In November 2004, the faculty of CUNY Law School will convene a one-day symposium on the work of Prof. Ruthann Robson. As the “mother of lesbian legal theory,” Prof. Robson has done pioneering work in the areas of equality, pedagogy, and law and literature. She has developed a specifically lesbian notion of equality through critiques of equal protection and family law jurisprudence and also written about issues of economic equality, youth, and criminal justice. As the author of two novels and several short fiction collections, her work has been widely recognized, and she has used creative nonfiction and other mixed genres to address theoretical and doctrinal issues. In addition, Prof. Robson’s work on legal pedagogy includes discussions of the integration of issues of sexuality into the classroom, grading, and scholarly production by students.

The CUNY Law School symposium will bring together scholars and practitioners from the U.S. and abroad who have been influenced by Prof. Robson’s work, published papers that analyzed or relied on Prof. Robson’s perspectives, and used Prof. Robson’s books and papers in their courses. During the symposium, conference participants will present their contributions to these areas of legal scholarship and will discuss Prof. Robson’s influence on their work.

The New York City Law Review, the law review of CUNY Law School, plans to publish the proceedings of the conference and the papers written in conjunction with it. In addition, we are soliciting papers from the general legal community in the areas of equality, legal pedagogy, and law and literature in order to further honor and celebrate Prof. Robson’s scholarship. While contributions need not focus on Prof. Robson and we are seeking a broad range of submissions, special consideration will be given to those papers that do address Prof. Robson’s scholarship in some way.

Contributors should submit abstracts by September 30, 2004, and final drafts by January 1, 2005. Abstracts and papers should be submitted in Word format to nyclr@mail.law.cuny.edu, or mailed on disk to the address below. Please feel free to contact Shira Galinsky, Symposium Editor, at nyclr@mail.law.cuny.edu with any questions or concerns.