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Sunday, June 24, 2007

The MacKinnon Family

Did you know that the father of famed feminist legal scholar Catherine MacKinnon, George MacKinnon, was a former Congressman and appellate court judge? Not just any judge, but a Nixon appointee that was said to be "so far right he makes Goldwater look like George McGovern."

He died in 1995. I wonder what he thought of his daughter's work?

2 comments:

  1. Yes, I did. He must not have thought too poorly about her work: "Then, in 1977, a landmark case in the D.C. Circuit found that a male supervisor who abolished a female employee's job because of her unwillingness to engage in an affair had done so because of her gender. (MacKinnon played no role in the litigation; her father concurred with the ruling.)"

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  2. On family relations, I was always thought the relation of Max Born who did seminal work in Quantum mechanics having as a grand-daughter Olivia Newton John was one of the most surprising relationships.

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