The purpose of this paper is to explore where the potentiality of feminist legal theory exists by regarding the ethics of care as a relational approach to social and human affairs. The first section rereads C. Gilligan’s masterpiece, In a Different Voice and shows how Gilligan criticizes radically the male-oriented perspectives of social reality. The second section focuses on J. Nedelsky’s Law’s Relations where Nedelsky argues how law and rights structure social conceptions as well as social institutions and relations. Her relational approach to law and rights is based on her critique of “private property model” of rights. “Private property model,” that is, the typical model of liberal understanding of rights cannot properly respond to violence against women. How should individual cases of violence be considered as a moment to transform our society by using a relational approach to law? The paper concludes to argue that this question shows us the theoretical potentiality of a relational approach.
