Last year’s Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention featured few women. Out of 110 people listed on the program, looks like only 10 women participated, and 3 of them were “moderators” rather than speakers. One of the all-male panels convened around Intellectual Property law, a subject area in which there is a huge number of successful women law profs and practitioners. Half of the Leiter Citation Index IP Law “Top 10” are female. Yet none of the five panel participants were. This doesn’t look accidental to me.
–Ann Bartow
Ann,
I think it’s helpful to be more particular here (a theme I’ve been pushing in the VC thread, but with little success), no matter which side you’re on.
The symposium itself was about limited government, and in particular about conservative/libertarian responses to liberal critiques relating to the role of government in the area of culture and international affairs. That particular panel was on “Intellectual Property: Does IP Harm or Help Developing Countries?”.
I confess I haven’t listened to the MP3, but I gather that the main point of the panel was to host a response to critiques generally arising from the left that IP laws harm developing countries. (I assume 1 or 2 of the folks on the panel were making that critique, and the rest of the people on the panel were responding to it, but I’m not sure as I don’t actually work in this area.)
Assuming I’m right about that, who are the women you would have invited? Let’s say you’re coming up with a list of 3 or 4 to take a position against the liberal critique and 1 or 2 to take a position for it to speak on the topic of the panel. Of course, we don’t know if some of them were invited, as we only know the panel that resulted rather than who was asked. But let’s assume that everyone who might be asked would accept.
Ruth Okediji, Sri Ragavan, Wendy Gordon, Jane Ginsburg, Marci Hamilton, Margo Bagley, Clarissa Long, Patricia Bellia, Doris Long, Cynthia Ho, Rebecca Bratspies, Madhavi Sunder, Sonia Katyal, Arti Rai, Bobbi Kwall, Maggie Chon, Madeleine Placensia, and that’s just off the top of my head, and in a hurry. And these are just Americans; there are a lot of women in Canada doing this kind of work as well.
Thanks, Ann. Which in the group would be among the 3-4 against the standard liberal critique? I have a few guesses, but I don’t now the area well enough.
Clarissa, Doris, Jane, Marci, Bobbi, and Patricia, though they would not all make the same sorts of arguments.
Incidentally, I think people are reluctant to be particular on this issue because it feels awkward to talk about people publicly like this. I worry about offending IP folks by mischaracterizing them (or worse, leaving them out!) and apologize in advance if I’ve done so here.
Thanks. I know that Marci is a pretty regular speaker at Federalist Society events (as far as I know, she is a member of the Federalist Society, and I think the only member among this group).
I knew Marci in law school She was two years ahead of me and legendary for being the E-I-C of the law review.