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Women in Law? A Review of Cynthia Fuchs Epstein's Women in Law
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
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- Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 1983
References
1 Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Women in Law (New York: Basic Books, 1981). Wherever in this essay page numbers appear within parentheses, it is a citation to this book.Google Scholar
2 One could criticize the chapter as poor sociology for its too thinly veiled disguises or for the narrowness of the sample chosen. The women discussed in this chapter are virtually all from elite law schools. A few notorious instances are cited as examples of academic decision making about appointing and granting tenure to women on law faculties. But as a participant in such decision making, I am particularly wary of the accuracy of the reports, given the norms of secrecy and privacy that usually accompany such decisions. Given the collective ways in which such decisions are made, I am also wary of any individual's report.Google Scholar
3 Just because women are making some inroads in the numbers of law students and professors, they are not necessarily affecting the ways law is studied and practiced. Women may be forced to conform to male norms in teaching, studying, and practicing. Is the Socratic method, with its stern and incisive questioning, a distinctly male form of teaching? Could models of “collaborative” learning employed in “women's studies” programs be successfully used in legal education? What role does the token woman faculty member play in the functioning of a law school as an institution? Are there disinctive “feminized” values that could change the study and practice of law? As women increasingly enter legal academe will they change legal academe or be changed by it? Carrie Menkel–Meadow, Women as Law Teachers: Toward the Feminization of Legal Education, in Essays on the Application of a Humanistic Perspective to Law Teaching (Humanistic Education in Law, Monograph No. 3, New York: Columbia University Press, 1981).Google Scholar
4 See Sharon Veach, Linguistics and Women Attorneys in the Courtroom, in Eleventh National Conference on Women and the Law Sourcebook 248—-50 (San Francisco, Cal.: Golden Gate University School of Law, 1980).Google Scholar
5 Carrie Menkel–Meadow, Toward Another View of Negotiation: The Structure of Legal Problem Solving (forthcoming article).Google Scholar
6 Williams, Wendy, The Equality Crisis: Some Reflections on Culture, Courts, and Feminism, 7 Women's Rts. L. Rep. 175 (1982); Olsen, Fran, The Family and the Market: A Study of Ideology and Reform, 96 Harv. L. Rev. (forthcoming).Google Scholar
7 Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Woman's Place: Options and Limits in Professional Careers 3 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970).Google Scholar
8 Id. at 20.Google Scholar
9 Id. at 22.Google Scholar
10 Robert K. Merton, Continuities in the Theory of Reference Groups and Social Structure, in id., Social Theory and Social Structure, 281 (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1957).Google Scholar
11 Reconciliation of Women's Roles: Paths and Obstacles, in Epstein, supra note 7, at 86.Google Scholar
12 See Barnes, Janette, Women and Entrance to the Legal Profession, 23 J. Legal Educ. 276 (1970).Google Scholar
13 Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982).Google Scholar
14 Id. at 64–105.Google Scholar
15 Helen Astin, Report on Higher Education (Berkeley: University of California, Center for the Study of Higher Education, 1982). See also Eve Spangler & Ronald M. Pipkin, Portia Faces Life: Sex Differences in the Professional Orientations and Career Aspirations of Law Students, Report from the Law Student Activity Patterns Project, Research Program in Legal Education of the American Bar Foundation, 1977; Epstein (p. 42).Google Scholar
16 42 U.S.C. §2000(e) (1976 & Supp. IV 1980). I am more skeptical about the impact of these laws on cultural norms. See Emily Abel, Collective Protest and the Meritocracy: Faculty Women and Sex Discrimination Lawsuits, 7 Feminist Stud. 505 (1981).Google Scholar
17 Eleanor Emmons Maccoby & Carol Nagy Jacklin, The Psychology of Sex Differences (Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 1974); Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978); Ann Freedman, The Equal Protection Clause, Title VII, and the Differences Between Women and Men: A Critical Analysis of Contemporary Sex Discrimination Jurisprudence (Yale L.J. forthcoming).Google Scholar
18 Jack Katz, Review of Women in Law, Work & Occupations, Spring 1983 (forthcoming).Google Scholar
19 See, e.g., Jerome E. Carlin, Lawyers on Their Own: A Study of Individual Practitioners in Chicago (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1962); Joseph C. Goulden, The Superlawyers: The Small and Powerful World of the Great Washington Law Firms (New York: Weybright & Talley, 1972).Google Scholar
20 Carlin, supra note 19; Ladinsky, Jack, Careers of Lawyers, Law Practice, and Legal Institutions, 28 Am. Soc. Rev. 47 (1963); Jerold S. Auerbach, Unequal Justice: Lawyers and Social Change in Modern America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976); Schwartz, Murray L., The Reorganization of the Legal Profession, 58 Tex. L. Rev. 1269 (1980); Heinz, John P. & Laumann, Edward O., The Legal Profession: Client Interests, Professional Roles, and Social Hierarchies, 76 Mich. L. Rev. 1111 (1978).Google Scholar
21 White, James J., Women in the Law, 65 Mich. L. Rev. 1051, 1062 (1967); Helene E. Schwartz, Lawyering (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1976).Google Scholar
22 I have searched in vain for some documentation of this fact. There is none. Neither law schools nor placement services keep follow-up data on their graduates in a systematic way. Law firms simply will not release whatever data they may have. Participants in this version of legal musical chairs are the ones who know best about this phenomenon.Google Scholar
23 Schwartz, supra note 21; Priscilla Fox, Goodbye to Gameplaying, Juris Dr., Jan. 1978, at 37.Google Scholar
24 Katz, supra note 18.Google Scholar
25 Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Men and Women of the Corporation (New York: Basic Books, 1977).Google Scholar
26 Id. at xi–xiii.Google Scholar
27 Id. at 3.Google Scholar
28 Id. at 260–64.Google Scholar
29 E. Digby Baltzell, The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America (New York: Random House, 1964).Google Scholar
30 Schwartz, supra note 20.Google Scholar
31 Similar developments were occurring in other fields, such as higher education. See, e.g., Adrienne Rich, Toward a Woman–Centered University, in id., On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966–1978, at 125 (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1979).Google Scholar
32 Menkel-Meadow, supra note 3.Google Scholar
33 Gilligan, supra note 13.Google Scholar
34 Elsewhere I have talked about the law as “other” to women. See Menkel–Meadow, supra note 3; Rifkind, Janet, Toward a Theory of Law and Patriarchy, 3 Harv. Women's L.J. 83 (1980).Google Scholar
35 One person's commitment to meaningful work in one culture may be viewed as a “useless addiction to needless hard work” in another culture. See AAA Guide to Baja, California (1979).Google Scholar