Gender and the Law Blog

CFP Symposium, Women's Leadership in Law and Politics

Call for Proposals

Women’s Leadership in Law and Politics

Scholars Virtual Symposium

Sponsored by The Center for Constitutional Law & The Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron

Friday, February 21, 2025

The Center for Constitutional Law at Akron Law and The Bliss Institute of Applied Politics seek proposals for a Scholars Virtual Symposium to be held on Friday, February 21, 2025. Akron’s Center for Constitutional Law is one of four national centers established by Congress in 1986 for the bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution to support legal research and public education on issues of constitutional import. Past presenters at the Center have included Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Justice Arthur Goldberg, Professor Reva Siegel, Professor Lawrence Solum, Professor Maggie Blackhawk, Professor Katie Eyer, Professor Harold Koh, Professor Kate Masur, Professor Julie Suk, and Professor Paula Monopoli, among many others. The Bliss Institute of Applied Politics is a bipartisan research, teaching and experiential learning institute dedicated to increasing understanding of the political process with special emphasis on political parties, grassroots activity, and civility and ethics.

The 2025 Scholars Symposium highlights questions of women’s leadership in law and politics. Recent events have brought heightened visibility to women’s political and leadership. Vice-President Kamala Harris became the presidential candidate. Women Justices reached a critical mass on the U.S. Supreme Court, constituting now four of nine Justices. Women’s grassroots initiatives and activism brought reproductive rights to the national agenda through state voting referenda in the wake of Dobbs. This symposium brings together scholars from disciplines including law, politics, history, and gender studies to explore the contours of what women’s political and legal leadership looks like. It will discuss trends, barriers, limitations, and impacts of women’s leadership.

Suggested topics for this symposium may include, but are in no way limited to:

• Why women’s representation in political and lawmaking institutions matters
• Barriers to women’s political and legal leadership
• Women judges – trends, history, and impact
• Women as political candidates
• Bias in women’s leadership – gender, racial, ethnicity bias, and DEI
• Personal attacks on women in leadership from AI, social media, and harassment
• The Hillary Factor – the antagonism to women candidates and the assumption women can’t win
• The Kamala Factor – undervaluing women’s power
• Grassroots women’s groups, g. Moms for Liberty, Red Wine & USA, MeToo
• Proportional Representation Reform, g. Alaska, Congress’s Fair Representation Act, international
• Comparative international women’s leadership in law, courts, and politics
• Women’s leadership in legal practice – firms, partners, MDL, arbitration, experts, judges
• Women’s political equality as seen in constitutional jurisprudence, including Dobbs
• Pipelines to women’s legal and political leadership
• Women as constitution makers (19th Amendment, ERA, global constitutions)

The symposium aims to ignite dialogue and discussion among scholars ruminating on these important issues. The price of admission, so to speak, is a short discussion paper to be published in the written symposium in the Spring 2025 edition of the Center for Constitutional Law’s open-access journal, ConLawNOW (also indexed in Westlaw, Lexis, and Hein). Papers should be about 3,000 to 5,000 words (5-10 published pages). These may be derivative works of longer works or books published elsewhere.

Those interested in participating in the 2025 Constitutional Law Scholars Symposium should send an abstract, title, and CV to Professor Tracy Thomas, Director of the Center for Constitutional Law at Akron, at [email protected]. Abstracts are welcomed beginning now, and should be submitted by December 1, 2024. 

Re-examining the Three-Year Legal Education Through a Critical Theory Lens

Paula A. Monopoli, Remembering the Origins of Modern Legal Education, 85 University of Pittsburgh Law Review 305 (2023)

American legal education came under tremendous pressure in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. That crisis precipitated a decline in law school applications and a concomitant decrease in the size of American law school enrollments during the 2011-2012 academic year. Commentators offered a myriad of proposals for reforming legal education during that period. Yet many of those proposals failed to gain traction, and a decade later legal education looks much the same, albeit with smaller enrollments. One of those proposals was to shorten the three-year course of study. In this Article, I revisit the origins of that long-standing feature of American legal education introduced by Christopher Columbus Langdell, Dean of Harvard Law School, in the nineteenth century and later embraced by the legal education's regulatory bodies in the twentieth century. Viewed through a critical theory lens, its intractability can be explained, in part, by the persistence of exclusionary impulses and masculine norms in the legal profession from its origins to the current day. This Article proposes that American law faculty revive previous conversations about the value of this central design feature. And the subordinating effects of that feature should be a factor in weighing the costs and benefits of moving to a shorter course of study.

