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MacKinnon, Catharine A.

Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law

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Catharine A. MacKinnon is the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan and the James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School (long-term). She holds a BA from Smith College, a JD from Yale Law School, and a PhD in political science from Yale, and specializes in sex equality issues under international and domestic (including comparative and constitutional) law.

Prof. MacKinnon pioneered the legal claim for sexual harassment and, with Andrea Dworkin, created ordinances recognizing pornography as a civil rights violation and the Swedish model for abolishing prostitution. The Supreme Court of Canada has largely accepted her approaches to equality, pornography, and hate speech, which have been influential internationally as well. Representing Bosnian women survivors of Serbian genocidal sexual atrocities, she won with co-counsel a damage award of $745 million in August 2000 in Kadic v. Karadzic under the Alien Tort Act, the first recognition of rape as an act of genocide.

Among the schools at which she has taught are Yale, Stanford, Chicago, Harvard, Osgoode Hall, Basel (Switzerland), Hebrew University (Jerusalem), and Columbia. She was awarded residential fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study, Stanford, the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, and the University of Cambridge.

Prof. MacKinnon's scholarly books include Sexual Harassment of Working Women (1979), Feminism Unmodified (1987), Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (1989), Only Words (1993), Women's Lives, Men's Laws (2005), Are Women Human? (2006), and the casebook Sex Equality (2001/2007). She is widely published in journals, the popular press, and many languages.

Prof. MacKinnon practices and consults nationally and internationally and works regularly with Equality Now, an NGO promoting international sex equality rights for women, and the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW). Serving as the first Special Gender Adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (The Hague) from 2008 to 2012, she implemented her concept "gender crime."

Studies document that Prof. MacKinnon is among the most widely-cited legal scholars in the English language.

Recent Publications

More Publications...

Co-author. "Sexual Violence." C. K. Nana, co-author. In The Oxford Companion to Comparative Politics, edited by J. Krieger, 2, 359-64. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2013.

"Intersectionality as Method: A Note." Signs 38, no. 4 (2013): 1019-30.

"Creating International Law: Gender as Leading Edge." Harv. J. L. & Gender 36, no. 1 (2013): 105-21.
Full Text: HEIN (UMich Users) | HEIN

Foreword to Symposium: Catherine MacKinnon. Tulsa L.Rev. 46, no. 1 (2012): 1-6.
Full Text: HEIN (UMich users) | HEIN | Westlaw

"Martinez Revisited." In The Indian Civil Rights Act at Forty, edited by K. A. Carpenter, M. L. M. Fletcher, and A. R. Riley, 27-38. Los Angeles: UCLA American Indian Studies Center, 2012.

"Gender in Constitutions." In The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Constitutional Law, edited by M. Rosenfeld and A. Sajó, 397-416. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Full Text: WWW

"Feminist Legal Theory." In Legal Intellectuals in Conversation: Reflections on the Construction of Contemporary American Legal Theory, edited by J. R. Hackney, Jr., 129-43. New York: New York University Press, 2012.

"Creating International Law: Gender as New Paradigm." In Non-State Actors, Soft Law and Protective Regimes, edited by C. Bailliet, 17-31. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2012.

"10 x 10 (American): Homage to Norman Dorsen." Int'l J. Const. L. 10, no. 3 (2012): 786-91.
Full Text: Oxford Journals (UMich users) | Oxford Journals

Foreword to Feminist Constitutionalism: Global Perspectives, by B. Baines, D. Barak-Erez, and T. Kahana, editors, ix-xii. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, (2012).

Foreword to Speech and Harm: Controversies over Free Speech, by I. Maitra and M. K. McGowan, editors, vi-xviii. Oxford: Oxford University Press, (2012).

"Trafficking, Prostitution, and Inequality." Harv. C. R. -C. L. L. Rev. 46, no. 2 (2011): 271-309.
Full Text: Hein (UMich users) | Hein | Westlaw

"Substantive Equality: A Perspective." Minn. L. Rev. 96, no. 2 (2011): 1-27.
Full Text: HEIN (UMich users) | HEIN | Westlaw | WWW

"Rantsev v. Chipre & Rusia, App. No. 25965/04 (Eur. Ct. H.R. Ene. 7, 2010)." In Anuario de Derechos Humanos, edited by C. Sarmiento R., 107-15, no. 7. Santiago, Chile: University of Chile, 2011.
Full Text: WWW

"Are Women Human?" In Women Worldwide: Transnational Feminist Perspectives on Women, edited by J. Lee and S. M. Shaw, 48-9. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011. (Originally published under the same title in Reflections on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, edited by B. van der Heijden and B. Tahzib-lie, 171-72. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1998.

"Gender--The Future." Constellations 17, no. 4 (2010): 504-11.
Full Text: Wiley (UMich users) | Wiley

"Engaged Scholarship as Method and Vocation." Yale J. L. & Feminism 22, no. 2 (2010): 193-205.
Full Text: HEIN (UMich users) | HEIN | Westlaw

"A Love Letter to Ruth Bader Ginsberg." Women's Rts. L. Rep. 31, no. 2/3 (2010): 177-84.
Full Text: HEIN (UMich users) | HEIN | Westlaw

"Prosecutor v. Nahimana, Barayagwiza, & Ngeze." Am. J. Int'l L. 103, no. 1 (2009): 97-103.
Full Text: HEIN (UMich users) | HEIN | Westlaw

"Giving Her Life." Introduction to Heide Hatry Heads and Tales: Twenty-Seven Stories and Twenty-Seven Portraits, by H. Hatry, et al.; 6-7. Milan: Edizioni Charta srl., 2009.

Recently Taught Courses

Curriculum Interest Areas

Activities

Gave the keynote address at the International Conference on Gender Crimes, sponsored by the public defender, UNIFEM, UNICEF, and the University of Buenos Aires School of Law, Buenos Aires, Argentina, June 2010.

Gave the keynote address at the Prostitution and Trafficking seminar at the University of Witswatersrand, sponsored by the South African Law Reform Commission, Johannesburg, South Africa, February 2010.

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