Celebrating Kate Bartlett: A remarkable scholar, colleague, and mentor, and transformative dean
To mark her retirement from teaching, colleagues and alumni laud Bartlett as a leader in her field, for her students, and in the Duke Law community.
Professor Kate Bartlett
On her way to teach her late-afternoon class in law and literature on April 22, Professor Katharine T. Bartlett was met with an excited crowd. As soon as she stepped into view, faculty, staff, and students lining the corridor outside her fourth-floor classroom began clapping and chanting “Kate, Kate, Kate.”
Bartlett responded with laughter, a few hugs and high-fives, and a joking acknowledgement that the occasion must indeed be special to have drawn one somewhat reclusive colleague from his office. And it was: She was teaching her last class at Duke Law after more than 35 years on the faculty.
By her own admission, Bartlett arrived in Durham in 1979 as a “trailing spouse” caring for two small children (with a third to follow) after husband Christopher Schroeder, now the Charles S. Murphy Professor of Law and Public Policy Studies, accepted a faculty post at the Law School. She enters retirement as a Duke Law legend: a preeminent scholar in family law, employment law, feminist theory, and gender law; an award-winning teacher; a transformational leader whose tenure as dean from 2000 to 2007 cemented Duke’s position as a top-tier law school; and a cherished member of the community.
“Kate had a remarkable ability to identify the best outcome for the Law School in a particular situation and work tirelessly to achieve it, yet all the while connecting on a very human level to the people working with her,” says Charles S. Rhyne Clinical Professor of Law Theresa Newman ’88, who calls herself privileged to have served as Bartlett’s associate dean. “She wanted everyone to succeed professionally — and personally — and she regularly worked quietly to help make that happen, never wanting any gratitude or even recognition for doing so.” And it’s an approach Bartlett applies to all her interactions and endeavors, Newman observes.
A foundational and innovative scholar
For Bartlett, who earned an MA in history at Harvard after graduating from Wheaton College, law was an afterthought. After graduate school, she taught history at the same high school in Guilford, Conn., she had attended while growing up on her family’s farm. She wanted to move on, but was unable to land a big city teaching post, so instead enrolled in law school at the University of California, Berkeley. It was a transformative experience, she told an alumni audience in 2007 during a public conversation celebrating her career.
“I absolutely loved law school,” she said. “It was exciting and exhilarating and opened up a whole new way of thinking for me.”
After graduating, Bartlett spent a year as a law clerk on the California Supreme Court and then joined the Legal Services office where she had done clinical work as a 3L. When she arrived in North Carolina, she hoped to resume her career as a public interest attorney, but again came up empty. Academia only entered the picture when Paul Carrington, then dean of Duke Law, invited her to teach pre-trial litigation. “I probably wasn’t a hundred percent qualified for the position, but I did take it,” Bartlett joked in 200. After a couple years of teaching part-time, she joined the governing faculty as an associate professor in 1983, moving on to teach subjects in line with her growing body of scholarship and gaining tenure in 1987. She was awarded the distinguished A. Kenneth Pye Professorship in 1995.
Kate had a remarkable ability to identify the best outcome for the Law School in a particular situation and work tirelessly to achieve it, yet all the while connecting on a very human level to the people working with her. She wanted everyone to succeed professionally — and personally — and she regularly worked quietly to help make that happen, never wanting any gratitude or even recognition for doing so.
With a longstanding interest in family law, the focus of her student scholarship and her early teaching as a full-time professor, Bartlett quickly emerged as a highly influential scholar in the area of child custody. She published seminal articles advocating for the legal recognition of non-biological “functional” parents, starting with “Rethinking Parenthood as an Exclusive Status: The Need for Legal Alternatives When the Premise of the Nuclear Family Has Failed,” 70 Virginia Law Review 879 (1984). While rising divorce rates were causing many children to “form attachments to adults outside the conjugal nuclear family — to stepparents, foster parents, and other caretakers,” she wrote, “current law provides virtually no satisfactory means of accommodating such extra-parental attachments … because the presumption of exclusive parenthood requires that these relationships compete with others for legal recognition.”
In another influential article, “Re-Expressing Parenthood,” 98 Yale Law Journal 293-340 (1988), Bartlett proposed an attempt “to redirect the applicable disputes over parental status toward a view of parenthood based on responsibility and connection.”
“I was asking at what point has an individual earned the role of parent and the legal recognition of parent simply by virtue of the way they have acted, and how that might speak to the continuing roles of biological parents and same-sex couples, custody issues, and so on?” she explains in a recent interview in her office. “I was an early mover in advocating some legal recognition of functional parenthood.”