"Inclusive Socratic Teaching" Podcast

Blog co-author Jamie R. Abrams was featured on a podcast titled Tea for Teaching last week, hosted by SUNY Oswego. The podcast focused on the book Inclusive Socratic Teaching, which draws upon a half century of feminist theory critiquing the Socratic Method. This book summary is below. The podcast is featured here. 

For more than fifty years, scholars have documented and critiqued the marginalizing effects of the Socratic teaching techniques that dominate law school classrooms. In spite of this, law school budgets, staffing models, and course requirements still center Socratic classrooms as the curricular core of legal education. In this clear-eyed book, law professor Jamie R. Abrams catalogs both the harms of the Socratic method and the deteriorating well-being of modern law students and lawyers, concluding that there is nothing to lose and so much to gain by reimagining Socratic teaching. Recognizing that these traditional classrooms are still necessary sites to fortify and catalyze other innovations and values in legal education, Inclusive Socratic Teaching provides concrete tips and strategies to dismantle the autocratic power and inequality that so often characterize these classrooms. A galvanizing call to action, this hands-on guide equips educators and administrators with an inclusive teaching model that reframes the Socratic classroom around teaching techniques that are student centered, skills centered, client centered, and community centered.

 

 

History of Women in the Legal Profession in Ireland

Niamh Howlin has posted Women as Both Insiders and Outsiders in the History of the Legal Profession on SSRN. The abstract is excerpted below: 

The Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 removed the legal barrier to women entering the legal professions. In November 1921, Frances Kyle and Averil Deverell were the first women to be called to the Irish bar. The experiences of these early women barristers have in recent years been documented and commemorated in exhibitions and portraiture, as well as through various conferences, other events, books, periodicals and poetry, particularly in the context of the centenary of the 1919 Act. These add to the growing body of literature examining the experiences of early women lawyers and judges in England and other jurisdictions.

Much recent focus has been on historic ‘firsts’ or ‘trailblazers’, but it is important not to let this obscure the broader story of how women experienced working in the legal professions. Indeed, this point was made twenty years ago by Bacik, Costello and Drew who observe, ‘[t]his phenomenon of the highly visible trailblazer woman should be understood not necessarily as an example of ‘advances’ made by women, but as a reminder of continuing male domination.’ Glazer and Slater identify strategies employed by early women professionals: superperformance, separatism, subordination and innovation. They add that while early women professionals did not consciously choose such strategies, ‘it quickly became clear to them that entrance into the elite world of professionalism would require special strategies for women.’ ‘Superperforming’ women were pioneers, and often achieved historic ‘firsts.’ Bacik, Costello and Drew refer to this as the ‘first woman to’ phenomenon, and caution that this ‘does not necessarily provide evidence of absence of discrimination, but rather often signals the continued and persistent exclusion of women – the exception that proves the rule.’

While recognizing the significance of the trailblazers and ‘famous firsts’, this paper seeks to go beyond commemoration, to consider the lived experiences of women at the Irish Bar in the twentieth century. It looks at the challenges they faced, the type of work they did and the strategies they adopted to succeed in a gendered environment. This paper draws on archival research as well as interviews conducted with men and women who were in practice at the Irish Bar from the 1950s until the late 1990s.

Huberfeld, McClain, and Ahmed on "Rethinking Foundations and Analyzing New Conflicts: Teaching Law After Dobbs"

Nicole Huberfeld, Linda McClain, and Aziza Ahmed have published "Rethinking Foundations and Analyzing New Conflicts: Teaching Law After Dobbs" in volume 17 of the Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy. The abstract is excerpted here: 

This Article draws on our diverse and complementary areas of scholarly expertise and teaching experiences across law school and public health curricula to offer a multidisciplinary model for teaching in a variety of courses after Dobbs. Teaching reproductive rights and justice poses extensive challenges in the wake of Dobbs’ overruling Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, upending a half century of precedents protecting a constitutional right to abortion, and returning the issue to “the people”—and the states. This Article offers theoretical and pedagogical perspectives on teaching courses in Reproductive Rights and Justice, as well as relevant foundational courses like Constitutional Law, Family Law, and Health Law, in the uncertain and shifting post-Dobbs landscape. We argue that including historical and theoretical context alike will aid in and enhance learning. Likewise, developing data and historical literacy will help students understand doctrinal shifts over time and provide grounding for contextualization and application for such changes.

