Boston University School of Law

The 1L feminine experience is a paradox.  Picture a modern day classroom filled with women reading century-old cases absent a feminine perspective.  Women are systemically removed from the picture.  As a class, we collectively go weeks without hearing about a female party or from a female judge (save Ginsburg’s use of female-gendered pronouns in her opinions, which are few and far between).

This is no fault of the faculty or curriculum — this is a universal norm, I’d venture to guess.  As 1L’s, we are expected to learn the fundamental law; thus, we are reading excerpts from a male-dominated narrative written many lifetimes ago.  I just wonder to what extent the legal opinions (and therefore, the law) would be different if women had access to the legal system earlier in history.

In short, I can’t help but wish that Posner was a woman.  Instead, I’m left with a squib on battered women, a diva named Lady Duff-Gordon, and “poor, old” Miss Davis…ode to the marginalized victims of the 1L experience!