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Release date: June 18, 2003 Top Feminist Legal Scholar Named Woodruff Professor
Fineman, an internationally recognized law and society scholar and expert on family law and feminist legal theory, comes to Emory from Cornell Law School, where she is the Dorothea S. Clarke Professor of Feminist Jurisprudence. She also is founder and director of the Feminism and Legal Theory Project, an interdisciplinary examination of law and policy topics of interest to women; she will bring the project to Emory. "No legal scholar today has done more to make us view old questions in a new light," said Thomas C. Arthur, dean of Emory Law School, in announcing the appointment. "She has already transformed the way we view no-fault divorce, and her ongoing work on caregivers and dependents challenges us to rethink some of the most basic issues of family law. She also is a great colleague who works tirelessly to recruit and nurture young scholars." "Martha Fineman is widely reputed to be the leading feminist legal scholar of our generation," says John Witte Jr., Jonas Robitscher Professor of Law and Ethics, who headed the Woodruff selection committee. "She brings to Emory an extraordinary record of courageous interdisciplinary scholarship and a bracing enthusiasm for conversation and scholarship on law and public policy that will edify everyone." One of the major draws for Fineman is Emory's Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Religion, says Interim Provost Howard O. Hunter. "She will join a first-rank group of scholars who are breaking new ground in interdisciplinary research." Fineman's original and thought-provoking work in the field of divorce and family law has had a profound effect on the debates surrounding the legal regulation of intimacy. Her first book, "The Illusion of Equality: the Rhetoric and Reality of Divorce Reform" (1991), challenged the country's no-fault divorce reforms of the 1970s and 1980s and the implications of the gender-equity revolution. Fineman argued that equality imposed in one arena—divorce—actually resulted in heightened inequality, especially when other social arrangements such as work and childcare remain unchanged and unequal. Her 1995 book, "The Neutered Mother, the Sexual Family and Other Twentieth Century Tragedies," broke new ground in the exploration of single motherhood, welfare reform and marriage as social policy. In it, Fineman explores society's undervaluation of motherhood and the laws that reflect that undervaluation. She also called for a re-visioning of family law and explored the implications of ending marriage as a legal category. Building on her work in "The Neutered Mother," Fineman's latest book, "The Autonomy Myth: a Theory of Dependency" (2003) articulates a radical reconception of family: Rather than focusing on the bond between husband and wife, Fineman says society's number-one priority in protecting the family should be the tie between mother and child (or caregivers and dependents, whatever their age and sex). A prolific scholar, Fineman is the author of scores of book chapters and articles and has served as editor and contributor to a number of influential works of legal theory. Instrumental in much of this research and publication has been the Feminism and Legal Theory Project, which she founded at the University of Wisconsin in 1984. Over the years, the project has nurtured the scholarship that comprises much of the canon of classic works in feminist legal theory and "has contributed to a major transformation in the way we think about all areas of law," says Fineman. The very first anthology of feminist legal theory, "At the Boundaries of Law: Feminism and Legal Theory" (1990), was a product of the project. Other works growing out of the project include "The Public Nature of Private Violence" (1994), "Mothers in Law: Feminism and the Legal Regulation of Motherhood" (1995), "Feminism and the Media" (1997), and "Feminism Confronts Homo Economicus (Economic Man)" (2003). In 1999, Fineman was named recipient of the Harry Kalven Prize for Distinguished Research in Law and Society, given in recognition of a body of scholarly work. In March, Fineman was on the Emory campus debating with role of marriage with some of the nation's leading scholars at Emory's conference on "Sex, Marriage and Family and the Religions of the Book," the culmination of a two-year research effort by the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Religion. As a senior fellow at the center, Fineman will be preparing new publications on rethinking the rights and duties of dependency and responsibility between children and their parents and caregivers. With her appointment, Fineman becomes the law school's third Woodruff professor, the highest honor Emory can bestow on a faculty member. She joins Michael J. Perry, a leading constitutional law scholar whose appointment also takes effect this coming fall; and Harold J. Berman, who came to Emory in 1985 after a distinguished career at Harvard Law School. "The Woodruff professors have always been university appointments that draw various aspects of the university together, so that we can avoid being a 'multiversity,'" said Berman. "At the law school we have a strong tradition of working with professional programs such as medicine, public health, religion and Russian and East European Studies, so the appointment of two new Woodruff professors is another welcome step in that direction." Prior to joining the faculty at Cornell, Fineman was the Maurice T. Moore Professor at Columbia University School of Law. She also was on the faculty and served as the director of the Institute for Legal Studies' Family Law and Policy Program at the University of Wisconsin Law School. |
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copyright 2001
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