is an American jurist and legal theorist, known for her work in feminist legal theory and family law. 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 Professorship of Feminist Jurisprudence at Cornell Law School, and held the Maurice T. Moore Professorship at Columbia Law School.
She is the author of Transcending the Boundaries of Law: Generations of Feminism and Legal Theory (Routledge, 2010), What Is Right for Children: The Competing Paradigms of Religion and Human Rights (Ashgate, 2009), Feminist and Queer Legal Theory: Intimate Encounters, Uncomfortable Conversations (Ashgate, 2009) and The Autonomy Myth: A Theory of Dependency (The New Press, 2004). She is also co-editor with Estelle Zinsstag of Feminist Perspectives on Transitional Justice: From International and Criminal to Alternative Forms of Justice (Intersentia Publishing, 2013).
As privatization displaces a sense of civic responsibility on both sides of the Atlantic, care-workers become ever more isolated. Martha Albertson Fineman insists that, rather than the gender of the person doing the care work, it is actually the care work itself that simply isn’t valued in today’s society.
