In Defense of Women: Memoirs of an Unrepentant Advocate

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

Author: Nancy Gertner
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 04/26/2011
Pages: 298
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.14lbs
Size: 9.35h x 6.27w x 0.98d
ISBN: 9780807011430


Review Citation(s):
Booklist 03/01/2011 pg. 8
Kirkus Reviews 03/15/2011
Publishers Weekly 02/07/2011

About the Author
Nancy Gertner was appointed a Federal District judge by President Clinton in 1993 and serves on the bench for the District of Massachusetts. Before her appointment, Judge Gertner was a defense and civil rights lawyer in Boston. As a judge she has decided cases where racial profiling, employment discrimination, and fair housing were at issue. A graduate of Barnard College and Yale Law School, she has taught at the law schools of Yale, Boston College, Boston University, and Harvard.


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