Abstract
I’m delighted to have the opportunity to talk with you today about some important aspects of feminist legal theory. My comments will focus on the implications of feminist legal theory for legal education. Feminist legal theory has important ramifications for legal education. Feminist legal theory is theory that is connected to doing and to being. Thus, an important dimension of feminist legal theory is its interconnection with legal practice and with legal education.
Here at Columbia, as well as at many other law schools, there has been much discussion concerning problems of gender bias in legal educa- tion. It is now widely acknowledged that law school courses do not ade- quately incorporate issues relating to women and women’s perspectives into the curriculum. As a result, many law professors and law students have begun to rethink every facet of the law school curriculum, particularly first-year courses, from the standpoint of gender. Today I want to suggest some contributions that feminist legal theory can make to the teaching of one of the most important courses in the first-year curriculum–Civil Procedure.