Mary Joe Frug - Harvard Law Review Controversy

Harvard Law Review Controversy

In March 1992, the Harvard Law Review published an unfinished draft article by Frug called "A Postmodern Feminist Legal Manifesto," which explored the legal theories on violence toward women. Some members of the Review were opposed to publishing the piece, and later, on the anniversary of her murder, parodied it in He-Manifesto of Post-Mortem Legal Feminism, which was included in the Harvard Law Revue, an annual spoof of the Review. It was signed by "Mary Doe, Rigor-Mortis Professor of Law" and argued that Frug's theories were the concoction of paranoid feminists. Co-authors Craig Coben and Ken Fenyo later apologized in a statement, particularly to Frug's husband. They added that they did not mean to distribute the article on the anniversary of her death. The statement was signed by other members of the Review, including the then-Supreme Court editor Paul Clement. Her views were considered especially infuriating by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who railed against her audacity, and stirred up strong sentiment against her among his students. According to The New York Times:

On April 4, 1991, Mary Joe Frug, a prominent feminist legal scholar at the New England School of Law in Boston, was hacked to death on the streets of Cambridge. Wielding a military-style knife with a 7-inch-long blade, her assailant, as yet unknown, stabbed her four times. On April 4, 1992, the Harvard Law Review held its annual gala banquet, when the torch of the nation’s most prestigious legal journal is passed to a new generation of editors. Among those invited: the murdered woman’s husband, Gerald Frug, a member of the Harvard Law School faculty. Had he attended, he would have found on his plate a parody of his wife’s last article. The parody, titled “He-Manifesto of Post-Mortem Legal Feminism,” was produced by the Law Review’s editors and paid for by the school. It depicted Ms. Frug as a humorless, sex-starved mediocrity and dubbed her the “Rigor-Mortis Professor of Law.”