Martha Albertson Fineman

Martha Albertson Fineman, Robert W. Woodruff Professor at Emory University School of Law, is a law and society scholar who is an authority on critical legal theory and feminist jurisprudence. She teaches courses and seminars on family law, critical legal theory, and feminist jurisprudence.

At Emory, Fineman founded the Feminism and Legal Theory (FLT) Project in 1984. The FLT Project published the first anthology of feminist legal theory, At the Boundaries of Law: Feminism and Legal Theory in 1990, which was followed in 2010 with a 25th anniversary edition: Transcending the Boundaries of Law: Generations of Feminism and Legal Theory.

The Vulnerability and the Human Condition Initiative (VHC) emerged from FLT in 2008 and comprises the bulk of Fineman’s current research and writing. She is founding director of the VHC and organizes several local and international academic workshops each year. Vulnerability theory offers an alternative paradigm to a human rights approach to state responsibility and social justice. The workshops and visiting scholar opportunities at VHC allow scholars to engage in the concepts of “vulnerability” and “resilience” in conceiving of an ideally “responsive state.”

Following graduation from University of Chicago Law School, Fineman clerked for the Honorable Luther M. Swygert of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and subsequently taught at the University of Wisconsin, Columbia University, and Cornell Law School before joining the faculty of the Emory University School of Law.