Correction: Diane Schulder taught the first Women and the Law course at Penn, not NYU, because "NYU was not yet ready," as she reports in a fine 2012 article--meaning that NYU Law, contrary to widespread reports (including in Equal) did not offer America's first course on women and law. (Correction date: May 8, 2014)
With thanks and apologies to Diane Abrams, formerly Diane Schulder, I learned on May 8, 2014, that p. 19 of Equal needs to be corrected.
Diane Schulder taught the first course in Women and the Law at the University of Pennsylvania, and she then taught the first seminar in Women and the Law at NYU Law School, a combination that is little known.
As I've learned from Ms. Abrams, the story is quite interesting. She tells this story well in her fascinating article, "Brains vs. Beauty: How the 1968 Miss America Pageant led to the First 'Women in Law' Course in America," Women Lawyers Journal, Volume 97, Numbers 3 & 4, 2012.
After being asked in 1968 to serve as attorney for Peggy Dobbins, a leader of the famous protest against the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City, Ms. Abrams received an invitation from Ms. Dobbins' to join a consciousness-raising group, and Ms. Abrams' article for Women Lawyers Journal picks up the story from there:
Diane Schulder taught the first course in Women and the Law at the University of Pennsylvania, and she then taught the first seminar in Women and the Law at NYU Law School, a combination that is little known.
As I've learned from Ms. Abrams, the story is quite interesting. She tells this story well in her fascinating article, "Brains vs. Beauty: How the 1968 Miss America Pageant led to the First 'Women in Law' Course in America," Women Lawyers Journal, Volume 97, Numbers 3 & 4, 2012.
After being asked in 1968 to serve as attorney for Peggy Dobbins, a leader of the famous protest against the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City, Ms. Abrams received an invitation from Ms. Dobbins' to join a consciousness-raising group, and Ms. Abrams' article for Women Lawyers Journal picks up the story from there:
"I took Peggy Dobbins up on her invitation. The women’s consciousness-raising group was vibrant and exciting. A few law students from New York University School of Law were participants and said they were interested in having a Women and the Law course taught at the school. Such a course had never been taught at any American university, and the time seemed ripe. After the consciousness-raising session, I was so inspired that I went home that very night and began to write the outline for the Women and the Law course. Leo Kanowitz, who wrote Women and the Law: The Unfinished Revolution (1970), had begun publishing and his writings proved very helpful.
"The law students lobbied to get the Women and the Law course offered at NYU. But, unfortunately, NYU was not yet ready for such an undertaking, so I contacted a mentor of mine, Professor A. Leo Levin, who was a highly respected and well-loved law professor, as well as Vice Provost at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Levin was able to arrange for the two of us to teach a Women and the Law course together in the Spring Semester of 1969, at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. I took the train to Philadelphia once a week and taught the course with Professor Levin. The course was a great success.
"As luck would have it, Professor Levin was a colleague and close friend of the then dean of NYU Law School, Robert B. McKay. Levin’s strong, positive recommendation, the continued lobbying of the women law students at NYU, together with a big change in the environment favoring women’s rights and more student power, resulted in the course being instituted at NYU Law School in the Fall of 1969, which I taught as a seminar for third-year law students.
"As it turned out, things dovetailed nicely. Robin Morgan, one of the organizers of the Miss America Pageant demonstration, called to ask if she could include my outline for the course in her forthcoming book, Sisterhood is Powerful (Random House, 1970). The chapter, entitled 'Does the Law Oppress Women?' was a footnoted discussion of the contents of my proposed course and was divided into five sections: Civil Rights; Employment; Marital Relationship; Welfare Law; and Criminal Law.
"Morgan explained: 'This article is based on the outline of what will be the first law school seminar on sex discrimination in U. S. history, to be taught by Diane B. Schulder, at New York University.' Morgan’s book became one of the first widely disseminated anthologies of new feminist writings."
