Foreword: Law, Labor and Gender

The theme of the conference, Law, Labor, & Gender, came out of a working group comprised of law students, lawyers, a judge, and myself. We thought that a number of issues deserved attention, ranging from current jurisprudence on employment discrimination to more theoretical issues having to do with work/family dilemmas. Professor Deborah Rhode kindly accepted our invitation to be the keynote speaker, and various other academic speakers also agreed to present papers. The working group, and the editors of the Maine Law Review, drafted and sent out a call for papers to approximately 1600 law professors and others. The Law Review editors were gratified to receive more excellent proposals than the symposium had room for, and engaged in a difficult selection process. The response to the call for papers led us to issues that we did not even know about, and resulted in a richer conference and symposium issue than we would have had otherwise