In Defense of Women
Memoirs of an Unrepentant Advocate
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A champion of women’s rights reflects on her illustrious career litigating groundbreaking cases on reproductive rights, sexual harassment, and violence against women
In the boys’ club climate of 1975, Nancy Gertner launched her career fighting a murder charge on behalf of antiwar activist Susan Saxe, one of the few women to ever make the FBI’s Most Wanted List. What followed was a storied span of groundbreaking firsts, as Gertner threw herself into criminal and civil cases focused on women’s rights and civil liberties.
Gertner writes, for example, about representing Clare Dalton, the Harvard Law professor who famously sued the school after being denied tenure, and of being one of the first lawyers to introduce evidence of Battered Women’s Syndrome in a first-degree murder defense. She writes about the client who sued her psychiatrist after he had sexually preyed on her, and another who sued her employers at Merrill Lynch—she had endured strippers and penis-shaped cakes in the office, but the wildly skewed distribution of clients took professional injury too far. All of these were among the first cases of their kind.
Gertner brings her extensive experience to bear on issues of long-standing importance today: the general evolution of thought regarding women and fetuses as legally separate entities, possibly at odds; the fungible definition of rape and the rights of both the accused and the victim; ever-changing workplace attitudes and policies around women and minorities; the concept of abetting crime.
“With wit, heart, and honesty, Gertner . . . looks back on the decades just after feminism’s Third Wave, when issues like abortion for poor women, shield laws for rape victims, ‘battered wife syndrome,’ and the rights of lesbians to adopt children were unconventional, to say the least.”
—Renee Loth, The Boston Globe
“This is a fascinating memoir of a life lived in the law with passion, guts, humor, and great skill.”
—Linda Greenhouse, Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter and author of Before Roe v. Wade
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 1975 Gertner, an aggressive, dogged, and idealistic lawyer, began an illustrious career defending high-profile cases involving women's or civil rights issues just as those movements were being tested in the courtroom. Now a federal judge, Gertner tells familiar courtroom dramas along with the less familiar chronicle of how the legal culture responded to the growing number of women in the ranks and how the law changed in response to the gender-driven legal issues they raised. Gertner's first high-profile case was in defense of Susan Saxe, a Vietnam war protestor accused of murder and bank robbery. Gertner lost, but the ultimate plea to lesser charges was perceived as a victory. In 1989 Gertner took on Merrill Lynch in a sex discrimination case; made history by asserting the battered woman syndrome in defense of a woman charged with murdering her husband; and in 1987 challenged Harvard's denial of tenure to a woman law professor. Gertner adeptly describes insider courtroom strategy as well as both the blatant and insidious institutional sexism she faced. Her story is a well-told reflection of the growth and growing pains of the legal system regarding women as advocates, educators, plaintiffs, and defendants.
