Mary Joe Frug

Frug was born as Mary Joe Gaw in St. Joseph, Missouri in 1941.

In 1968, she married Gerald Frug, with whom she had two children, Stephen and Emily.

From 1975 to 1981, she was a professor at the Villanova University School of Law.

The group has been described as a foundational part of "progressive resistance to conservative legal thought" during the 1980s Reagan revolution, and a breakaway move from the "white male-dominated Conference on Critical Legal Studies."

In 1981, she joined the New England School of Law, where she taught until 1991.

At the time of her death, she was on sabbatical, doing research as a fellow at Radcliffe College’s Bunting Institute.

Frug was recognized in the legal field for her work in legal postmodern feminist theory.

In 1981, Gerald obtained a professorship at Harvard Law School, and the family moved from the Philadelphia area to Cambridge.

Mary Joe Frug (née Gaw; 1941 – April 4, 1991) was a professor at New England Law Boston, and a leading feminist legal scholar.

She is considered a forerunner of legal postmodern feminist theory.

Much of her work was collected in the posthumously-published book, Postmodern Legal Feminism.

She is the author of the casebook Women and the Law.

On April 4, 1991, Frug was murdered on the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, near the home that she shared with her husband, Harvard Law professor Gerald Frug, and their two children.

The murder remains unsolved.

Frug received a Bachelor of Arts from Wellesley College, a Juris Doctor from the National Law Center at George Washington University, and a Master of Laws from New York University.

She worked for three years providing free legal services to low income clients in Washington, D.C. and New York.

On the evening of April 4, 1991, Frug was fatally stabbed while walking to a local convenience store.

She received multiple wounds, in the chest and upper thighs.

The murder occurred in the exclusive Brattle St. neighborhood of Cambridge, in front of the Armenian Holy Trinity Apostolic Church at the corner of Sparks St. and Brewster St., less than 300 yards from her home.

A passing motorist entered the church for help.

Members of the choir practicing inside came out, among them, a Harvard professor who recognized Frug, ran to her house and returned with her husband and daughter.

At 8:57 pm, Frug was taken away by ambulance.

She was pronounced dead on arrival at Mount Auburn Hospital.

The investigation by local police was soon joined by other police departments and the FBI.

Frug's purse was found at the scene, which led investigators to rule out robbery as the motive.

A witness a block away described a white male, 5'10"-6'0", late teens to early 20s, brown hair, dressed in dark clothing, running from the scene.

Shoe prints were found and plaster casts taken.

The murder weapon, unrecovered, was determined to be a military-style knife.

A knife was found near the crime scene, but forensic examination failed to connect it to the murder.

The investigation initially considered that Frug may have been targeted for her feminist academic work.

This line of inquiry was eventually abandoned.

One year from her death, the New England School of Law offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to arrest.

There were no suspects, no leads, and no idea of motive at the time.

Frug's murder remains unsolved.

She wrote a casebook entitled Women and the Law, and a collection of essays, Postmodern Legal Feminism (published in 1992, after her death).

In her essay "A Postmodern Feminist Legal Manifesto", she argued for three general claims that explain the connection between feminism and law: “legal rules permit and sometimes mandate the terrorization of the female body”, “legal rules permit and sometimes mandate the maternalization of the female body”, and “legal rules permit and sometimes mandate the sexualization of the female body”.

Her work was controversial and at times characterized as radical.

Frug was a founding member of a group of female lawyers and legal scholars known as the Fem-Crits, part of the heterodox Critical Legal Studies movement (her husband, Gerald, was also an adherent of CLS).

Fem-Crits applied the principles of CLS to feminism, to show how the law subordinates women in a male-dominated power structure.

In 2019, a newly-formed cold case unit in Middlesex County, Massachusetts took up the case.