Long way to go in legal academy

Old enough to remember when legal citations eschewed the author's 1st name in favor of 1st initial only?
That style served to obscure the lopsidedness of the legal academy: virtually all the names lurking behind A., B., and C. were men. The mask's largely been lifted, so that each of us today cites in full consciousness of whom we are citing, man or woman. I suspect the change has had good effects, not least among them recognition that women as well as men contribute their voices to this generation of legal scholarship.
Thus even as I celebrated the news that my home institution, the University of California, Davis, School of Law (Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall) is among the Top 25 Law Faculties in Scholarly Impact according to a just-published 2005-2009 survey, I could not but raise a curious eyebrow at the decision of number-cruncher extraordinaire Brian Leiter (prior IntLawGrrls posts here and here) to list the 10 most-cited members of each law faculty by the equation of initial + surname.
A look underneath the veil of that device revealed much:
► In none of the top 25 schools were more than 4 women among the top 10 most-cited scholars, and only 3 of the 25 earned even that scarcely heart-warming 40% rate.
► Double that number -- fully 6 law schools -- do not have a single woman among their top 10 most-cited.
The rest ranged from 1 to 3 women out of 10.
Proud to say that among the women receiving top recognition are 2 IntLawGrrls, Naomi Cahn and yours truly, as well as a number of others whom we've featured in posts: not only my California-Davis colleague Madhavi Sunder, but also Kimberlé Crenshaw, Martha Albertson Fineman, Vicki Jackson, Pamela Karlan, Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Martha Minow (left), Rachel Moran, Catharine MacKinnon (bottom left), Martha Nussbaum, Margaret Jane Radin, and Dinah Shelton.
Proud too to see on the list a close law school classmate, Kirsten H. Engel, as well as the only woman professor I had in law school, Carol M. Rose.
Can't help, though, but be concerned about the dearth of women on this list (reflective, no doubt, of the proportion in the academy as a whole, an issue that my deans, Kevin Johnson and Vik Amar, tackle in this new column on need for faculty diversity).
And can't help harbor concern about the fact that not 1 woman is on Brian's list of Ten Most Cited Faculty 2005-2009; indeed, the list drops a full 660 citations to get to the 1st woman (Kathleen Sullivan) below the 10th man (Bruce Ackerman).
In short, still a very long way to go.

Here's the roundup, with 1st as well as last name provided in full:

Most women among top 10 (4 each):
► Arizona (ranked #21): Jean Braucher, Kirsten H. Engel, Toni Massaro, Carol M. Rose (#10 most-cited woman)
► California-Irvine (#9): Catherine Fisk, Elizabeth Loftus, Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Rachel Moran
► Michigan (#11): Rebecca Eisenberg, Jessica Litman, Catharine MacKinnon (#4 most-cited woman), Margaret Jane Radin (#7 most-cited woman)

Next most -- 3 women among top 10:
► Georgetown (#20): Julie Cohen, Vicki Jackson, Robin West
► Stanford (#4): Pamela Karlan, Deborah Rhode (#3 most-cited woman), Kathleen Sullivan (#1 most-cited woman)
► UCLA (#15): Kimberlé Crenshaw, Katherine Stone, Lynn Stout
► Vanderbilt (#10): Margaret Blair, Nancy King, Suzanna Sherry

Next next-most -- 2 women among top 10:
► California-Davis (#23): Diane Marie Amann, Madhavi Sunder
► Chicago (#3): Lisa Bernstein, Martha Nussbaum (#5 most-cited woman)
► Emory (#23): Martha Albertson Fineman, Barbara Bennett Woodhouse
► George Washington (#18): Naomi Cahn, Dinah Shelton
► Northwestern (#8): Lee Epstein, Dorothy E. Roberts

Only 1 woman among top 10:
► California-Berkeley (#7): Pamela Samuelson
► Columbia (#6): Jane Ginsburg
► Cornell (#11): Valerie Hans
► Harvard (#2): Martha Minow (#2 most-cited woman)
► Illinois (#21): Cynthia Williams
► Penn (#14): Jill Fisch
► Yale (#1): Reva Siegel (#5 most-cited woman)

Not even 1 woman among top 10:
► Duke (#11)
► Florida State (#23)
► Minnesota (#19)
► NYU (#5)
► Texas (#17)
► Virginia (#16)

Perhaps 'nuff said, but thoughts welcome.

Go On! "The Asian Century?"

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia and other events of interest) Next Friday, February 26, the University of California, Davis Law Review will host "The Asian Century?," a conference exploring how the rise of Asia might bolster or hamper efforts to expand human capabilities. Experts will consider economic and human rights issues through the lens of their diverse areas of expertise, including multinational corporations, intellectual property, human rights, gay rights, the status of rural persons, national security law, and constitutional law. Cosponsoring the event is the California International Law Center, where I serve as Fellow.
Session topics include "Human Rights Under Stress," "The Concept of Asia in International Law," "Lost in Translation?." The symposium features a keynote address by Chicago Law Professor Martha Nussbaum (left); among those presenting papers will be 2 of IntLawGrrls' guests/alumnae, Afra Afsharipour and Lisa R. Pruitt.
The event is all day and free; details here.

For world's women, recession goes on

(My thanks to IntLawGrrls for the opportunity to contribute this guest post about my scholarship on women and international economic law)

Goldman Sachs may be out of the woods, but the Great Recession is not over for the world’s women.

