Blogging about an event in which you're a participant is a skill I have yet to master. Michigan State University College of Law's Gender and the Legal Profession's Pipeline to Power presented just that challenge. After two days of reflection on a well-conceived, constructed, and conducted symposium, here are some observations:
- If Harvard Law professor Nancy Gertner, Stanford Law's Deborah Rhode, and Michigan's own Julia Darlow are typical, the women at the forefront of the breakthroughs that began in the seventies remain passionate and committed to achieving equality. I didn't see any weariness, discouragement, or mellowing -- just energy, determination, wisdom, and humor.
- There was an explicit recognition that although lift-off to gender equality has taken place (the pipeline has been almost half full of women admitted to practice for a significant period of time), orbit has not been achieved. The statistics offered in the keynote address by Yale Law's Linda Greenhouse, who asked whether the pipeline is half full or half empty, underscored that point, and Rhode's opening plenary address built upon it.
- Depressingly, the same concern about a balance between professional demands and family life that dominated much of the conversation about gender and the profession in the seventies continues to be a dominant part of the conversation today. The law has addressed the old manifestations of overt discrimination, but discrimination today is more opaque and thus in some respects more difficult to address. Maryland School of Law's Paula Monopoli description of the ways in which the pipeline thwarts female scholars provided powerful illustration of the problem.
- In the "as if that isn't bad enough" vein, the symposium addressed the additional difficulties women of color face in navigating the pipeline to power. Iowa College of Law's Angela Onwuachi-Willig (a Michigan Law grad) made a particularly forceful argument for the intrinsic value of having judges of color represented on the bench, even when the judges themselves reject the importance of their race (e.g., Justice Thomas).
- The evidence that the pipeline is "leaking" women before they reach positions of power is irrefutable, but there is no consensus about cause. Side conversations at the symposium explored whether the main problem is the pipeline itself or the ambiguous ambition of the women within it. Nancy Gertner tends to the latter view, lamenting that women take themselves out of the pipeline in order to prepare for a hypothetical family life before even trying to compete within the traditional structure. (Note to self and Nancy: Those of us who have done it know it can be done; have we failed to emphasize the joys, or overemphasized the difficulties?)
- One hopeful sign concerning the persistent work/family life balance problem is that the concerns are now shared by many young male lawyers, an observation reinforced by thoughtful comments from some of the many male law students at the symposium.
- Women in the judiciary became a major focus of the symposium. Syracuse College of Law's Keith Bybee suggested that the media's infatuation with the dichotomous view of judges as either impartial arbiters or partisan policymakers has disadvantaged women in the selection process, and he advocated seizing the initiative by questioning why women should not be on the bench. Tulane's Sally Kenney's fascinating overview of women on state supreme courts reinforced the emerging theme that gender equality in the legal profession has not yet achieved orbit. The record includes evidence of reversals and deterioration in progress.
- Suk and Gertner had one of the most memorable interchanges of the symposium. Gertner's plenary address included the assertion that recent jurisprudence has effectively killed Title VII. For example, discrimination suits have little chance when otherwise relevant evidence is dismissed as "stray remarks," and discriminatory acts are "spliced and diced" into inoffensive bits of evidence (if you're not offending on a continuous basis, then sporadic outbursts of discrimination don't count). Suk wondered whether the anti-discrimination law framework is up to the task of providing meaningful relief, because it does not recognize many of the drivers of disparity, including the impact of our present scheme (or lack thereof) of family and medical leave.
- MSU College of Law continues to impress with its innovative, interdisciplinary, international approach to tackling major issues in the legal profession. Princeton's Carol Greenhouse offered a memorable anthropologist's view of the Sotomayor confirmation hearing and Cardozo Law's Julie Suk hooked us on a provocative quota theme and then took us on a whirlwind world-wide tour of approaches to the work-family conflict. And of course, the symposium's leaders, Hannah Brenner and Renee Knake, were particularly bold in reaching outside of the academy to invite the three living past women presidents of the State Bar, and our current President, Julie Fershtman, to offer their perspectives on the pipeline to power.
- Speaking of a promising developments in the pipeline to power, Brenner and Knake are examples themselves. The new generation of women scholars was in evidence everywhere at the symposium, and even online -- Brenner and Knake recruited Pace Law's Bridget Crawford to live-blog the symposium. Find the results here.
- What didn't get said? One question that remained unasked and unanswered at the end of the day was whether the presistent upheaval in the market for legal services offers a realistic opportunity to remake the legal profession in a manner that provides for a better work/life balance and thus encourages all lawyers in a path to both power and happiness. How about a new symposium, MSU College of Law -- "Toward a Sustainable, Sensible, and Satisfying Norm"?
