is grounded in feminist cyberlaw, a growing global movement that views through a feminist lens the influence of gender, race, sexuality disability, and class on cyberspace and the laws that govern it. Coupled with foundational methods, like Critical Legal Research and Critical Legal Information Literacy, this Essay examines why adopting and adapting critical methods with a feminist cyberlaw approach can help scholars align their work with the feminist cyberlaw values of safety, equity, and accessibility. Those values help scholars escape data cartels, engage marginalized scholars, embrace free and public resources, and ensure that those resources remain easily available—collectively promoting “just” research and citation, as in justice. Taken as a whole, this Essay provides practical tools for feminist cyberlawyers seeking to pursue just research and citation.

Publication Citation

Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice, Vol. 40, Issue 1, 2025, Pp. 119-151.

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