 

ABA Profile of Legal Profession and Women in Law

One of the best sources for statistics on women in the legal profession.

ABA, ABA Profile of the Legal Profession 2023, Women in Law

The percentage of female lawyers has slowly inched up in recent years, according to the ABA National Lawyer Population Survey, a tally of lawyers by licensing agencies in every state. In 2010, fewer than one-third of all lawyers (31%) were women. Thirteen years later, in 2023, 39% of all lawyers were women.

The long-term trend is easier to see when viewed over the course of decades. The biggest growth in female lawyers came in the 1980s and ’90s. From 1950 to 1970, only 3% of all lawyers were women. The percentage increased to 8% in 1980, 20% in 1991 and 29% in 2000.  

The trend is also apparent at law schools. The number of male students has declined every year for the past 12 years – from 78,516 in 2010 to 50,969 in 2022. Meanwhile, the number of female law school students has increased every year for the past six years – from 55,766 in 2016 to 65,073 in 2022. Women now significantly outnumber men in U.S. law schools, and the gap is widening. In 2022, there were 14,000 more female students than male students.

The number of female federal judges has increased dramatically. The first woman was appointed to the federal judiciary in 1928, when 217 men held that position. By 1950, there were still only three female federal judges. That rose to 46 in 1980. And by Oct. 1, 2023, there were 455 women on the federal bench – nearly one-third of all federal judges (32%).

The picture is somewhat different in state Supreme Courts, where 42% of all high-court justices are women, according to a 2023 survey by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. That’s nearly the same as the share of all lawyers who are women nationally: 39%. 

Teaching Law After Dobbs: Rethinking Foundations and Analyzing New Concepts

Nicole Huberfeld, Linda C. McClain & Aziza Ahmed, Rethinking Foundations and Analyzing New Concepts: Teaching Law After Dobbs, 17 St. Louis U. J. Health L. & Pol'y 243 (2024) [Westlaw Access]

This Article draws on our diverse and complementary areas of scholarly expertise and teaching experiences across law school and public health curricula to offer a multidisciplinary model for teaching in a variety of courses after Dobbs. Teaching reproductive rights and justice poses extensive challenges in the wake of Dobbs' overruling Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, upending a half century of precedents protecting a constitutional right to abortion, and returning the issue to “the people”--and the states. This Article offers theoretical and pedagogical perspectives on teaching courses in Reproductive Rights and Justice, as well as relevant foundational courses like Constitutional Law, Family Law, and Health Law, in the uncertain and shifting post-Dobbs landscape. We argue that including historical and theoretical context alike will aid in and enhance learning. Likewise, developing data and historical literacy will help students understand doctrinal shifts over time and provide grounding for contextualization and application for such changes.

Jamie R. Abrams Publishes Book on "Inclusive Socratic Teaching" with UC Press

I am excited to share with blog readers that I have published a new book on Inclusive Socratic Teaching: Why Law Schools Need it and How to Achieve It with the University of California Press. The book's synopsis is pasted below. Of particular note to readers is the way in which the book draws upon the sustained and impactful contributions of Feminist Legal Theorists naming and documenting critiques of problematic Socratic performances for over a half of a century. It then maps a set of implementable techniques to adapt and modernize the Socratic method to be more inclusive, effective, and equitable.   

