Mary Joe Frug (née Gaw; 1941 – April 4, 1991) was a professor at New England Law Boston, and a leading feminist legal scholar.

She wrote a casebook entitled Women and the Law, and a collection of essays, Postmodern Legal Feminism (published in 1992, after her death).

[5][6] Fem-Crits applied the principles of CLS to feminism, to show how the law subordinates women in a male-dominated power structure.

[4][9] In 1981, Gerald obtained a professorship at Harvard Law School, and the family moved from the Philadelphia area to Cambridge.

The murder occurred in the exclusive Brattle St. neighborhood of Cambridge, in front of the Armenian Holy Trinity Apostolic Church at the corner of Sparks St. and Brewster St., less than 300 yards from her home.

Members of the choir practicing inside came out, including a Harvard professor who recognized Frug, ran to her house, and returned with her husband and daughter.

A witness a block away described a white male, 5'10"-6'0", late teens to early 20s, brown hair, dressed in dark clothing, running from the scene.

[17] It was filled with inside jokes and sexual innuendo, suggested that Frug's husband's tenure at Harvard Law was the only reason the paper was published, and mocked her death.

With Marxist influence, the Crits saw the law as a tool for keeping privileged classes in power and control, and their mission, to deconstruct it.

In the 1980s, appearing across university campuses, race and gender issues, diversity, and political correctness were embraced by the Crits and entered the Harvard Law conflict.

[5] Opposing the Crits over policies and hiring decisions was the traditionalist faction of the faculty, holding that the law was necessary to maintain order and equity in society.

Tribe forcefully condemned the authors: he compared the parody to Ku Klux Klan propaganda, called it a rape "in all but biological reality", and asked, "What is the point of teaching?

"[5] Dershowitz defended the authors, calling the parody "somewhat" offensive, and the reaction a "witch hunt": “The overreaction to the spoof is a reflection of the power of women and blacks to define the content of what is politically correct and incorrect on college and law school campuses.

[25] In a commemorative piece written by colleagues following Frug's death, Gary Minda, a Cardozo Law professor, wrote: "Mary Joe inspires all of us to challenge the constraints of gender and to remain hopeful and optimistic about the possibility of coming to grips with the dilemmas of difference that separate our lives.

In her written contribution, Brooklyn Law School professor Elizabeth M. Schneider commented: "Twenty-five years after her death, I see even more of a need for the integration of Mary Joe's perspectives into ongoing work on feminist legal theory and practice.