Sappho Goes to Law School: Fragments in Lesbian Legal Theory (Between Men - Between Women: Lesbian & Gay Studies) Book

Ruthann Robson's canny, well-written essays on lesbian legal theory and pedagogy, rooted in her experience as a lesbian professor at a progressive law school, offer a sparkling application of poststructural analysis, queer theory, and cautious, common-sense feminism to a wide range of legal problems and possibilities. She begins by imagining Sappho as a modern-day law student, with the hope of uncovering Sapphic rather than Socratic methodologies in legal theory: "How could [invoking Sappho] change the ways in which we understand, practice, and apply law? What if we adopted the Sapphic lyric as a mode of communication and understanding rather than Socratic argumentation?"

Included are essays on lesbians and criminal justice, same-sex marriage, child custody cases, and the role of personal experience in postmodern theorizing. In her provocative closing essay, "Lesbian Sex in a Law School Classroom," Robson describes the difficulties of teaching a course entitled "Sexuality and the Law" to a diverse group of students, some of whom object to the word "sex" appearing on their law school transcript, while others cannot help but unburden their private lives to her during her office hours. With its multitude of stories and its playful ambivalence toward personal narrative, even the theory-weary will find Sappho Goes to Law School stimulating and unusual. --Regina Marler