In this Critical Review Essay, Professor Obiora brings together work from many traditions to address the issue of how differences among students beyond gender–and, in particular, differences in terms of race–might affect legal education. After situating the question in terms of the literature on legal education generally (including standard critiques), she delves into work on gender–in law generally, in kgal education, in moral development and learning, in language use, and in education generally–to elucidate hypothesized differences between men and women that might affect differential experience in law school. She then moves on to make the picture more complex by drawing on work that indicates cross-cultural and class-based variation around conceptions of gender. Using research by sociolinguists on educational processes and work by historians and feminists of color on the intersection of gender, race, and class, Professor Obiora suggests specific ways in which women of color and working-class women might diverge from middle-class white women in their approach to kgal education. In particular, she notes: (1) different speech patterns and linguistic socialization lend different meaning to “voice,”“silence,” and “interruption” in classroom interactions; (2) the historical distinction between public and private spheres has been much more sharply drawn for upper-middle-class white women than it has been for black and working-class women; (3) the exclusion of black women from male “chivalry” and feminine idealization necessitated the development of agency; black women could not afford to be passive. Given these points of divergence, but also given convergences among the experiences of women, Obiora suggests a complex and contextually sensitive approach to the issue of gender in legal education, one that takes seriously the differences that exist among women. Because of the richness of the literature reviewed here, we include a Bibliography at the end of the article.

Statements regarding the ratio of erroneous acquittals to erroneous convictions are often thought to have clear implications for standards of proof. For example, Blackstone's comment that “it is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer’ is believed by many to imply a precise numerical value for proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Specifically, jurors should vote to convict only if they are at least 91 % certain of the defendant's guilt. Unfortunately, the belief that this decision threshold will lead to the desired ratio of judicial errors is simply incorrect. Depending on (a) the accuracy with which juries discriminate between truly innocent and truly guilty defendants and (b) the proportion of defendants who are truly guilty, this probabilistic standard of proof may lead to any ratio of judicial errors, including those favoring conviction of the innocent over acquittal of the guilty. Although standards of proof cannot be equated with error ratios in a simple manner, the problem lies not with probabilistic decision thresholds but with the desire to achieve a certain error ratio.

Gerald Rosenberg's lucid, insightful, and provocative review of my book Rights at Work strikes me as quite positive in several different, even divergent senses of the word. The review is positive first of all in that it extends copious compliments to my efforts and achievements. Rosenberg uses lots of laudatory adjectives in describing various characteristics of the book and identifies several ways in which the book makes important contributions to scholarship. Even the specific criticisms in the second half of the review are framed in ways that recognize virtues along with alleged limits or shortcomings in my work. It is always nice to receive reviews that are positive in this sense, and I thank him for such an affirmative appraisal.