Law Prof. Files Gender Suit

Assistant Professor Clare Dalton filed a gender discrimination suit yesterday against Harvard Law School, which denied her tenure bid last May.

However, Dalton said that if the University offers her tenure after President Bok reviews the case, she will drop the suit.

Dalton had to file her suit now according to Massachusetts law which dictates that gender discrimination suits can not be filed any more than six months after the discriminatory act. She sent a letter to Bok this week saying that the suit did not mean she would not honor the outcome of his review.

"I told President Bok that I needed to file my complaint merely to protect my rights to file a suit," Dalton said yesterday. "Filing the complaint doesn't reflect a change in my decision to wait until his review process is finished to proceed with any action."

Bok announced his decision to review Dalton's case this summer after many of her supporters charged that her opponents on the Law School faculty attacked her scholarship because of her political ideology. Dalton embraces the theories of Critical Legal Studies, which holds that the law is not based on abstract notions of justice but on social and economic norms.

Less than a week after Bok's announcement, Dalton said she would pursue a discrimination suit against the Law School if Bok did not reverse the decision.

Dalton's lawyer, Nancy Gertner, said that her client's filing the suit-which only entails stating allegations against the Law School-should not effect Bok's review process.

"We still plan to cooperate with the internal review. If her case is resolved, we would simply drop it," Gertner said. It will be at least six months before the case can go to trial, and the review should be complete within that time, Gertner said.

Bok has begun the review process by sending criticisms that Law School faculty members made of Dalton's work to outside reviewers. He expects to receive their responses by Thanks-giving, and will decide how to proceed at that time.

Dalton, whose tenure bid failed by three votes, was the second assistant professor since 1969 to be denied a permanent post. The first, Daniel Tarullo, was also a CLS adherent.

Another CLS adherent, Visiting Professor David Trubek from the University of Wisconsin Law School, was offered a tenured position by the faculty last spring. But Bok reversed the faculty's decision for the first time in the Law School's history and rescinded the offer.