Law professors Karla McKanders, Mae Quinn and Jennifer Hendricks.

By Gregory M. Stein

Professors Jennifer S. Hendricks, Karla M. McKanders, and Mae C. Quinn of the UT College of Law gave a presentation and led a discussion about the status of women in the legal academy at the University of Baltimore Feminist Legal Conference on March 6, 2009. Building on the work of some of America’s leading feminist scholars, these three law professors are working to improve the status of women scholars.

Various scholars have suggested that the under-representation of women in the most prestigious legal journals may result because many women have not yet perfected the “audacity factor” needed to ensure that their articles are placed in these leading journals. Building on this idea, Hendricks, McKanders, and Quinn led a forum that considered the merits of perfecting the audacity factor, and they brainstormed audacious and other possible reform strategies.

The three professors began their discussion at the conference by summarizing the leading work in the field. They then offered their own accounts of striving to produce and promote quality scholarship, including participation in the UT College of Law’s “Half-Baked Lunch” scholarship series, an all-women faculty scholarship “boot camp,” and a week-long “Law Women Writing Retreat.” These personal examples kicked off discussion of the pros and cons of such tactics. Ultimately, Hendricks, McKanders, and Quinn hope to come up with ways in which women can move forward with a practical feminist agenda. Perhaps, they suggest, implementing this agenda may require redefining the very criteria that exist for measuring success in the legal academy.

Jennifer Hendricks joined the faculty of the UT College of Law in 2005. Her scholarship focuses on sex equality and equal protection rights; federal-state relations; civil procedure; and the electoral process. A graduate of Swarthmore College and Harvard Law School, Hendricks served as a research assistant to Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe and clerk to the Honorable Karen Nelson Moore of the United States Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. She also practiced law at a private law firm in Helena, Montana, where her practice focused on discrimination, products liability, environmental protection, media law, and constitutional litigation.

Karla McKanders became a member of the UT Law Faculty in 2008. She previously taught at Villanova Law School as a Reuschlein Clinical Teaching Fellow. During her fellowship, she focused on representing immigrants in asylum matters before the Department of Homeland Security and immigration judges. Previously, she practiced with a Detroit, Michigan, law firm specializing in labor and employment law. McKanders has served as a law clerk to the Honorable Damon J. Keith of the United States Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Her current research focuses on civil rights, immigration, and asylum law and policy. She is a graduate of Spelman College and Duke University School of Law.

Mae Quinn joined the UT College of Law faculty in 2005 after practicing law for several years as a New York City public defender, where she represented indigent criminal defendants in trials, appeals, and post-conviction proceedings. Previously, she was an associate with a prominent white-collar criminal defense law firm in New York and helped oversee a project relating to the implications of problem-solving courts for the Center for Court Innovation. Before coming to UT, Quinn taught as an E. Barrett Prettyman clinical fellow in Georgetown University’s Criminal Justice Clinic and as an adjunct professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. She also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Jack B. Weinstein of the United States District Court in Brooklyn, New York. Quinn is a graduate of the State University of New York at Albany, received her J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law, and received her LL.M. degree from Georgetown University Law Center.