Much of the current academic debate concerns Austin's latest work, "Sapphire Bound!" It is a case study of an unmarried pregnant Black woman who gets fired from her job as a schoolteacher because she is not deemed an adequate role model. According to Austin, such a judgment, made from the perspective of the white middle class, might not be an appropriate one.

Since that work is so untraditional and experimental, many scholars are cautions in evaluating her scholarship.

"I think the work she's branching out to now is a little tentative and hasn't found itself yet," says one law professor. "I think she would admit that."

Yet other legal experts say that such criticism is based upon a fundamental conservatism in the legal community, which keeps any experimentation with conventional legal methods--like Austin's work--from being accepted.

"I think that a lot of feminist work is dismissed because it doesn't come down with a fine, tight moral at the end," says Christina Whitman, a law professor at the University of Michigan. "A lot of law professors are more happy with more traditional scholarship."

Nonetheless, Austin's earlier work, both in torts and insurance law, has won more widespread praise form legal scholars nationwide.

"She has done pathbreaking work involving the question of discrimination in insurance law," says a law professor at New York University Law School.

Perhaps that is why so many people who know her wish she had not become the center of so much controversy.

"I think it's enormously unfortunate that the issue has come to focus so personally on Regina Austin," says Colin S. Diver, dean of the Penn Law School. "I think somebody should have compassion on her."