Feminist Legal Theory

This chapter presents an interview with Catharine MacKinnon, the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan and James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She is a leading feminist scholar, activist, and theorist on sex equality issues, both domestically and on the international stage. She has done pioneering work establishing the framework for sex harassment claims and legal challenges to pornography. She is currently serving as United Nations Special Adviser on Gender Crimes. Topics covered during the interview include her training prior to law school and graduate school; factors that helped shape her worldview; her encounter with Marxist theory; her thoughts about the role of consent in legal doctrine with respect to rape; her views on liberal theory and the deficiencies of liberal feminist theory; and her belief that pornography and rape are part of a continuum in terms of sex harassment and other sex acts.

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