News Archive

Professor Mary Harter Mitchell’s Women and Law Class hosted a visit by a very special speaker in March of this year—United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  Following her March 8, 2007 appearance for the James P. White Lecture on Legal Education, Ginsburg visited the class on March 9, 2007 and spoke about the evolution of the Supreme Court's jurisprudence of equal rights for women, a jurisprudence which Justice Ginsburg played a major role in shaping.

“It was a high point of the class, and of my own career, to welcome Justice Ginsburg to the new Women and Law class this spring,” Professor Mitchell said. “With this new course on Women and Law, Dean Susanah Mead’s successful term as first female Dean of the law school, and increasing numbers of females joining the faculty, this was a good time to recognize persons such as Justice Ginsburg who have worked and are still working toward the goal of full equality for women in the legal profession.”

The class on Women and Law was offered for the first time in the spring semester 2007. Mitchell says the class was a collaborative effort with twelve teachers co-teaching the course. Law school faculty in volved in the course included Professors Karen E. Bravo, Robert Brookins, Jennifer A. Drobac, Maria Pabon Lopez, Mary Harter Mitchell, Novella Nedeff, Antony Page, Florence Wagman Roisman, and Mary Therese Wolf. Alumni Kathleen Surina Grove, ‘77 (Director, Office for Women, IUPUI) and Ruth Reichard, ‘85(retired judge) also taught parts of the course, as did Ellen Andersen (Professor of Political Science, IUPUI). Professor Frances Watson Hardy and librarian Debra Denslaw also helped plan the 3-hour elective course covering a variety of legal topics of special significance to women. The topics included Introduction to Critical Perspectives on Law; History of Women’s Movements and Legal Reforms; Introduction to Feminist Legal Theory; Discrimination in the Workplace; Sexual Harassment; The Psychology of Discrimination; Women and Poverty; Women and Housing; Rape; Family Violence; Pornography and the First Amendment; Motherhood; Reproductive Freedom; Women and Crime; Women and Prison; Women and Immigration; Women and International Law; Human Trafficking; Women and Education; Women in the Legal Profession; Women and Legal Education.