Feminist Law Professors

The University of Baltimore invites applications and nominations for the position of Dean of the School of Law.

The University of Baltimore School of Law is a vibrant, urban law school that is deeply engaged in the local, state, national and global legal communities. In early 2013, the Law School will complete construction of a new, 12-story platinum LEED certified facility that will support innovative pedagogy, flexible spaces for faculty and student interaction, a state-of-the-art library, and student-centered services. In recent years, the Law School has hired dynamic scholar-teachers, begun a medical-legal partnership with The Johns Hopkins University, revamped its curriculum to emphasize critical thinking, and obtained a multi-year institution funding commitment that will increase the law school’s expenditure budget.

The new Dean will have the opportunity to build on the Law School’s momentum and to impart a vision for a 21st Century law school. As the Law School’s chief academic officer, the Dean will be expected to provide intellectual and administrative leadership, guiding the Law School in fulfilling its continuing goal of offering cutting-edge education for current and future generations of students.

The School of Law is committed to producing graduates who are critical thinkers and practice- ready lawyers. The School’s nationally renowned clinical program offers nine clinics, and almost all students take advantage of the school’s experiential learning opportunities. All first-year students take an expanded legal writing program that integrates a doctrinal course with a writing course, and also enroll in one of five Law in Context offerings, which are designed to give students theoretical understandings of the law. There are five dynamic centers at the Law School: The Center for Families, Children and the Courts; the Center on Applied Feminism; the Center for Sport and the Law; the Center for International and Comparative Law; and the Stephen L. Snyder Center for Litigation Skills. The Law School prepares students for a global legal practice by offering programs such as a Master of Laws in the Law of the United States; longstanding study abroad programs in international and comparative law in Scotland, Israel, and Curacao; and exchanges between faculty and students at the Law School and international institutions.

The School of Law was founded in 1925 and is part of the State of Maryland higher education system. It is the sixth-largest public law school in the country, with approximately 1,100 students. Students come from 31 states and 14 countries; they are graduates of 153 different colleges and universities. Eighteen percent are students of color and 30 percent are from out of state. Our students’ entering credentials continue to rise; the median LSAT score in 2011 was 156. There are 57 full-time faculty members, of whom 47 have tenure.

The School of Law is part of the University of Baltimore, which is one of the Carnegie Foundation’s first “community engaged” universities. The University enrolls more than 6,500 students and is comprised of four academic units: The Yale Gordon College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Public Affairs, the Merrick School of Business, and the School of Law. The University is located in the cultural heart of Baltimore, near museums, concert halls, and educational arts institutions. The Law School is deeply ingrained in the Maryland legal community, and its dedicated alumni actively participate in the life of the Law School, teach as adjunct professors, and support current students through a wide range of mentoring activities. Furthermore, the wide alumni network in Maryland provides current students with numerous internship and career opportunities. The Law School’s dynamic Law and Career Development Office assists students in taking advantage of these opportunities and has expanded the schools’ reach throughout Maryland and Washington D.C.

Candidates must possess a J.D. or its equivalent from an accredited institution, progressive leadership experience, excellent interpersonal skills, and outstanding achievement that fulfills the School’s requirements for tenure at the rank of Professor. Strong preference is for someone who has had administrative experience, a record of scholarship within the field of law, and fiscal and fundraising expertise. The ability to build upon and further develop good relations with legislators, the Bar, state agencies, alumni, and donors is crucial.

The University of Baltimore is committed to diversity and welcomes applications and nominations of women, minorities, and others whose background and viewpoints contribute to the diversity of our institution.

Greenwood/Asher & Associates, Inc. is assisting the University of Baltimore in the search. Initial screening of applications will begin immediately and continue until an appointment is made. For best consideration, materials should be provided by January 27, 2012. Nominations should include the name, position, address, and telephone number of the nominee. Application materials should include a letter addressing how the candidate’s experiences match the position requirements, a resume, and contact information for at least five references. Submission of materials as MS Word attachments is strongly encouraged.

Confidential inquiries, nominations, and application materials should be directed to:
Jan Greenwood or Betty Turner Asher
Greenwood/Asher & Associates, Inc.
42 Business Center Drive, Suite 206
Miramar Beach, FL 32550
Phone: 850.650.2277τFax: 850.650.2272

E-mail: jangreenwood@greenwoodsearch.com
bettyasher@greenwoodsearch.com

For more information about the University of Baltimore visit the website at
www.ubalt.edu

The University of Baltimore is an AA/EOE employer.

