Book Talk and Discussion with Professor Anita Bernstein
Book Talk on Making the Best of Semen: Prospects for Law and Regulation
Hear author Anita Bernstein, Anita and Stuart Subotnick Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, in conversation with Bridget Crawford, University Professor and Professor of Law at Pace University, as they discuss Professor Bernstein’s new book Making the Best of Semen: Prospects for Law and Regulation (NYU Press, December 2025).
About the Program
Despite the pervasive controls on sexual reproduction through law, medicine, religion, and other frameworks, one active participant has escaped its share of deserved attention. Semen is the quintessential hazardous substance, a fluid that delivers unique benefit along with unique risk. Yet until now nobody has set out to control it.
In Making the Best of Semen, Professor Anita Bernstein takes on a difficult yet essential topic in the first book to address the regulation of semen. The benefits and harms that semen delivers when it travels onto mucosa are not only extraordinary: they also lie within the reach of regulation. Bernstein lays out the problem of unmentionability that shields semen from controls and documents the upheavals for which this substance is responsible.
Read our Q&A about this book with Professor Anita Bernstein
This event is by invite only.
About the Speakers
Anita Bernstein, the Anita and Stuart Subotnick Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, writes about tort law, feminist jurisprudence, professional responsibility (especially legal malpractice), and family law. Her awards include the first Fulbright scholarship in European Union affairs given to a law professor. In 2020 she received from the AALS Section on Torts and Compensation Systems the top honor in her academic field, the William L. Prosser Award.
Making the Best of Semen: Prospects for Law and Regulation is Professor Bernstein’s second book-length journey into the law of human reproductive anatomy. Her first book on the subject, The Common Law Inside the Female Body (Cambridge University Press 2019), was the subject of two symposia in law reviews. Her other books address torts, products liability, and the law of marriage.
Bridget J. Crawford holds the title of University Distinguished Professor, the highest honor bestowed on a member of the faculty, at Pace University. Her books include Social Movements and the Law: Talking About Black Lives Matter and #MeToo (University of California Press 2024) (co-editor with Lolita Buckner Inniss), Hot Flash: How the Law Ignores Menopause and What We Can Do About It (Stanford University Press 2024) (co-author with Emily Gold Waldman and Naomi R. Cahn) and Menstruation Matters: Challenging the Law’s Silence on Periods (New York University Press 2022) (co-author with Emily Gold Waldman).
She is also the co-editor of the Cambridge University Press series of Feminist Judgments books, a groundbreaking collection of volumes that reimagine key judicial opinions through a feminist lens across diverse areas of law. In addition, she is the co-author of three casebooks: Federal Taxes of Gratuitous Transfers: Law & Planning; Federal Income Taxation: Cases and Materials; and Wills, Trusts & Estates: An Integrated Approach. Professor Crawford was one of 26 law professors profiled in What the Best Law Teachers Do (Harvard University Press 2013), a study of exemplary legal educators nationwide.
More Information
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Important Note
Brooklyn Law School is committed to providing a forum for the discussion of important and sometimes controversial legal and social issues. The Law School provides space for dialogue and debate but does not endorse the views expressed by speakers, faculty, or participants at its events. The perspectives shared are those of the individuals involved.