Fineman, Martha

Martha Albertson Fineman (born 1943) is an American jurist, legal theorist and political philosopher. She is Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law. Fineman was previously the first holder of the Dorothea S. Clarke Professor of Feminist Jurisprudence at Cornell Law School. She held the Maurice T. Moore Professorship at Columbia Law School. Fineman works in the areas of feminist legal theory and critical legal theory and directs the Feminism and Legal Theory Project, which she founded in 1984. Much of her early scholarship focuses on the legal regulation of family and intimacy, and she has been called "the preeminent feminist family theorist of our time." She has since broadened her scope to focus on the legal implications of universal dependency, vulnerability and justice. Her recent work formulates a theory of vulnerability. She is a progressive liberal thinker; she has been an affiliated scholar of John Podesta's Center for American Progress.