For more than fifty years, scholars have documented and critiqued the marginalizing effects of the Socratic teaching techniques that dominate law school classrooms. In spite of this, law school budgets, staffing models, and course requirements still center Socratic classrooms as the curricular core of legal education. In this clear-eyed book, law professor Jamie R. Abrams catalogs both the harms of the Socratic method and the deteriorating well-being of modern law students and lawyers, concluding that there is nothing to lose and so much to gain by reimagining Socratic teaching. Recognizing that these traditional classrooms are still necessary sites to fortify and catalyze other innovations and values in legal education, Inclusive Socratic Teaching provides concrete tips and strategies to dismantle the autocratic power and inequality that so often characterize these classrooms. A galvanizing call to action, this hands-on guide equips educators and administrators with an inclusive teaching model that reframes the Socratic classroom around teaching techniques that are student centered, skills centered, client centered, and community centered.

New Women Law Deans

Updated 5-28-24

Once again, Gender & the Law Blog's annual list of New Women Law Deans. We will update as announcements are made.

Women are 15 of 29 (52%) new law deans in 2024. 

Aviva Abramovsky, Idaho (previously Dean, Buffalo)

Marcilynn Burke, Tulane (Dean, Oregon)

Anna Carpenter, Oklahoma (Utah, Prof. & Special Advisor to President)

Brietta Clark, Loyola LA (Interim Dean, Loyola LA)

Camille Davidson, Mitchell Hamline, President & Dean (Dean, Southern Illinois)

Jelani Jefferson Exum, St. John's (Dean, Detroit Mercy)

Twinette Johnson, St. Louis (Dean, District Columbia)

Julia Hill, Wyoming (Vice Dean, Alabama)

Johanna Kalb, U San Francisco (Dean, Idaho)

Leslie Kendrick, Virginia (Prof., Virginia)

Stephanie Lindquist, Washington U, St. Louis (Prof., Arizona State)

Alicia Ouellette, Lewis & Clark (President & Dean, Albany)

LaVonda Reed, Baltimore (Dean, Georgia State).

Jenny Roberts, Hofstra (Prof. & Clinic Director, American)

Franita Tolson, USC (Interim Dean, USC)

 

                                         

The Life and Work of the First Woman Elected Justice of the Peace, Catharine Waugh McCullough

Sandra Ryder, Clearing the Bar: Catharine Waugh McCullough and Illinois Legal Reform

Catharine Waugh McCulloch was one of the first women admitted to practice law in Illinois, and the 18^th woman admitted to practice in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. After graduating from law school and passing the bar, she experienced difficulty finding a legal position in Chicago, so she opened an office in Rockford, Illinois, where she often took on destitute women clients. She initiated the shared writing among women attorneys, which became the Equity Club. She ran for Attorney General in 1888 and was active in many women's groups. After marrying a classmate from law school, the two formed a partnership in law and marriage; they wrote briefs, tried cases and published legal documents together.

 

McCulloch drafted a bill which changed guardianship laws, and another which raised the age of consent for girls from 14 to 16, both of which were passed into law. After an Illinois case gave women the right to vote in school elections, McCulloch recognized the significance of this ruling. Together with the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association, she and other suffragists toured the state by auto, speaking and handing out flyers and pamphlets. She drafted a bill by which Illinois women could vote in municipal and presidential elections, and every year, for 20 years, she and others went to Springfield to testify and lobby for her bill; it passed in 1913, and this Illinois suffrage law was instrumental in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Not satisfied, McCulloch worked with the Chicago charter revision committee to have women's suffrage included; she fought to have the Illinois Constitution revised to include women's suffrage; she was successful in both efforts.

 

Meanwhile, in 1907, McCulloch was the first woman elected to a judicial position, Justice of the Peace, in Evanston, Illinois, and by all men. She was appointed Master in Chancery of the Cook County Superior Court for four, two-year terms. She was selected the first woman elector to the State Democratic Convention in 1916. While practicing with McCulloch & McCulloch, she had one case which used contract law to set public policy regarding wholesomeness of food; this case later was incorporated into one portion of today's Uniform Commercial Code. Since much of their practice dealt with probate and estates, the McCulloch's co-authored A Manual of the Law of Will Contests in Illinois.

 

With the National League of Women Voters, McCulloch fought for years, again using print media, speeches and women's groups, to have women on juries, and to make the laws concerning women uniform throughout the U.S. *3 Always committed to utilizing law to reform the legal status of women and children, McCulloch wrote plays, essays, legislative bills, speeches, pamphlets, and used the power of print media to convince the public; her plays were still being produced in the 1990s.