Her work in this regard, as well as her broader family law scholarship, remains authoritative. Kerry Abrams, the James B. Duke and Benjamin N. Duke Dean of the School of Law and professor of law, credits Bartlett’s work as inspiration for her entry into the field. “As a junior family law scholar I experienced more than one moment of despair when I worried that there were no interesting questions left to explore. It seemed that she had already written the definitive work on every issue in family law.”
Bartlett was responsible for the provisions relating to child custody in the American Law Institute’s Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution (2002) for which she served as reporter. For her work on the project, she was named the ALI R. Ammi Cutter Chair in 1998.
Bartlett’s interest in gender issues and feminist jurisprudence grew out of her engagement with family law and she also emerged as a leading scholar in that field. Her most frequently cited article is “Feminist Legal Methods,” 103 Harvard Law Review 829-888 (1989), in which she argued that an examination of methods matters because they “shape one’s view of the possibilities for legal practice and reform.”
A key insight of that article was Bartlett’s development of positionality “as a stance toward knowledge from which feminists may trust and act upon [what they know], but still must acknowledge and seek to improve their social groundings.” Positionality, she wrote, “imposes a twin obligation to make commitments based on the current truths and values that have emerged from methods of feminism, and to be open to previously unseen perspectives that might come to alter these commitments … [setting] an ideal of self-critical commitment whereby I act, but consider the truths upon which I act subject to further refinement, amendment, and correction.”
The author or editor of six books, including casebooks on family law and feminist legal theory, Bartlett points to her casebook, Gender and Law: Theory, Doctrine, Commentary, completed as a National Humanties Center Fellow in 1992-1993, as the publication of which she is most proud. She was the sole author of the first edition, published in 1993, in which she reorganized the field by theoretical category, with each chapter addressing a different set of premises and goals about the relationship between gender and the law. Her approach represented a significant scholarly innovation, and it remains the leading casebook in the field.
“Before my book, the field was organized by taking pieces of already existing fields impacting especially on women — like family law, criminal law, and employment discrimination — and putting them together,” says Bartlett, who had been in a student in the first sex-discrimination course that was taught from published materials by their author, Berkeley Professor Herma Hill Kay.
“What my book did was organize the field more theoretically, making gender in the law a subject of study in its own right rather than a pastiche of other fields. The idea is that each chapter understands differently what the relationship between gender and law ought to be.”
Successive editions — the eighth is forthcoming in 2020 from Aspen Publishers — reflect changes in understandings about the intersection or gender, race, religion, and class, as well as appreciation of non-binary gender identification, and the ways the construction of gender harms men as well as women.
“I have learned more than I can ever express from Kate’s intellectual approach to gender issues and from her commitment to teaching, social justice, and law school leadership,” says Deborah Rhode, the Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, who joined Bartlett as co-author of the casebook’s third edition in 2003; the two also co-authored Gender Law and Policy, which was first published in 2010. “She has been an invaluable guide to me and so many others on how to use law to make a difference in the world. We are all in her debt.”
For students, a mentor and guide
Margaret Hu ’00 says she chose to study law at Duke largely because of her familiarity with Bartlett’s influential body of scholarship, which also includes works on employment law and legal education.
“When I was in my senior year of college, a professor assigned Kate’s article ‘Feminist Legal Methods,’ and gave me her book, Feminist Legal Theory, as a college graduation gift,” says Hu, now an associate professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law. “I took multiple classes with Kate, including her gender law course where we used her casebook. She was an amazing teacher — brilliant, as I had expected, but also so warm and funny, which I had not expected.”
Hu says Bartlett stayed a “generous mentor” long after she graduated: “She has encouraged and supported me at every stage of my professional career. Now, as a tenured professor of law, her scholarship and friendship continue to inspire me. I am consistently relying upon her work in my own research.”
In addition to teaching Family Law, Employment Discrimination, and her signature classes relating to gender and the law, Bartlett, who received Duke’s University Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award in 1994, says she derived enormous gratification from regularly teaching Contracts to a small section of first-year students and helping them get “from zero-to-60” in terms of their knowledge in a very short time.
...her intellectual incisiveness was matched only by a genuine desire to listen to our viewpoints.
David Bowsher ’99 calls it a matter of good fortune to have landed in Bartlett’s section for the foundational 1L course, describing her teaching skills as “magical” and her approach deeply respectful to students.
