Martha Albertson Fineman will deliver the keynote speech at the 24th Annual Kate Stoneman Day, to be held Tuesday, March 27, 2018, at Albany Law School. Fineman, a Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law at Emory University, is an internationally recognized law and society scholar. Fineman is also a leading authority on vulnerability theory and feminist jurisprudence. Following graduation from University of Chicago Law School in 1975, she clerked for the Hon. Luther M. Swygert of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, after which she began her teaching career at the University of Wisconsin. In 1990, she moved to Columbia University where she was the Maurice T. Moore Professor. Before coming to Emory, she was on the Cornell Law School faculty where she held the Dorothea Clarke Professorship, which was the first endowed chair in the nation in feminist jurisprudence.

Her scholarly interests are the legal regulation of family and intimacy and the legal implications of universal dependency and vulnerability. Fineman’s books include: The Autonomy Myth: A Theory of Dependency (The New Press 2004); The Neutered Mother, and The Sexual Family and other Twentieth Century Tragedies (Routledge 1995); and The Illusion of Equality: The Rhetoric and Reality of Divorce Reform (University Of Chicago Press 1991). In addition she has edited and contributed to several books on vulnerability theory: Vulnerability: Reflections on a New Ethical Foundation for Law and Politics (with A. Grear) (Ashgate Press 2013); Privatization and Globalization: A Comparative Perspective (with U. Andersson and T. Mattesson) (Routledge 2016); and Vulnerability and the Legal Organization of Work (with J. Fineman) (Routledge 2017). She is currently working on a manuscript that will bring together the dozen essays she has published on vulnerability theory and its application.

Fineman is founder and director of the Feminism and Legal Theory (FLT) Project, inaugurated in 1984. She also is the director of Emory University’s interdisciplinary Vulnerabilityand the Human Condition Initiative, which she founded in 2008.

Fineman has received numerous awards for her writing and teaching, including the prestigious Harry Kalvin Prize for her work in the law and society tradition. In 2013 she was awarded the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa, Faculty of Law, Lund University.  She is a Lifetime Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and in 2017 was awarded the Ruth Bader Ginsberg Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Association of Law Schools. She teaches courses and seminars on vulnerability, the regulation of intimacy, feminist jurisprudence, and reproductive justice.

Kate Stoneman Day is free and open to the public. Nominations are open for additional Stoneman Awards, which are given annually to individuals who have demonstrated a commitment to actively seeking change and expanding opportunities for women within the legal profession. The deadline for nominations is Friday, January 26, 2018. For more information, contact Geoff Seber at alumni@albanylaw.edu.

The awards are presented in honor of Kate Stoneman, the first woman admitted to practice law in New York state and the first female graduate of Albany Law School in 1898. For more information on Kate Stoneman and Albany Law School’s annual Kate Stoneman Day, visit www.katestoneman.org.