Feminist Law Professors

Naomi Cahn is the John Theodore Fey Research Professor of Law at George Washington University, where she is also the Associate Dean for Faculty Development. Professor Cahn has held a variety of positions in both the private and public interest sectors, including as an associate with the Washington, D.C., firm of Hogan & Hartson and as a staff attorney with Philadelphia’s Community Legal Services.For the five years prior to her joining the faculty of the Law School in 1993, Professor Cahn was the assistant director of the Sex Discrimination Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center, where she supervised students in domestic violence cases. She was a visiting professor at Georgetown from 1991 to 1993 and in 1998.At GW Law, Professor Cahn teaches courses on family law, trusts and estates, and child, family, and state. Professor Cahn is the co-author of the West casebook, Contemporary Family Law, and has co-authored other books about family law, reproductive technology, and adoption. From 2002 to 2004 she was on leave in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

FLP: When did you first make a connection between feminism and the law?

NC: Certainly before college — in college, I wrote my senior thesis on women’s work and child care, examining, among other topics, various laws and approaches to child care.

FLP: Has feminism reached the limits of what it can accomplish via the law? Should feminists focus on issues other than the law (i.e., culture, youth education, etc.)?

NC: I think feminism continues to have an enormous amount to contribute to the law. One of the methods that feminism contributes to legal analysis is an emphasis on context, on helping us see that the law is critical to feminist goals, but that changes in the law are not enough. For example, I’ve written about sexual violence against women during war, and argued that prosecution, or even reparations, are legal solutions to a problem that also requires emphasis on humanitarian issues. These humanitarian issues are also legal issues: we need laws supporting the use of such (what I term) ‘social services justice.” Or take the issue of low income women in the workplace, who need guarantees of job equality, or protection from the impact of domestic violence on their job, but who also need child care and longer school years.

FLP: What are you working on now?

NC: I’m working on 2 projects. The first is a book on reproductive technology and the law, forthcoming from NYU Press, which argues that we need a coherent framework for addressing issues of parenthood, market regulation, and relationships. A second project, a co-authored article, with Professor June Carbone, is titled, “Red Families v. Blue Families,” and articulates two distinct sets of life patterns and supporting family laws that are roughly correlated with a state’s political climate.

FLP: Has blogging changed academic feminism?

NC: I think blogging is just beginning to realize its potential.

Jessica Silbey is a professor at Suffolk University of Law.   Her scholarly interests focus on the cultural analysis of law, including the interdiscipline of law and literature and law and film.   Before joining the faculty of Suffolk Law School, Professor Silbey was a litigator at Foley Hoag LLP in Boston. She also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Robert E. Keeton on the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts and to the Honorable Levin Campbell on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

FLP: What is your educational and professional background?

JS: I have a PhD in Comparative Literature from U Michigan and a JD from U Michigan. I pursued them jointly. I did my undergraduate work at Stanford University. After law school, I clerked for two years  and then litigated for several years in Boston. I entered academia in 2004, just four months after I gave birth to my first child.  

FLP: What courses do you teach?

JS: I teach constitutional law and intellectual property (copyright and trademarks).

FLP: How does feminism influence your teaching/scholarship/service?

JS: To me, feminism is the study of power imbalance with attention to gender inequity. If law is one way in which society distributes power among various constituencies and individuals, feminism is inevitably part of the study of law. In my constitutional law course, we regularly discuss the role of equality and liberty and the governmental balance of power — all issues that are intimately involved in gender relations in our society. And it seems that in my scholarship I keep writing about how narrative and various forms of storytelling (film, written fiction, rhetoric generally) work to undo or solidify various relations of power between individuals and within or among  groups.    

FLP: What are you working on now?

JS: I am working on an article that investigates how origin myths structure and explain intellectual property protection in the United States.

Ellen S. Podgor is the Associate Dean of Faculty Development and Distance Education at Stetson University College of Law.   She is a co-author of books on white collar crime, criminal law and international criminal law, and has authored articles on computer crime, international criminal law, lawyer’s ethics, criminal discovery, prosecutorial discretion, corporate criminality, and other white collar crime topics. Professor Podgor is also a co-editor of the White Collar Crime Prof Blog.

In addition to her law degree, Professor Podgor earned an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago and an L.L.M. from Temple University. In the fall of 1998, she was a Visiting Scholar at Yale Law School. She was a professor of law at Georgia State University College of Law and has also been a visiting professor at University of Georgia School of Law and George Washington University Law School and held a visiting endowed chair position at University of Alabama School of Law. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the International Society for the Reform of Criminal Law (ISRCL). She is also a member of the American Law Institute (ALI) and an honorary member of the American Board of Criminal Lawyers.

FLP: What is your educational and professional background?

EP: After graduating from law school I joined the prosecutor’s office as a deputy prosecutor in the felony division.   Back in 1976, I was the only woman deputy prosecutor in this division in the Crown Point, Indiana office.   After prosecuting individuals for crimes such as murder, rape, robbery, and other felonies, I entered private practice. I spent  a good number of years in practice and in the last two years received an MBA from Chicago.   I then left private practice to study and receive an LL.M. from Temple U. Law School. To me teaching is the ultimate profession and I have enjoyed and continue to enjoy  the teaching, writing, and service that I am able to do as a law professor.      

FLP: What courses do you teach?

EP: I feel like during my teaching career I have taught  1/4 the courses in a law school curriculum.  But having the experience of teaching constitutional law, agency, family law, criminal procedure, professional responsibility, and women in the law has made me a better  professor in the courses that I do in fact  presently teach. I  am now  settled into my dream course package  of criminal law, white collar crime, and international criminal law. It is wonderful to have courses that match my scholarship.

FLP: How does feminism influence your teaching/scholarship/service?

EP: Feminism is an integral part of  where I have been, where I am going, and who I am.   Every time I approach any subject of law,   I do so from a feminist view.   It is the caring that goes into mentoring students and a perspective I bring to my teaching, scholarship, and service.