"In America and in Harvard Law School there is an environment that fosters this kind of thing," she says.

Susan Estrich, who was elected as the first woman president of the Review in 1976, says while she is not familiar with current circumstances at the Review, she "Found it no worse there than any place else" during her tenure.

"Sexism exist in our society as a whole," says Estrich, now a law professor at the University of Southern California.

"What made the Law Review better was that it was a meritocracy," she says. "Gender and race were not important."

Although Tribe also says that the issue of sexism is not particular to the Law School or the Review, he characterizes his judgment as "faint praise."

"It's not more pervasive than in America on average...but that's not saying much," Tribe said.

Besides the general criticisms of disrespect, three areas of concern are continually raised with respect to women at the Law Review: specific events of harassment, attitudes among Review staff members toward feminist scholarship and the statistical disparity between men and women.

COMPLAINTS OF HARASSMENT

Asked to discuss harassment at the Review, Eisenberg cites two incidents:

. Eisenberg refers to a staff meeting in January during which a number of women were particularly outspoken. A male editor remarked at the time that the meeting "was the best argument against the 19th Amendment [he had] ever seen," Eisenberg says.

. Esienberg says the editor sparked such an uproar that he posted a note of apology the following week.

In defense of the editor, another staff member of the Review, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, says that the man's remark was "a joke in poor taste."

"It was a careless off-the-cuff remark," the editor says. "He didn't mean to be intimidating."

. Eisenberg also cites an incident in which she says an editor on the Review told her that "rape is the price that women pay for freedom."

"Several men [on the Review] have said to me that rape is something women make up," Eisenberg says.