"The law students lobbied to get the Women and the Law course offered at NYU. But, unfortunately, NYU was not yet ready for such an undertaking, so I contacted a mentor of mine, Professor A. Leo Levin, who was a highly respected and well-loved law professor, as well as Vice Provost at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Levin was able to arrange for the two of us to teach a Women and the Law course together in the Spring Semester of 1969, at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. I took the train to Philadelphia once a week and taught the course with Professor Levin. The course was a great success.
"As luck would have it, Professor Levin was a colleague and close friend of the then dean of NYU Law School, Robert B. McKay. Levin’s strong, positive recommendation, the continued lobbying of the women law students at NYU, together with a big change in the environment favoring women’s rights and more student power, resulted in the course being instituted at NYU Law School in the Fall of 1969, which I taught as a seminar for third-year law students.
"As it turned out, things dovetailed nicely. Robin Morgan, one of the organizers of the Miss America Pageant demonstration, called to ask if she could include my outline for the course in her forthcoming book, Sisterhood is Powerful (Random House, 1970). The chapter, entitled 'Does the Law Oppress Women?' was a footnoted discussion of the contents of my proposed course and was divided into five sections: Civil Rights; Employment; Marital Relationship; Welfare Law; and Criminal Law.
"Morgan explained: 'This article is based on the outline of what will be the first law school seminar on sex discrimination in U. S. history, to be taught by Diane B. Schulder, at New York University.' Morgan’s book became one of the first widely disseminated anthologies of new feminist writings."
I had read the information in Sisterhood is Powerful, quoted above, and had relied on similar information, omitting mention of a course at Penn, in the fine early textbook, Barbara Allen Babcock, Ann E. Freedman, Eleanor Holmes Norton, and Susan C. Ross, Sex Discrimination and the Law: Cases and Remedies (Boston, 1975), p. v (which says the first of America's "student-generated courses in Women and the Law" was taught in fall 1969 at NYU), as well as in Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Women in Law, 2nd ed. (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1993), p. 71 (which mentions Diane Abrams role as "the first instructor for the seminar" at NYU but does not mention an earlier course at Penn). All of these sources, while omitting mention of Penn, of course do not contradict the fact that Diane Abrams co-taught a course at Penn in spring 1969. I had also consulted a valuable early typescript, titled “Courses
on Women and the Law” (mimeo prepared for conference at Yale Law School), date
c. December 1971, in files of Ann E. Freedman, as of 6/1/98; that typescript states that the "first time" at Penn that a "survey course" on women and the law was taught was in spring 1971, taught by Judge Norma Shapiro. A book that I had consulted but without noticing its discussion of early courses, until it was pointed out to me by Diane Abrams, is American Feminism,
by Ginette Castro; Castro on p. 219 mentions a course at Penn but seems to omit mention of NYU when she refers to
"the appearance of specific courses on women and the law, such as the one
taught by the feminist jurist Diane Schulder at the University of Pennsylvania,
beginning in 1969." Diane Abrams' article surely adds important information to what has been a much-discussed topic, the origin of the first courses on women in the law.
While writing Equal I had thought that I should try to interview Diane Abrams, but I failed to connect with her. I regret both the lost opportunity and the resulting error. And I greatly appreciate her decision to inform me about this error and to write her article for Women Lawyers Journal, which is available at <http://www.law.nyu.edu/sites/default/files/upload_documents/Brains%20v%20Beauty.pdf> .
-- Fred Strebeigh, 5/8/2014
While writing Equal I had thought that I should try to interview Diane Abrams, but I failed to connect with her. I regret both the lost opportunity and the resulting error. And I greatly appreciate her decision to inform me about this error and to write her article for Women Lawyers Journal, which is available at <http://www.law.nyu.edu/sites/default/files/upload_documents/Brains%20v%20Beauty.pdf> .
-- Fred Strebeigh, 5/8/2014
Further corrections?
I will gladly add further corrections here, if I learn about other errors in Equal. -- Fred Strebeigh