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28 Sw. U. L. Rev. 171 (1998-1999)
What Feminism Has to Offer Evidence Law

handle is hein.journals/swulr28 and id is 183 raw text is: WHAT FEMINISM HAS TO OFFER EVIDENCE LAW Andrew E. Taslitz* I. INTRODUCTION Feminist theory, which seems at long last to have a permanent place in the academy,1 is subject to heated attack. The attack takes many forms. Some challenge feminist thought as politically correct nonsense, indoctrination and intimidation that serve to mask flawed reasoning and weak research.2 Feminism is thus viewed as the enemy of both logic and free thought.3 Others challenge the strands in femi- nism that seek to alter fundamental, long-standing research methodol- ogies and standards for evaluating merit, which feminists sometimes see as reflecting male bias and domination.4 Still others worry that feminism politicizes what should otherwise be the neutral search for * Professor, Howard University School of Law; former Assistant District Attorney, Phila- delphia, PA; B.A., 1978, Queen's College; J.D., 1981, University of Pennsylvania Law School. The author thanks Professor Myrna Raeder for her invitation to participate in this symposium and to present this paper at the January, 1998 meeting of the Association of American Law Schools' Evidence Section. 1. See generally, e.g., FEMINIST LEGAL THEORY: FOUNDATIONS (D. Kelly Weisberg ed., 1993) (collecting over a decade's worth of feminist legal scholarship originally published in pres- tigious journals and books); see also DAPHNE PATAI & NORETrA KOERTGE, PROFESSING FEMI- NISM: CAUTIONARY TALES FROM THE STRANGE WORLD OF WOMEN'S STUDIES 1-2 (1994) (Now, after two and a half decades, there are more than six hundred undergraduate and several dozen graduate programs at colleges and universities.). 2. See, e.g., PAUL R. GROSS & NORMAN LEVITT, HIGHER SUPERSTITION: THE ACADEMIC LEFT AND ITS QUARRELS WITH SCIENCE 107-48 (1994) (challenging the quality of the reasoning and research in feminist science and philosophy of science); ELLEN R. KLEIN, FEMINISM UNDER FIRE 51-72, 199-226 (1996) (attacking feminist epistemology and recounting the author's percep- tion that her teaching and research are politically incorrect, thereby provoking feminist ire); PATAI & KOERTGE, supra note 1 (arguing that Women's Studies departments are ideologically intolerant). 3. See KLEIN, supra note 2, at 199-226. See generally PATAI & KOERTGE, supra note 1. 4. See DANIEL A. FARBER & SUZANNA SHERRY, BEYOND ALL REASON: THE RADICAL ASSAULT ON TRUTH IN AMERICAN LAW 3-14, 27-33, 52-78 (1997) (critiquing feminist and other radical multiculturalist views on merit); ROBERT KLEE, INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE: CUTTING NATURE AT ITS SEAMS 181-204 (1997) (critiquing alternative research methodologies proposed by feminists).

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