 

After their many years of legal practice and innovation, in 1940 both McCulloch and her husband were named “Senior Counselors” of the Illinois Bar Association. But her legacy is far more reaching; when any woman votes, retains custody of children or property in a divorce, or serves on a jury, it is because of the vision and relentless legal work of Catharine Waugh McCulloch and her peers.

 

In track and field, clearing the bar indicates that the person has exceeded expectations and is ready to face even more difficult ones. McCulloch did not just pass the bar; because women entering the legal profession was in its infancy, and due to the bulk and import of her legal contributions, McCulloch cleared the bar with room to spare.

Priya Baskaran on Critical Legal Research in Law Clinics

Priya Baskaran has published "Searching for Justice: Incorporating Critical Legal Research into Clinic Seminar" in Volume 30 of the Clinical Law Review. The article concludes:   

The progenitors of CLR — Delgado and Stefancic — reiterate the importance of “reinventing, modifying, flipping, and radically transforming legal doctrines and theories imaginatively” to pursue justice and law reform. Law is a profession that recreates hierarchy and predictability; thus, law reform and justice require “mulling over what an ideal legal world would look like from the client’s perspective.”

 

This type of contextual critical thinking is exactly what clinical legal education seeks to develop. When lawyers focus on the rule and only the rule, they place a specific box around the problem. The problem and potential resolutions, when so narrowly categorized, are limited to the universe of “settled law” and stifle innovative solutions. Such restrictions are in direct opposition to the best interest of the client —who is expecting the lawyer to help engage in creative problem solving and advocacy, rather than simply upholding the status quo and perpetuating harm and injustice. From a metacognition perspective, restrictive and limited construction also harms the students’ intellectual development and capacity. Strict adherence to the rule prevents effective learning for transfer by reinforcing subject matter silos. Students make only surface level connections rather than understanding the underlying structural issues and engaging in applied critical thinking. In contrast, “a conceptual advance that sees old material in a new light” can lead to the type of creative lawyering that is necessary to champion justice. Our current moment desperately calls for wide-ranging, transformative social change. Communities face increasing economic precarity as decades of divestment continue to erode social infrastructure and safety nets. In the wake of this draconian and shameful legal regression that entrenches harmful hegemonies, we cannot train students to merely accept precedent or the myth of a neutral judiciary. Advocating for vulnerable clients will require far more creative and strategic attorneys who are able not only to conceptualize creative arguments, but also to work collaboratively with grassroots groups pushing for greater change through concerted organizing and political mobilization.

 

Training students in CLR equips them with the critical thinking skills and research strategies to navigate the deeply flawed legal systems and imperfect research resources. Despite the challenges, we should find a way to incorporate CLR into clinical pedagogy as an important step in the continued fight against injustice.

Judy Stinson Lecture on "Reclaiming the Singular They"

Robert Anderson presented the Judy Stinson Lecture at Arizona State University on the topic of "Reclaiming the Singular They in Legal Writing." A recording of the presentation is available here.  It gives background on the grammatical prohibition on the singular they.  It describes a historic tension between grammar guides and dictionaries on this issue. The underlying article that was the basis for the lecture is available here. 

New Women Law Deans

Once again, Gender & the Law Blog's annual list of New Women Law Deans.

LaVonda Reed, Baltimore (previously Dean at Georgia State).

Learning the Law Through Taylor Swift Cases

ABA J., Swift Justice: Students Learn About the Law Through Taylor Swift Cases

As anyone who pays attention to current events knows all too well, Taylor Swift has become ubiquitous.

She’s touring the world, playing to sold out stadiums on her record-breaking “The Eras Tour.” She’s in movie theaters, showing a version of said tour to enchanted Swifties who either couldn’t see her in person or did and want to relive their best day.

She’s at NFL games, trying to bring good karma for her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, and his team, the Kansas City Chiefs. She’s talked about on cable news and social media, as the political world waits to see if she’ll speak now about who she’s endorsing in the 2024 presidential election.