The Feminist Legal Theory Collaborative Research Network (CRN) is a newly-constituted  group that seeks to bring together scholars across a range of fields who are interested in feminist legal theory. At our inaugural get-together at the Law and Society Association (LSA) meeting this past June, we decided to organize two events for the coming year. The first will be in Washington, D.C., in conjunction with the AALS annual meeting in January 2012. The second, and the subject of this call for papers, will take place in Honolulu, Hawaii, in conjunction with the LSA annual meeting, June 5-8, 2012.

We hope to organize a number of panels for this year’s LSA meeting; we would like to invite you to submit paper proposals for these panels. There is no single topic or theme to which paper submissions must conform: they should simply relate to feminist legal theory in some shape or form. We particularly welcome proposals which would permit us to collaborate with other CRNs, which have organized around topics such as Critical Research on Race and the Law, or Gender, Sexuality and the Law. Also, because the LSA meeting attracts scholars from other disciplines, we welcome multidisciplinary proposals. Our goal in organizing these panels is to stimulate focused discussion on papers on which scholars are currently working. Thus, while proposals may reference work which is well on the way to publication, we are particularly eager to solicit proposals for works-in-progress which are at an earlier stage, and which will benefit from the discussion that the panels will provide.

Our panels will utilize the LSA format, which requires four papers; but we will continue the approach that worked so well last June, when each paper had an assigned commentator who had read the paper closely and began the discussion. A committee of the CRN will assign individual papers to panels based on subject and then will ask CRN members to volunteer to serve as chairs of each panel. The chair will develop a 100-250 word description for the session and submit the session proposal to LSA before the upcoming December 6 deadline, so that each panelist can submit his or her proposal, using the panel number assigned. Chairs will also be responsible for recruiting commentators but may wait to do so until panels have been scheduled later this winter, so as to minimize conflict with paper presentations that commentators themselves may be doing at the meeting.

If you would like to submit a paper for one of the CRN panels, please do so by using the Feminist Legal Theory CRN TWEN page. TWEN is an online resource administered by Westlaw. If you haven’t yet registered for the TWEN page, signing up is easy. Just sign onto Westlaw, hit the tab on the top for “TWEN,” then click “Add Course,” and choose the “Feminist Legal Theory” CRN from the drop-down list of National TWEN Courses. Or, if you have a Westlaw OnePass as a faculty member, you can enter the Easy Course Access link below:

Easy Course Access Link:
http://lawschool.westlaw.com/shared/courselink.asp?course=113601&lID=4%3D2

If you enter through the Easy Course Access Link above, you will immediately see a link to the Feminist Legal Theory CRN TWEN page, and you should click on it.

If you aren’t enrolled on the TWEN page and you don’t have a Westlaw password, please email Kathy Abrams (krabrams@law.berkeley.edu) or Susan Appleton (appleton@wulaw.wustl.edu) and we’ll enroll you directly.

Once you arrive at the Feminist Legal Theory CRN TWEN page, by either of the above routes, look to the left hand margin for a tab to “June 2012 Law and Society – Sign-Ups and Paper Proposals.” When you click on it, you will see two threads under “topics.” One thread will permit you to post a paper proposal; the other will permit you to sign up as a commentator or panel chair. Just click on the thread you want to post to; you will then get a new screen that locates you within that thread: hit “reply” to post a reply to it. If you post a paper proposal, you should include your name, a title, and an abstract of 400-500 words.

Please submit all proposals for paper presentations by November 14, 2011. This will permit us to organize panels and submit them prior to the LSA’s deadline of December 6, 2011. We are aiming roughly for 6 to 8 sessions. If we receive too many proposals and cannot accept all for the CRN, we will notify you by November 28, 2011, so that you can submit an independent proposal to LSA. In addition, if you would like to serve as a chair or a commentator for one of our panels, or if you are already planning a LSA session with four panelists (and papers) that you would like to see included in the Feminist Legal Theory CRN, please let Kathy or Susan know.

In addition to these panels, we may try to utilize a more flexible format that the LSA also provides: the roundtable discussion. Roundtables are discussions that are not organized around papers, but rather invite several speakers to have an exchange focused on a specific topic of interest to the group (in this case, of interest to the CRN). If you have an idea relating to feminist legal theory that you think would work well in this format, please let Kathy or Susan know, as well.

Those of us who were present at last year’s meeting were delighted by the papers presented and the opportunity to connect with others in doing work on feminism and gender. We look forward to another terrific meeting in Hawaii.

Kathy Abrams
Susan Appleton
Beth Burkstrand-Reid
Donna Coker
Leigh Goodmark
Jennifer Koshan
Nancy Polikoff

–Jennifer Hendricks

Abstract submissions for the University of Baltimore’s Fifth Annual Feminist Legal Theory Conference, Applied Feminism and Democracy, are due Friday, October 14. The call for papers is here.