Will it ever be?

Consider these "Facts & Figures on Women, Poverty & Economics," compiled by UNIFEM, the U.N. Development Fund for Women:

► Women perform 66 percent of the world’s work, produce 50 percent of the food, but earn 10 percent of the income and own 1 percent of the property.
► Women constitute around 60% to 80% percent of the export manufacturing workforce in the developing world, a sector the World Bank expects to shrink significantly during the economic crisis.
► The global economic crisis is expected to plunge a further 22 million women into unemployment, which would lead to a female unemployment rate of 7.4 percent (versus 7 percent of male unemployment).

The chasm between the rich and the poor has become unfathomable.

As a recent U.N. study explains, global wealth is distributed "as if one person in a group of ten takes 99% of the total pie and the others share the remaining 1%." Few argue that this is inevitable or unimportant, but there is little consensus on how to proceed.

What should be done?

Who should do it?

These questions should not be left entirely to politicians, economists, and celebrities.

In a recent article, "Theories of Poverty/The Poverty of Theory," 2009 Brigham Young Law Review 381, I consider the usefulness (or not) of legal theory. The article explains how liberal theories in particular dominate post-Cold War approaches to poverty, as shown in three major legal instruments. It then introduces other theories of poverty, those of liberalism’s 'discontents,' conspicuously absent from post-Cold War discourse. The article concludes by focusing on the limits of theory itself in a liberal international system that has neither the legal muscle to effectively address global poverty nor the political will to develop it.

A second article, "Jam Tomorrow: The Limits of International Economic Law," forthcoming in the Boston College Third World Journal, asks whether existing international economic law -- including the law governing and generated by the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and the World Bank -- has the capacity to realize distributive justice. The question takes on special relevance with the election of an American President explicitly committed to reducing economic inequality (at least domestically).

"Distributive justice" is an ambiguous goal. If we simply mean "more fair than what we have now," "distributive justice" is within easy reach, since we could hardly do worse. As a threshold question, accordingly, it should be established what, exactly, is required for actual "distributive justice." I take as a starting point the relatively modest objective of the Millennium Development Goals — to halve the number living in extreme poverty, i.e., subsisting on less than $1 a day, by 2015. As economist Jeffrey Sachs points out, the wealth is still there. It is just a matter of moving it around.

"Jam Tomorrow" argues that this is not going to happen, because:

► 1st, this is not an objective of international economic law; and

► 2d, even if the political will were there, it would not happen because "international economic law" is not a coherent legal subject with the capacity to make it happen. Neoliberalism cannot be relied upon to produce distributive justice, but neoliberalism is not the only game in town.

Constructive alternatives?

Microfinance is fine, but markets are no silver bullet. For further thought, see, for example:

► Human Rights And The Global Marketplace: Economic, Social And Cultural Dimensions, by Jeanne M. Woods, Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, and IntLawGrrl Hope Lewis, Northeastern University School of Law;

► Dr. Martha Nussbaum, University of Chicago Law School, on the capabilities approach, in her 2001 book Women and Human Development; and

► The brilliant essay on "Exploitation" by Dr. Susan Marks, King's College London, in the 2008 collection that she edited, entitled International Law on the Left.

(credit for photo of food charity in Australia; credit for woman at handloom in India)

Aren't there any influential women thinkers?

Brian Leiter has opened a poll on his Law School blog on who the “most important thinker in American law” in the 20^th century was/is. All the eleven individuals named on the poll are, without question, influential legal thinkers. Here’s the list:
► Bruce Ackerman
► Guido Calabresi
► Benjamin Cardozo
► Ronald Dworkin
► Richard Epstein
► Lon Fuller
► Henry M Hart Jnr
► Kart Llewellyn
► Richard Posner
► Roscoe Pound
► Herbert Wechsler

They are not all American, which I guess must mean that Leiter intended to ask who had the most impact on American legal thought generally rather than who was the most influential American thinker. In addition, all of the individuals on the list are lawyers or legal philosophers—non-lawyers like Foucault (left), for example, make no appearance. Most strikingly, perhaps, is the complete absence of women thinkers on the list. What might the explanations be? Well, let us look first at the selection criteria used to put the list together:

(1) for those born in the 19th-century, most of the thinker's important work must have been done in the 20th-century; (2) those thinkers who are still alive must have entered the profession in the 1960s or earlier; (3) the thinker must have made contributions in more than one field; (4) the thinker's contributions must have had a wide-ranging impact on American legal thinking and scholarship.

These selection criteria themselves make the inclusion of women somewhat difficult on the list—entering the academic profession as a woman in the 1960s or earlier was a particularly difficult task, although of course if the third criterion were interpreted as meaning ‘entering the legal profession including entering law school’ in the 1960s or earlier many more female scholars may be eligible for the list.
If we were to put together a list that was more inclusive—let’s say one that did not have the ‘entered the profession in the 1960s’ cut-off point (which seems to somewhat undermine the impact of those scholars who entered later and still managed to have an enormous influence on legal thought)—who might we include on such a list? Some examples come immediately to my mind: Martha Nussbaum (pictured right), Ann Marie Slaughter, Martha Fineman, Kimberlé Crenshaw and Margaret Radin, for example.
What are your thoughts on the list, the selection criteria, and the women thinkers who have had the most influence on American legal thought?