FEMINIST LEGAL SCHOLAR JUDITH RESNIK TO DELIVER
2006 COMMENCEMENT CONVOCATION ADDRESS

Judith Resnik '72, a leading legal scholar and a pioneer of the study of gender bias in the American legal system, will deliver this year's Commencement Convocation address, the President's Office has announced.

Now the Arthur Liman Professor of Law at Yale Law School, Resnik was a member of the Ninth Circuit Gender Bias Task Force, the first body to report on the effects of gender in the federal court system. Resnik joined Yale's faculty in 1997, when she founded the Arthur Liman Public Interest Program. She teaches courses on procedure, large-scale litigation, federal courts, federalism, feminist theory and gender (locally and globally) and serves as the co-chair of the Women's Faculty Forum at Yale University.

Resnik has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, testified before Congressional and judicial committees — most recently on the nomination of John J. Roberts Jr. to be chief justice of the United States — and published many widely cited works on legal issues. Her books include Processes of the Law: Understanding Courts and Their Alternatives and The Effects of Gender. She is currently at work on Representing Justice: From Renaissance Iconography to 21st-Century Courthouses.

Resnik has also published essays in the popular press; recent contributions include a discussion of legislation that stripped federal courts of jurisdiction over Guantanamo Bay detainees on Slate.com and a New York Times op-ed on the concentration of power in the hands of the Chief Justice over the course of the 20th century (now available on the Yale Law School site).

Among the distinctions Resnik has earned are memberships in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. She has taught at the University of Southern California, New York University, Harvard University, the University of Chicago and the University of Toronto Law Schools and served as a Parsons Fellow at the University of Sydney.

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