Assistant Professor of Law Carol S. Steiker '82 has received a tenure appointment, Harvard Law School officials announced yesterday. She will join a handful of tenured women faculty at the Law School.

Steiker, a specialist in criminal law who graduated from the Law School in 1986, has served as an assistant professor since 1992. Her new appointment will take effect next summer.

"She is an excellent scholar in the area of criminal law and is an immensely popular and effective teacher," Law School Dean Robert C. Clark said in a news release.

Of the 73 assistant and full law professors, only 11 are women, said Michael Chmura, a Law School spokesperson.

Only seven of the 64 tenured law faculty are women, Chmura added. When she takes her new position next July, Steiker will be the eighth.

Steiker, who currently teaches a required first-year criminal law course and two advanced courses at the Law School, clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall from 1987 to 1988 and for Judge J. Skelly Wright of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1986 to 1987.

Between 1988 and 1992, Steiker was a staff attorney for the Public Defender Service in the District of Columbia. She has published articles on punishment theory and on the constitutional regulation of capital punishment.

Attempts to reach Steiker by telephone yesterday were unsuccessful.

Chmura said that the low number of female law professors conceals the fact that "they have been added to the faculty at an increasing rate in recent years."

Three of four new appointments in the 1994-95 year were women, according to Chmura. In 1995-96, women were two of three new appointments. But in 1996-97 and 1997-98, the current academic year, the five new faculty who joined the Law School were all men.

Still, Chmura said the Law School's hiring patterns point to emerging diversity. "Since 1989, approximately half the appointments have been women and minorities," he said. "That's the trend at Harvard Law School these days."