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Abstract
Until recently, women were rarely found on the faculties of the nation's law schools. The few who were tended to teach at their alma maters and specialized in only a few subject areas. This article reports the extent to which women have become part of the tenure track faculties of the nation's law schools. The author finds that women have made considerable progress toward becoming tenure track law teachers. She finds, however, that women law professors continue to be academically inbred in disproportionate numbers and overrepresented in some subject areas.
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- Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 1980
References
1 Data came from the Association of American Law School, Directory of Teachers in Member Schools 1950–51 (St. Paul: West Publishing Co., 1950).Google Scholar
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4 It should not be inferred from the concomitant overrepresentation of women among the nation's law school librarians and their underrepresentation among the nation's tenure track law teachers in the 1950s and 1960s, that women librarians were necessarily “faculty quality” persons relegated to the library. It appears that the qualifications necessary to become law school librarians have, in general, been different from those required to become members of the tenure track teaching faculties, a fact which presumably explains why law school librarians as a group have never had the same status as teaching faculty. The fact remains, however, that prior to the late 1960s running a law school library was a permissible activity for women lawyers while teaching in a law school was apparently not.Google Scholar
5 Data on the percentage of women in the legal profession came from U.S., Department of Labor, Changes in Women's Occupations, 1940–50, Women's Bureau Bulletin No. 253, at 57 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1954).Google Scholar
6 Data came from the Directory of Teachers, supra note 1, which included only those law schools that were members of the American Association of Law Schools. During the 1950s and 1960s, there were a number of women on law school faculties in full-time, nonlibrarian, non-tenure-track teaching positions, many of whom were married to tenure track teachers at the same institutions. As a result of the antinepotism rules in effect at most institutions during this time, only one spouse was permitted to hold a tenure track position at an institution, which meant that in most cases the husband held the tenure track position and the wife held the non-tenure-track position.Google Scholar
7 Data on the percentage of women in the legal profession came from Census of Population: 1960, vol. 1, at 528–33 table 202 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1962). Data on the number of law professors came from the Directory of Law Teachers in American Bar Association Approved Law Schools 1960 (St. Paul: West Publishing Co., 1960), which included only those law schools that were approved by the ABA.Google Scholar
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12 Id. Google Scholar
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23 In some studies of academic inbreeding a distinction has been made between “true” inbreds, or those who accept positions at their alma maters immediately upon graduation, and “silver-corded” inbreds, or those who accept positions at their alma maters after having taught elsewhere. No such distinction was made in this study, however, as a result of the unusual nature of the field of law school teaching. Very few lawyers (only about 6 percent) who enter tenure track teaching do so immediately upon receiving their J.D. degrees. The overwhelming majority either clerk for judges and/or practice law before entering tenure track teaching. Consequently, most law teachers might be considered “silver-corded” inbreds for almost all had been employed elsewhere before accepting positions at their alma maters. This prior employment, however, was in a line of work other than tenure track teaching, so perhaps they were not really “silver-corded” inbreds after all. If the prior nonacademic employment of most law teachers were ignored, then only those who had held tenure track positions at another law school before accepting a similar position at their aha mater could be considered “silver-corded” inbreds and all the others would be “true” inbreds. Interinstitutional mobility in tenure track law teaching is remarkably low, however. Indeed, less than 10 percent of the law teachers who were considered academically inbred in this study had taught at more than one law school. Because of the difficulty of distinguishing between “true” and “silver-corded” inbreds among the nation's law teachers, it was decided that in this study that any law teacher who was teaching in 1975–76 at the same law school from which they had received their J.D. degree would be considered academically inbred.Google Scholar
24 This might have been a consequence of the fact that, in many law schools, the promotion from associate to full professor has essentially been automatic as compared to that from assistant to associate professor. That is, in virtually all law schools the normal progression is from assistant to associate to full professor with the most critical promotion decision occuring between the ranks of assistant to associate professor. In these schools, the promotion from associate to full professor is frequently a relatively automatic decision. In a handful of law schools either the rank of assistant or associate professor does not exist. In these schools the critical promotion decision occurs either between assistant and full professor (e.g., Harvard) or associate and full professor (e.g., Kansas). For purposes of analysis in this study, the promotion from assistant to full professor was treated as if it were from assistant to associate professor.Google Scholar
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27 The 28 substantive areas of law teaching were derived from the Association of American Law Schools' list of 92 courses that has been used for a number of years to prepare the Directory of Law Teachers. The 92 courses were collapsed into 28 using the classificatory schemes of the substantive areas of law developed by Donald W. Jackson & E. Gordon Gee, Bread and Butter?: Electives in American Legal Education (New York: Council on Legal Education for Professional Responsibility, 1975); Edward O. Laumann & John P. Heinz, Specialization and Prestige in the Legal Profession: The Structure of Deference, 1977 A.B.F. Res. J. 155; Ronald M. Pipkin, A Paper on Law School Curricula from the Law Student Activity Patterns Project (Draft 1977).Google Scholar
28 The areas of advanced civil procedure, antitrust, evidence, legal history/jurisprudence, torts, and urban/zoning law were disproportionately dominated by the more experienced teachers, and men were disproportionately represented among the more experienced law teachers. This fact contributed to but did not entirely account for the differences noted between men and women in these areas. In all other areas, the differences between men and women were unaffected by the length of time a person had been in tenure track law teaching. That is, the differences between men and women were similar among those who had been teaching only a short time and among those who had been teaching a long time.Google Scholar
29 Data came from the Directory of Law Teachers for 1967 through 1979, which included only those law schools that were approved by the ABA.Google Scholar
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