Leslie Bender
Professor of Law
College of Law
Syracuse University
Biography:
B.A., Chatham College
J.D., University of Pittsburgh
LL.M., Harvard University
Leslie Bender, Professor of Law and Women's and Gender Studies, graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Chatham University and magna cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Professor Bender served as a law clerk for Justice Sam Harshbarger, Associate Justice & then Chief Justice of the West Virginia Supreme Court and as an Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Division, West Virginia Attorney General's Office. After five years of practice, she returned to school and received her LL.M. at Harvard Law School. She taught at Ohio Northern University Law School and Washington and Lee Law School. Professor Bender was a Research Fellow at the Five Colleges Women's Studies Research Center in Massachusetts and a Visiting Scholar at the University of Arizona School of Law, where she also taught. Between July 2000 and June 2003, she served as Associate Dean. Professor Bender was awarded a Board of Advisors professorship from 2004-2007. She has been teaching at the College of Law since 1987. Professor Bender has a faculty appointment in the Women's & Gender Studies Department and is a faculty affiliate with several other programs across campus, as well as at LeMoyne College, the Consortium for Culture and Medicine, and Upstate Medical University's Center for Bioethics and Humanities.
Professor Bender teaches constitutional law II, bioethics and law, civil rights: power, privilege and law, women and law, race and law, special topics seminars in bioethics (e.g., one on genetics and law and one on assisted reproductive technologies and law), contemporary legal theories, and for over a dozen years, she taught torts. She also directed the Street Law (high school externship) program. Professor Bender's scholarship includes published articles on tort law, feminist legal theories, bioethics, assisted reproductive technologies, civil rights, legal education, and constitutional law. Her feminist torts scholarship is included in most torts casebooks and many torts and feminist legal theory anthologies. She is coauthor, with Daan Braveman, of Power, Privilege, and Law: A Civil Rights Reader (West 1995). Two of her most recently published articled discuss mistakes that have occurred while people were using assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) and the complicated issues of parentage that arise, particularly in light of gender, race, and genetics dynamics. Professor Bender's current scholarship is on genetics, race and equality and on the frustrating lack of connection between law and justice.
Publications:
Articles:
"To Err is Human": ART Mix-ups - A Labor-Based, Relational Proposal, 9 J. Gender, Race and Justice 443 - 508 (2006).
Teaching Torts Stories, 55 J. LEGAL EDUCATION 108 - 115 (2005).
Genes, Parents and Assisted Reproductive Technologies: Mistakes, Race, Sex, and Law, 12 COLUM.J. OF GENDER & LAW 1 - 76 (2003).
Fixing Feminist Jurisprudence, BOOKS ON LAW (OCT. 6, 1999).
Tort Law's Role as a Tool for Social Justice Struggle, 37 WASHBURN L.J. 249 (1998).
Feminism and Bioethics: Beyond Reproduction, 25 J.L. MED. & ETHICS 58 (1997).
Teaching Torts as if Gender Matters, 2 VA. J. SOC.POLY &L. 115 (1994).
Is Tort Law Male? Foreseeability analysis and Property Managers' Liability for Third Party Rapes of Residents, 69 CHI.-KENT L. REV. 313 (1993)(symposium). (With Perette Lawrence)
An Overview of Feminist Torts Scholarships, 78 CORNELL L. REV. 575 (1993).
Feminism's Healing Effect, 5 J. CLINICAL ETHIC (1993).
Feminist Perspectives in Medical Ethics & No Longer Patient: Feminist Ethics and Health Care, 61 U. CIN. L. REV. 1251 (1993).
Hidden Messages in the Required First-Year Law School Curriculum, 40 CLEV. ST. L. REV. 387 (1992).
A Feminist Analysis of Physician Assisted Dying and Voluntary Active Euthanasia, 59 TENN. L. REV. 519 (1992).
Impassioning a Civil Rights Course, 16 VT. L. REV. 943 (1992). (Co-author: Daan Braveman)
In Memoriam: Mary Joe Frug, 1941-1991, 3 YALE J.L. & FEMINISM 1 (1991) (obituary).
For Mary Joe Frug: Empowering Women Law Professors, 6 WIS. WOMEN'S L.J. 1 (1991).
Feminist (Re) Torts: Thoughts on the Liability Crisis, Mass Torts, Power and Responsibilities, 1990 DUKE L.J. 848 (1990).
Changing the Values in Tort Law, 25 TULSA L.J. 759 (1990).
From Gender Difference to Feminist Solidarity: Using Carol Gilligan and an Ethics of Care in Law, 15 VT. L. REV. 1 (1990).
Sex Discrimination or Gender Inequality?, 57 FORDHAM L. REV. 941 (1998).
Trends in Tort Law, 17 N.Y. ST. BAR INCL J. 2 (June, 1998).
The Powell-Stevens Debates on Federalism and Separation of Powers, 15 HASTINGS CONST. L.Q. 549 (1988).
A Lawyer's Primer on Feminist Theory and Tort, 38 J. LEGAL EDUC. 3 (1988).
The Takings Clause: Principles or Politics?, 34 BUFF. L. REV. 735 (1985).
Books:
POWER, PRIVILEGE, AND LAW: A CIVIL RIGHTS READER (1995). (Co-author: Daan Braveman)
TEACHER'S MANUAL FOR POWER, PRIVILEGE, AND LAW: A CIVIL RIGHTS READER (1995).