{"id":10540,"date":"2015-07-24T04:28:19","date_gmt":"2015-07-24T20:28:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/law\/profile\/linda-c-mcclain\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T11:34:29","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T15:34:29","slug":"linda-c-mcclain","status":"publish","type":"profile","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/law\/profile\/linda-c-mcclain\/","title":{"rendered":"Linda C. McClain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Linda C. McClain<\/strong>\u00a0is internationally known for her work in family law, gender and law, and feminist legal theory. In 2023, with the generous support of BU Law alums, she co-founded the\u00a0Boston University Program on Reproductive Justice<\/a>\u00a0(BUPRJ), which she co-directs with Professors Aziza Ahmed and Nicole Huberfeld and Executive Director Sapna Khatri. She is the author or editor of seven scholarly books, including What Shall be Orthodox: A Constitutional Liberalism for Polarized Times<\/i> (under contract with University of Chicago Press) (co-authored with BU Law colleague James E. Fleming);\u00a0Who\u2019s the Bigot?: Learning from Conflicts over Marriage and Civil Rights Law<\/em>\u00a0(Oxford University Press, 2020); and The Place of Families: Fostering Capacity, Equality, and Responsibility<\/i> (Harvard University Press, 2006). Professor McClain is also co-author of a leading family law casebook,\u00a0Contemporary Family Law<\/em>, and has published numerous scholarly articles and book chapters. For more information on her books, see below.<\/p>\n

Professor McClain\u2019s\u00a0scholarship addresses the respective roles of families, other institutions of civil society, and government in fostering persons\u2019\u00a0capacities for democratic and personal self-government. She has engaged with prominent critiques of liberal legal and political theory and offered a reconstructive liberal feminist approach to such matters as civil rights, privacy, family and marriage, reproductive issues and welfare law. Her work highlights sex equality as a legal and constitutional commitment and public value, the responsibility of government to promote equality, and societal tensions over equality and its relationship to other values.\u00a0Professor McClain has also written (see\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0here<\/a>) and lectured (see\u00a0here<\/a>) about law and literature, focusing on themes of household and political governance, marriage, and singleness in 19th<\/sup>\u00a0century fiction (particularly the novels of mid-Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope) and in \u201cNew Woman\u201d novels.<\/p>\n

Professor McClain was a Laurence S. Rockefeller Fellow at Princeton University\u2019s Center for Human Values in 2016-17 and a faculty fellow at the Harvard University Center for Ethics and the Professions (now the Safra Center) in 1999-2000. She is on the editorial board of the\u00a0Journal of Law and Religion<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society<\/em>\u00a0and is a contributing editor to JOTWELL. A member of the American Law Institute, she serves on the Executive Committee for the AALS Sections on Family and Juvenile Law and on Women in Legal Education. She is a member of the Council on Contemporary Families, the American Political Science Association, and the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy. Professor McClain has been a visiting professor of law at Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Virginia. Before joining the faculty of Boston University School of Law in fall 2007, Professor McClain was the Rivkin Radler Distinguished Professor of Law at Hofstra Law School, where she was also co-director of the Institute for the Study of Gender, Law, and Policy. Prior to entering the legal academy, she practiced litigation for five years at Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York City. She enjoys playing classical piano.<\/p>\n

McClain has organized interdisciplinary conferences at BU Law, published in\u00a0Boston University Law Review<\/em>, including:\u00a0The Civil Rights Act of 1964 at 50: Past, Present, and Future<\/a>, and\u00a0Evaluating Claims about \u2018the End of Men\u2019: Legal and Other Perspectives<\/a>. With BUPRJ Faculty co-directors Aziza Ahmed and Nicole Huberfeld, she co-organized\u00a0\u00a0BUPRJ\u2019s inaugural conference, After\u00a0Roe\u00a0and\u00a0Dobbs: Seeking Reproductive Justice in the Next 50 Years<\/a>, published in\u00a0Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics<\/em>. Professor McClain also co-organized\u00a0\u00a0the conference,\u00a0Advancing Pregnant Persons\u2019 Right to Life, published in\u00a0Boston University Law Review Online<\/a><\/i>. She\u00a0frequently speaks to the press on issues concerning family law, gender, and marriage.<\/p>\n

About Professor McClain\u2019s Books<\/strong><\/p>\n

What Shall Be Orthodox: A Constitutional Liberalism for Polarized Times<\/em> (under contract with University of Chicago Press) (with James E. Fleming, The Hon. Paul J. Liacos Professor of Law) focuses on culture war controversies over whether government is unconstitutionally compelling \u201cwhat shall be orthodox.\u201d The quotation is from Justice Robert Jackson\u2019s widely-revered Supreme Court opinion,\u00a0West Virginia v. Barnette <\/em>(1943), protecting the First Amendment right of Jehovah\u2019s Witness children not to participate in a compulsory flag salute in public schools. Protests against imposed orthodoxy\u2014usually invoking Barnette<\/em>\u2014occur in a growing number of contexts, often when government is promoting public values concerned with autonomy and equality. Many, like\u00a0Barnette,<\/em>\u00a0concern schools, for example, conflicts over how to teach civic education and U.S. history and over parental rights to opt their children out of curriculum contrary to their religious beliefs.\u00a0Barnette<\/em> also features in challenges to state antidiscrimination laws prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity and over reproductive rights. The book aims to give\u00a0Barnette<\/em>\u2019s principles their proper role in protecting basic liberties, but to temper overextension of them to eviscerate civic education programs, antidiscrimination laws, and reproductive freedom protections aimed at securing the status of equal citizenship for all\u2014programs and laws crucial to the health and maintenance of our constitutional democracy. McClain and Fleming defend a liberal common good constitutionalism as an alternative to Adrian Vermeule\u2019s well-known conservative common good constitutionalism. See the\u00a0University of Missouri Law Review<\/em>\u00a0symposium on the draft manuscript of their book\u00a0<\/a>here.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Who\u2019s the Bigot? Learning from Conflicts over Marriage and Civil Rights Law<\/a><\/em> (Oxford University Press, 2020) traces the rhetoric of bigotry and conscience in controversies over marriage\u2014interfaith, interracial and same-sex\u2014and civil rights laws\u2014both the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and modern state laws protecting LGBTQ persons against discrimination. McClain argues that, although denouncing and preventing bigotry is a shared political value with a long history, people disagree over who is a bigot and what makes a belief, attitude, or action bigoted. This is evident from the rejoinder that calling out bigotry is intolerant political correctness, even bigotry itself. A frequent rejoinder to calling out bigotry is that the charge reflects intolerant political correctness, even bigotry itself. People also disagree over what it means to be \u201con the wrong side of history\u201d and how present forms of discrimination resemble or differ from past forms. McClain argues that understandings of bigotry have both a backward- and forward-looking dimension: people make new judgments about forms of \u201cbigotry\u201d based on consensus on past forms and reason from the past to come to new understandings of injustice and justice. The book shows recurring patterns of arguments in these social, political, and constitutional battles and suggests lessons learned from such study about bigotry\u2019s puzzles. In the words of one reviewer, \u201cthis is required reading for anyone who wants to understand our polarized society and how we got here.\u201d Who\u2019s The Bigot?<\/em> was among the ten books included as \u201cLegal Theory Bookworm Favorites from 2020.” Read an excerpt here<\/a>. See advance praise and other reviews<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0In the Media<\/strong><\/p>\n