And in at least two law schools, she’s the subject of a class available to students wanting to gain practical knowledge about the law by studying her various legal entanglements and how she emerged stronger.

At the University of Miami School of Law, there was “Intellectual Property Law Through the Lens of Taylor Swift,” a seven-week course taught by Vivek Jayaram, founder of Jayaram Law and co-director of the Arts Law Track in Miami Law’s Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law LL.M program.

Jayaram, who has practiced intellectual property and corporate law for over 20 years, came up with the idea for the class at lunch one day with Gregory Levy, associate dean of Miami Law. Jayaram had just read an article about Swift’s lawsuit with Evermore Park, a theme park in Utah that sued her for trademark infringement after she released an album titled “Evermore” in December 2020.

There were some other lawsuits and legal disputes he had read about involving Swift, including a well-publicized fight starting in 2019 over ownership of her old master recordings that led to her re-recording her back catalogue. There also was a 2014 battle with Spotify over streaming royalties and 2015 deals with JD.com and Alibaba to combat Chinese counterfeiting of her merchandise.

“I said to Greg: ‘I bet Swifties know more about IP law than a lot of lawyers,’” recalls Jayaram, whose favorite Swift album is 1989. “That initiated a bit of a conversation about centering an IP class around her.”

The inaugural class, which met in the spring of 2023, had about 25-30 students. Jayaram says his end game was to use Swift as a means of exploring interesting issues in IP law. He adds that while she was hardly the first artist to experience copyright and trademark issues, she has dealt with them in interesting, innovative ways that have allowed her to experience greater success.

“She’s not the first one who has re-recorded her old songs, but she’s really the only one who has been really successful at it,” says Jayaram, pointing out artists as diverse as The Everly Brothers, Journey and Def Leppard have tried it, with significantly less commercially successful results. “It’s very unusual to do this and have it shoot up to the top of the charts.”

Another law professor had a similar epiphany—this time, after speaking with some of his students who were excited about going to various shows on her recent “The Eras Tour.” “I thought that she could work as a class,” says Sean Kammer, an environmental and torts law professor at University of South Dakota Knudson School of Law. “I got to work and started from the point of view of what are the ways we can use Taylor Swift and her music to learn about the law?”

Kammer’s class, called “The Taylor Swift Effect,” does not just focus on IP law—instead, it looks at various issues, including how Swift’s songwriting and storytelling can help lawyers become better advocates.

“We look at questions that are more theoretical, like how we experience music and how we derive very deep meanings from these pieces,” says Kammer, whose favorite Swift song is “All Too Well” (10 Minute Version). “At the end of the class, we look at what we can learn as creators of legal arguments, to tell the stories we need to tell, by taking lessons from how a songwriter writes a song in terms of organization, style and narrative.”

Other undergraduate and graduate schools have opened their course catalogs to the multi-Grammy winner and recently certified billionaire. Stanford University, Arizona State, Rice University, the University of California at Berkeley and others have introduced classes examining a range of issues, including her lyrical and musical style, the psychology of her music and relationships, and business-oriented courses examining her as an entrepreneur.

Paula Monopoli to Speak on Women as Constitution Makers: Revisiting the 19th Amendment After Dobbs

TO REGISTER: Download 2024 Spring Lecture Con Law Center Monopoli QR

Feminist Pedagogy in Legal Education

Jamie Abrams, Feminist Pedagogy in Legal Education, Oxford Handbook of Feminism & the Law in the U.S. (Deborah Brake, Martha Chamallas & Verna Williams, eds. 2023).

This chapter . . .  traces and evaluates the influences of feminism in legal education. It explores how feminist critiques challenged the substance of legal rules, the methods of law teaching, and the culture of legal education. Following decades of advocacy, feminist pedagogical reforms have generated new fields, new courses, new laws, new leaders, and new feminist spaces. This chapter captures many reasons to celebrate the accomplishments of our feminist pioneers and champions. It also serves as a critical call to action to modern faculty, administrators, and students to carry the work forward with a vigilant purpose and determination.

New Book: Inclusive Socratic Teaching

New book from my co-editor on the Gender & Law Blog. 

