The Association of American Law Schools has recently presented its 2026 Deborah L. Rhode Award to two women in higher education: Joanna Grossman of Southern Methodist University in Dallas and Kimberly Mutcherson of Rutgers University in New Jersey. The annual award honors the contributions, service, and leadership of the late Deborah Rhode — former AALS president and director of the Center on the Legal Profession at Stanford Law School — by recognizing a current or new trailblazer in legal education and the legal profession.
“Professor Joanna Grossman and Professor Kimberly Mutcherson exemplify so many of the outstanding qualities that Professor Deborah Rhode possessed and pushed for within the legal profession,” said Angela I. Onwuachi-Willig, chair of the award selection committee and Dean and Ryan Roth Gallo Professor of Law at Boston University School of Law. “They are not only clever and creative, but also courageous and caring. The committee was particularly impressed by Grossman’s and Mutcherson’s excellent critical scholarship; their trailblazing in the legal academy; their influence as public intellectuals; and their important role as advocates and lawyers, as leaders who are putting their ideas into practice and having a real impact on the lives of others.”
Joanna Grossman is the inaugural Ellen K. Solender Endowed Chair in Women and the Law and the Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor at the Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law. Professor Grossman writes extensively on sex discrimination and workplace equality, with a particular focus on issues such as sexual harassment and pregnancy discrimination. She is also an expert in family law, especially parentage law and the state regulation of marriage. Professor Grossman is the author of several books, including Nine to Five: How Gender, Sex, and Sexuality Continue to Define the American Workplace (Cambridge University Press, 2016). A graduate of Amherst College in Massachusetts, Professor Grossman earned her juris doctorate from Stanford Law School in California.
“I am so honored to receive an award in the name of my professor, co-author, and friend Deborah Rhode,” said Professor Grossman. “Much of my life has been animated by her commitment to unearthing the complicated forces that create and maintain gender inequity as well as her devotion to expanding access to the civil justice system. There is no award I would be prouder to receive.”
Kimberly Mutcherson is a professor of law and former co-dean at Rutgers Law School. She was the first woman and the first Black person to be named dean at Rutgers Law. As a scholar of reproductive justice, Professor Mutcherson focuses her work on assisted reproduction and abortion among other topics. Throughout her career, she has held prestigious visiting scholar appointments at the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center at New York University Law School, the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School, and the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Mutcherson’s edited volume Feminist Judgements: Reproductive Justice Rewritten was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania and her juris doctorate from Columbia Law School.
“I am thrilled to receive this prestigious award named for a legend in the legal academy, and I am equally honored to be in the company of the impressive list of past recipients whose work and careers I have long admired,” said Professor Mutcherson.