No Matter How Loud I Shout: Legal Writing as Gender Sidelining

Abstract

In this essay, I argue that viewing legal writing as a mode of gender sidelining uncovers the urgency for law schools to provide unitary tenure for legal writing programs across all law schools. I recognize that many legal writing faculty are employed under ABA Standard 405(c), a seemingly second-best option to traditional tenure tracks. As Professor Kathy Stanchi (UNLV) comments, however, while Standard 405(c) offers some respite from “job insecurity, intellectual disparagement, and pay inequity,” it ultimately serves as an “institutionalized bar to professional advancement divorced from any reasonable measure of merit.” This essay takes Stanchi’s framing of 405(c) as an irrational categorical exclusion of tenure despite meritorious performance, and extends her reasoning as further evidence of gender sidelining.

Keywords: gender sidelining, legal writing, 405c status, tenure-track