Jamie Abrams, Inclusive Socrative Teaching: Why Law Schools Need it and How to Achieve It (U.C. Press June 2024)

For more than fifty years, scholars have documented and critiqued the marginalizing effects of the Socratic teaching techniques that dominate law school classrooms. In spite of this, law school budgets, staffing models, and course requirements still center Socratic classrooms as the curricular core of legal education. In this clear-eyed book, law professor Jamie R. Abrams catalogs both the harms of the Socratic method and the deteriorating well-being of modern law students and lawyers, concluding that there is nothing to lose and so much to gain by reimagining Socratic teaching. Recognizing that these traditional classrooms are still necessary sites to fortify and catalyze other innovations and values in legal education, Inclusive Socratic Teaching provides concrete tips and strategies to dismantle the autocratic power and inequality that so often characterize these classrooms. A galvanizing call to action, this hands-on guide equips educators and administrators with an inclusive teaching model that reframes the Socratic classroom around teaching techniques that are student centered, skills centered, client centered, and community centered

 

New Report Examines the Experiences of Native American Women in the Law

The National Native American Bar Association has published "Excluded & Alone: Examining the Experiences of Native American Women in the Law and a Path Towards Equity." Read the full report here. It is a powerful call to action for all. 

The study explores Native American women attorneys' journeys and experiences in the legal profession. Their personal stories include feelings of isolation and, at times, instances of painful harassment. The report concludes with a detailed Call to Action for legal professionals, including individuals, law schools, bar associations, policy advocates, employers, and philanthropic organizations, urging efforts to:

• Learn about Native American women's experiences, needs, and challenges
• Commit to sustained allyship and be an advocate
• Take deliberate and tangible supportive action

The Report recommends the following concrete actions: 

1. Do not relegate Native American women to meaningless footnotes in research studies. * * *
2. Continue to support and expand pre-law programs to encourage Native Americans to consider and get admitted into law school. * * *  
3. Train law school faculty and administration on the needs of Native American students, especially Native American women. Faculty need to be trained on how to integrate Federal Indian Law and Tribal Law into all aspects of the law school curriculum. Faculty also need to be trained on how to be more inclusive of Native American students’ voices in the classroom. * * *  
4. Ensure inclusive mental health support services for Native American students in law schools. There is currently a dearth of mental health support services for Native American law students, which affects these students’ abilities to survive and thrive in law school.
5. Improve data collection and communication on where Native American lawyers are working and how they advance within various workplaces. The lack of information on where Native American lawyers are working and how they are advancing in various workplaces makes it harder for younger Native American lawyers to chart their career paths. The lack of information also makes it more difficult for bar organizations and other groups to know where to best intervene and how to resource the various interventions.
6. Integrate information about inclusion of Native Americans into all diversity, equity, and inclusion trainings conducted by bar associations, judicial organizations, and other groups. There is currently inadequate mention of inclusion of Native Americans, and this allows for derogatory and racist terms to continue to be used in the legal profession, in law schools, and even in courtrooms. More non-Native Americans will be comfortable stepping up as allies for Native American lawyers if they get the information and skills that they aren’t currently getting.
7. Create cross-generational mentoring circles for Native American women that cut across geographical boundaries and practice areas. There aren’t enough ways in which Native American women can make substantive connections with each other, and these connections are necessary for the long-term wellness and success of Native American women in the legal profession. This can be the foundation on which further mentoring is built, but general mentoring, even in a strong community of Native American women, cannot do much about the isolation and exhaustion that currently exists.

Gender, Health and the Constitution Conference at the Center for Con Law at Akron

 

Con Law Conference Focuses on Gender, Health & the Constitution

The Center for Constitutional Law at The University of Akron School of Law held its annual conference on Oct. 13. This year’s theme was Gender, Health and the Constitution. The Center is one of four national resource centers established by Congress, along with Drake University, Howard University and the University of South Carolina, to support research and public education on issues of constitutional law. It includes five faculty fellows, student fellowships, a J.D. certificate program and an online journal, ConLawNOW.

“Speakers at this year’s conference all agreed on the need for attention to these issues of gender discrimination in the health care context,” said Akron Law Professor and Con Law Center Director Tracy Thomas. “The 20 featured panelists included national scholars and local practitioners in both law and medicine who provided a broad range of expertise from theoretical to practical implications.”