“Contracts is a course that invites differing views and differing policy perspectives on what should happen around the agreements that people reach,” says Bowsher, a corporate and bankruptcy specialist and partner in charge at Adams and Reese in Birmingham, Ala., who later happily accepted Dean Bartlett’s invitation to serve on an alumni board. “She never put her thumb on the scale to advocate for a particular viewpoint or a particular lens through which to view it, but was always pushing you to think more critically.
“She was going to meet you were you were. It didn’t matter a whit what you thought as long as it was heartfelt and you’d thought it through. And I think that’s rare and special.”
On her return to teaching following her deanship, Bartlett regularly taught Law and Literature, focusing on works that raise issues of sex and race. Intellectually and emotionally, she says, the upper-year course yielded “my best teaching moments” as students grappled with the ethical questions raised by such novels as Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Stones from the River, by Ursula Hegi.
“These students have been studying law for two-and-a-half years and are just about to enter the world of practice,” she says. “This class helps them to situate themselves as lawyers in a larger world that has lots of injustice.
“There’s something about literature that lends itself to asking not just ‘What would you do if you were in this situation?’ but ‘Who are you rooting for?’ And it’s often the person who is breaking the law. Literature is both a pathway to self-knowledge and a great entryway into talking about the ethics of being a lawyer.”
Says Khahilia Shaw ’17, who had three courses with Bartlett: “I was hooked after my first class. Professor Bartlett treated her students as colleagues. She comfortably and respectfully facilitated often-difficult conversations. Her intellectual incisiveness was matched only by a genuine desire to listen to our viewpoints. And she set herself forth as a mentor and a guide.”
A transformational leader
After holding the post of associate dean, Bartlett was recruited by faculty colleagues and university administrators to become the Law School’s 13th dean, and she proved to be a superb institutional steward. Highlights of her tenure as dean included: recruiting 17 scholars to the faculty; significantly expanding the clinical program and emphasizing the importance of engaging in public service in law school and beyond; introducing a focus on student leadership and ownership of the law school experience through the Duke Blueprint to LEAD; overseeing a major building expansion and renovation; and excelling in fundraising and financial management.
The distinguished interdisciplinary scholars who joined the faculty during Bartlett’s tenure as dean helped cement Duke’s strength in such strategic areas as intellectual property, international and comparative law, constitutional law, business and finance, and national security. In addition to bolstering such existing research centers as the Program in Public Law and the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security, Bartlett supported the creation of several new ones, including the Center for the Study of the Public Domain and the Center for International and Comparative Law.
Many faculty commended Bartlett’s adroit expansion of their ranks without compromising their cherished shared sense of collegiality, as well as her innate ability to broker consensus among them. Reflecting on her deanship as it was coming to an end, Brainerd Currie Professor of Law James Cox said Bartlett’s deep knowledge of and respect for Duke Law’s institutional culture was a key to her success in facilitating strategic changes. “She is by nature an individual who works best as a consensus builder, but in her quiet ways she is able to move that consensus by whom she puts in important or visible leadership roles,” he told Duke Law Magazine. “She is also eclectic in her understanding of legal scholarship and teaching, and has a broad vision about how people can make different contributions, even though they don’t always agree with one another.” The faculty also appreciated her support for fundamental, highly visible scholarship and their engagement in issues of public concern and national regulatory movements, he said.
Bartlett was equally effective in building consensus and community within the broader network of Duke Law alumni and friends, a factor essential to the success of facilities upgrades for which she raised more than $20 million. These included the addition of 30,000 square feet of office and clinic space, classroom renovations with installation of state-of-the-art technology, and planning and starting the complete renovation of the library, the exterior gardens, and the 4,200 square-foot Star Commons that is now the social hub of the Law School.
Board of Visitors honorary member Richard Horvitz ’78, who endowed “Marcy’s Garden” in front of Star Commons, noted the effectiveness of Bartlett’s continual consultation and dialogue with donors and advisors, saying the iterative nature of the design process improved it. “Kate [was] never stubborn about any aspect of it,” he told Duke Law Magazine. “She listens to people, takes them seriously, and makes the Board feel their ideas are welcome — that we’re in a partnership. It helps impart a sense of ownership of the project and the future.”
Bartlett also built a strong partnership with the alumni leadership boards and became expert at recruiting volunteers and fundraising. During her tenure, even while she was soliciting donations for the renovation, the Law School was able to more than double contributions to the Annual Fund, double the book value of the Law School’s endowment, and raise $9 million towards student financial aid.
