Women Lawyers at the Supreme Court

The title would lead you to believe I am referring to Justices O’Connor, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan. With all but O’Connor now serving, 3 of the 9 justices of the highest court of the land are women. 3/9 or 33.33% is a pretty phenomenal number considering it wasn’t until 1981 that there were any women on the bench at all.  Yet, just 15% of the court’s cases are argued by female litigators. According to an ABA Journal article, the most appearances by any female lawyer are those of Beatrice Rosenberg who served as a Justice Department lawyer in the 50’s and 60’s. Washington litigator, Lisa Blatt has the most appearances (30) of any living woman litigator.Moreover, women have represented just 1/3 of Supreme Court law clerks and six of the 20 lawyers in the Solicitor General’s Office are women.

For more statistics, be sure to check out my “Stats at a Glance” page.

Various Articles Lead to the Same Conclusion: Women’s Experiences in Law School are Unique

Taken together, the articles reflected upon in “Hey There’s Ladies Here!” persuade the authors “that a substantial proportion of law students – many, but by no means all of them, women students – experience frustration, or alienation, or both, because of law schools’ failure to engage and develop the full range of intellectual capacities necessary for successful and responsible practice . . . legal education must be broadened and deepened to encompass neglected but important aspects of the intellectual work that legal professionals do” (Berger, et al. 1998, 1025).

“Hey There’s Ladies Here!” reflects on Becoming Gentlemen: Women, Law School, and Institutional Change by Lani Guinier, Michelle Fine, and Jane Balin, Women in Legal Education: A Comparison of the Law School Performance and Law School Experiences of Women and Men by Linda F. Wightman, Law School Admissions Council, What Difference Does Difference Make?: The Challenge for Legal Education by Elizabeth Mertz with Wamucci Njogu and Susan Gooding, and Cultivating Intelligence: Power, Law, and the Politics of Teaching by Louise Harmon and Deborah W. Post.

An Invisible Gender Divide on Law School Faculties

According to McGinley, author of “Reproducing Gender on Law School Faculties, ” an invisible gender divide exists on law school faculties; not only are women in the minority of law school faculties, they also teach a disproportionate number of female-identified courses. Moreover, “Choice” is not the cause of the disparity between men and women law professors. McGinley argues that women will attain equal status on law school faculties only after hidden gendered practices are made visible. 

“From academic year 1998-99 to academic year 2007-08, the percentage of women law school deans rose from 10.4% to 19.8%.  Their proportion of full professors grew from 20% to 29.3% of the population.  Unfortunately, however, women represent 61.3% of lecturers and 65.4% of instructors.  In contrast, men represent the vast majority of high-paying and high-prestige positions, 80.2% of deans, 70.7% of full professors, but a minority of low-paying and low-prestige positions, 38.7% of lecturers and 34.6% of instructors” (McGinley 2009, 102-103).  Though women law graduates are continuing to increase in proportion to male graduates, McGinley points to Vicki Schultz’s study indicating that “choice” of employment is shaped by the work environment and that women react to opportunities and conditions at work to determine what type of work they desire in the first place.  In other words, women may be more interested in traditionally male-dominated jobs if they conditions were made attractive to do so (McGinley 2009, 103).  Statistics show that women have a disincentive in choosing legal academia as a career choice because they are more likely to earn lower-pay and teach less prestigious courses. This disparity in legal academia mirrors higher education disciplines as well.  For example, “women predominate in institutions with less status and pay like community colleges and in jobs that are either part-time or not on the tenure track” (McGinley 2009, 104, citing Judith Glazer-Raymo, The Feminist Agenda: A Work in Progress, in Unfinished Agendas: New and Continuing Gender Challenges in Higher Education 1, 5-9 (Judith Glazer-Raymo ed., 2008)).

Socializing Both Sexes in the Classroom

 

By implementing a feminist critique (defined as promoting a caring, results-oriented approach to the law, based on preserving relationships, nurturing, and expressing an ethic of care and compassion) in addition to the current teaching methods (logos/masculine), both men and women will realize greater success in law school. Methods beyond the current archaic arbitrator/adversarial model of teaching must be utilized. Moreover, instilling empathy and teaching dispute resolution skills in law school will promote the most effective lawyering and will benefit the students as future lawyers and the clients they serve (Proctor 2004, 585-589). Proctor argues “introducing the values traditionally associated with women, and traditionally undervalued, because an emphasis on collaboration, context, emotions, ethics and empathy will effectuate a much needed socialization of both sexes” (Proctor 2004, 578).