Those attending the conference included judges, attorneys, academics, students and members of the community interested in learning more about these emerging issues. Akron Law faculty Bernadette Bollas Genetin, Mike Gentithes, Dr. George Horvath and Brant Lee moderated the panels.

The first topic was reproductive rights and the profound legal and medical changes since the U.S. Supreme Court’s invalidation of the long-recognized fundamental right to reproductive choice. Maya Manian, director of the Health Law and Policy Program at American University, recommended a new theoretical approach grounded in health justice. Dr. Allison Kreiner, medical analyst with Plakas Mannos, revealed the stark detriment of the invalidation to patients in practice. Legal scholars Naomi Cahn from the University of Virginia, Tiffany Graham from Touro Law and Sonja Sutter from George Washington University discussed applications in the contexts of minors’ rights and assisted reproduction.

 The second panel turned to the topic of gender identity. Panelists spoke about recent bans on gender-affirming care, the history and meaning of gender identity, and new laws prohibiting transgender girls from participating in sports. Noted national legal scholars speaking on gender identity included Deborah Brake from the University of Pittsburgh, Noa Ben-Asher from St. John’s University, Jennifer Bard from the University of Cincinnati, Susan Keller from Western State University and Dara Purvis from Penn State University.

 The next panel discussion focused on bias in medical science and the ways in which medical science excludes women in research, resulting in significant negative physical effects. Panelists diagnosed existing problems and suggested preventive measures. These legal experts on medical science included former Akron Law Professor Jane Moriarty, now at Duquesne University; Jennifer Oliva from Indiana University; and Aziza Ahmed from Boston University. Dr. Rachel Bracken from Northeast Ohio Medical University also presented.

The final panel of the day focused on the broader meanings and implications of medical autonomy. Professor Thomas discussed Ohio’s unique health care freedom constitutional amendment and how it might apply to reproductive freedom. Abby Moncrieff, co-director of the Health Law Center at Cleveland State University, considered the theoretical neutrality bases of medical autonomy and how they applied to several of the emerging legal issues discussed at the conference, including gender-affirming care and reproductive rights. Attorneys Marie Curry from Legal Aid and Megan Franz Oldham ’05, partner at Plakas Mannos, discussed how these issues from daily medical practice. Oldham addressed how medical malpractice claims arise when physicians discount women patient’s reported symptoms. Curry shared information about racial impacts and discrimination in pregnancy care, and alternative patient-centered approaches to redress these concerns.

 Many papers presented at the conference will be published in the Spring symposium of ConLawNOW.

To Procreate or Not to Procreate--The Real Stories of Unwed Mothers

Lauren Gilbert, To Procreate or not to Procreate: A Right to Self-Determination, Human Flourishing: The End of Law, Forthcoming

Real stories of pregnant women, past and present, shed light on how our laws have evolved to ensure greater recognition of a woman’s fundamental right to reproductive and family autonomy. Today, these rights are in jeopardy. The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Center overturning the abortion right frames the issue in terms of the states’ interest in protecting human life; yet the implications for women’s health and human dignity are ignored. I look at several case studies implicating reproductive rights from 1924 to now. I then address Dobbs, concluding that the decision, by focusing on 1868 when women were excluded from the political process, disregards developments in women’s rights in the 20th century, defines fundamental rights too narrowly and ignores evidence of animus towards women seeking to control their reproductive destinies.

In Part I, I briefly review the common law history and treatment of unwed motherhood. In Part II, I recount some less well-known but illuminating details of the family history of Carrie Buck, who was forcibly sterilized in Virginia after the Supreme Court’s 1927 decision in Buck v. Bell. In Part III, I discuss the case of Anna Buck, who, to preserve her place in her community, hid her pregnancy and gave her baby, the bastard daughter of my great-grandfather, up for adoption. In Part IV, I tell my own story of single motherhood and the choices I made, including my own decision to have an abortion while I was living in Costa Rica, where abortions were illegal. In Part V, I discuss the Dobbs decision, and how its formalistic due process and equal protection analyses are compartmentalized so as to read out of existence any potential violations of a pregnant woman’s rights.