“Nobody wants to say ‘no’ to Kate” when asked to give their money, time, or expertise to advance the Law School’s success, and that, said former BOV member and chair Michael Dockterman ’78, spoke to “the tremendous respect that everybody has for her as a member of the academy and, more importantly, as somebody who deeply believes in the mission of the Law School.”
When she stepped down as dean, alumni honored Bartlett with their endowment of a distinguished professorship. The chair was named for her parents while she was an active faculty member and awarded to Professor Barak Richman in 2013; it became the Katharine T. Bartlett Professorship when she assumed emerita status this year.
I really hate to see her retire, because she’s the best: both the best friend one could have, and the best law school colleague and leader.
Apart from making faculty hires who introduced new curricular and interdisciplinary research opportunities for students and changing their physical surroundings, Bartlett is responsible for several initiatives that remain central to the student experience at Duke Law. One is her introduction, in 2002, of the Duke Blueprint to LEAD (Lawyer Education and Development) as a guiding framework for students’ ethical growth, engagement, and professional development.
The Blueprint’s six principles — to engage intellectually, embody integrity, lead with intention, build relationships, serve the community, and live with purpose — have come to serve as a mission statement for student engagement in class and out, a call to leadership, service, and ethical reflection, and a reminder of the importance of self-care and developing as well-rounded individuals while undertaking a challenging course of study. It remains the embodiment of Bartlett’s tradition of challenging each entering first-year student to take ownership of their time at Duke Law — “to become the person you wish to become.”
Bartlett’s investment in the growth of clinical programs also had profound implications for both education and access to justice. Taking the helm at Duke Law when the AIDS Legal Project (now the Health Justice Clinic) and the Death Penalty Clinic were the only two offerings that allowed students to serve clients directly, she oversaw the launch of clinics focused on children’s law, community economic development and transactional law, animal law, tax law, and the defense of Guantanamo detainees, as well as the planning for one focused on environmental law and policy.
John S. Bradway Professor of the Practice of Law James Coleman, Jr., who started the Appellate Litigation Clinic and the Death Penalty Clinic and now co-directs the Wrongful Convictions Clinic, told Duke Law Magazine in 2007 that Bartlett recognized the need to prepare students to adapt to a rapidly changing profession. “What she has done for the clinics has been important, even foundational, as experiential learning is crucial for students.”
For her part, Bartlett admitted as she wrapped up her deanship that she came to a gradual appreciation of the value of clinical education: “It seemed like a very expensive way to educate law students, but I’ve come to see that there is no substitute for what we provide our students in the clinics.” Particularly as law firms were increasingly expecting new associates to “hit the ground running,” she saw clinical work as a way for students to learn about teamwork, pragmatic problem-solving, and leadership. Clinics, she said, offer “a certain kind of teaching environment where they can make mistakes and not be penalized, and where they can learn from one another in helping and supporting roles.”
The clinical expansion and the Blueprint’s emphasis on leadership, community support, and engagement with public issues underscored an emphasis on service that remains a cornerstone of a Duke Law education. Bartlett encouraged students to make community service an active part of their lives at Duke through participation in public interest and pro bono programs, and beyond. And she led by example, serving on the Durham (County) Social Services Board from 1999 to 2005 and as its chair for one year. To promote the viability of careers in public interest and public service law, Bartlett rallied alumni support both for the Public Interest Law Foundation, which provides grants to students engaged in summer public interest work, and the Loan Repayment Assistance Program (LRAP), which helps lawyers in these sectors pay or gain forgiveness on student loans. Bartlett and Schroeder committed $100,000 to establish an endowment for LRAP for Duke Law students bound for public interest careers, which sparked other substantial donations, including a directed gift from the Class of 2006. Equal Justice Works honored Bartlett with the 2006 Dean John R. Kramer Award for leadership in public service in legal education.
Bartlett is now finding new pursuits and social action projects, many of them near the summer cottage that she shares with Schroeder in Belfast, Maine. But she remains an important presence at Duke Law.
“Kate’s the person I turn to for advice and confide in when things get tough,” says Charles L. B. Lowndes Professor of Law Sara Sun Beale, who joined the faculty in 1979. “She has tremendous empathy and warmth — leavened with her sharp wit. Many of these same qualities make Kate a tremendous colleague, and a leader within the law school, before, during, and after her deanship.
“I really hate to see her retire, because she’s the best: both the best friend one could have, and the best law school colleague and leader.” — Frances Presma