Indiana Law Review


Mary Barter Mitchell

Florence Wagman Roisman*

Like every other human being, Mary Harter Mitchell had many different
facets, interests, and relationships with a wide variety of people. I knew her as
a law school colleague for twelve years—from 1997, when I came to Indiana, to
2009, when she died. Although I considered her a cherished and revered friend
as well as colleague, we rarely saw each other socially; almost all that I knew of
her was through her presence and work at the law school.

Although we are taught that no person is indispensable, my experience with
Professor Mitchell makes me question that proposition. She occupied a unique
position at the law school. She was recognized as a person of total integrity,

broad and deep compassion, and thorough kindness as well as keen intellectual

prowess, breadth of knowledge and interest, and loyalty to the school. These all

are stellar qualities, but they are not qualities peculiar to Professor Mitchell.

What especially distinguished her, I think, was that she possessed all these
characteristics along with a wide, deep, passionate abhorrence of any form of

inequity, injustice, unfairness, unkindness, or oppression and a determination to

eliminate all instances of such evils. She cared about and acted on behalf of

individuals, and she challenged systemic institutional oppression as well.

Professor Mitchell was a Quaker, and she demonstrated in her life the Quaker

admonition to find the spark of divinity in every human being.' No one was
excluded from her concern or denied her respect. But those who oppressed
others, while benefitting from her compassion and understanding, also had to face

her steely insistence that they speak and act justly.

Teaching was a central part of Professor Mitchell's life, and social justice

concerns were at the heart of her teaching. For many years, she taught her own
beloved daughters, Clara and Sally, at home. She taught at the Indianapolis Peace

Institute (courses on "Practical Peace-Making" and "Peace and the Arts"). She

taught contracts in the Indiana Conference for Legal Education Opportunities

Summer Institute in 1999, 2003, and 2005. She quietly and effectively devoted
a huge amount of time to giving special attention and nurturing to students who
showed great promise but bore the marks of inadequate academic preparation.

At the law school, in addition to teaching contracts, church and state, and
family law, she created and taught courses that immersed students in significant

social justice issues: law and the elderly; law and education; law and literature

(focusing on prison literature); law and rape; and the law of corrections and

prisoners' rights (initially with a co-teacher). When the law school had no one
to teach a course in women and the law. Professor Mitchell organized a group of
faculty to offer it, taking upon herself the substantial work of coordination and
administration. In 2009, Professor Mitchell was planning two new seminars:

* William F. Harvey Professor ofLaw, Indiana University School ofLaw—Indianapolis.
I am grateful to Ms. Kyle Galster and Professor Susanah Mead for improvements to this Essay.

1 . Paul D. Buchanan, The American Women's Rights Movement: A Chronology
OF Events and Opportunities from 1600 to 2008, at 16 (2009) (describing the Society of

Friends).



668 INDIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 44:667

"Rationales for Criminal Punishment" (considering the jurisprudence of

retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, and restorative justice) and a course on

pardon and forgiveness.^ Of the elective courses she taught. Professor Mitchell
wrote: "I am proud to serve at these outposts in the academy, where socially and
morally crucial issues are examined."^ These were issues on which Mary Harter
Mitchell worked in many different aspects ofher life: opposing war and violence
in every form, notably including the death penalty; and protecting the rights of

such oppressed groups as women, prisoners, elderly people, and religious and
other minorities. It is thus especially appropriate that this issue of the Indiana

Law Review, organized to honor her memory, focuses on the issues that most
engaged her attention and concern.

Professor Mitchell was a dedicated student as well as teacher. She graduated
summa cum laude, first in her class, from Butler University, and then was an
editor of the Cornell Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif at
Cornell Law School. She took non-degree graduate courses at the Christian
Theological Seminary in Indianapolis for decades. And she actively practiced
what she identified as her "avocation" as a poet, including publishing in the

Journal ofLegal Education a quite lovely poem about the first-year contracts
course."^

The law school's respect for Professor Mitchell was evidenced in a variety
ofways. The faculty has one elected committee, the Executive Committee (EC),
and Professor Mitchell often would be the first person chosen for it. Selecting all
five members might take many ballots, but the faculty usually was virtually
unanimous about her. One of the EC's responsibilities is to select recipients of
the Indiana University Trustees Teaching Awards. Ordinarily, members of the
EC are not considered for these awards because the EC chooses the recipients, but
in 2003, her colleagues on the committee decided to disregard that usual rule of

ineligibility to select her for a Trustees Teaching Award. Her colleagues'

reasoning was that because Professor Mitchell was so often a member of the EC,
she might never be given this teaching honor which she unquestionably deserved.

Professor Mitchell also served on and chaired committees that required

particular sensitivity. She chaired the curriculum committee, the honor code

special committee, the student affairs committee from 2002 to 2004, and the

teaching committee from 2004-07. From 2008 until her death, she chaired the
promotion and tenure committee, and she memorably presided over a difficult
discussion that raised divisive substantive issues. I believe that everyone on the

committee must have been profoundly impressed by the patient, respectful,
insightful way in which Professor Mitchell led us through tension and arguments
to a position of genuine consensus. She was faculty advisor to several student

2. Prof. Mary Harter Mitchell, Ind. Univ. Sch. of Law—Indl\napolis, Faculty
Annual Survey: Pt. IV (2009) (on file with the Office of the Dean, Ind. Univ. Sch. of

Law—Indianapolis).
3. Id.

4. Mary Harter Mitchell, April, Contracts Class, First Year ofLaw School, 52 J. LEGAL

Educ. 312(2002).



2011] MARY HARTER MITCHELL 669

groups: Law Students Against Capital Punishment; the Women's Caucus;
Lambda Law Society; the Association for Public Interest Law; and the Society
on Law and Conscience. She organized and spoke at events related to the death
penalty, women's rights, spirituality, and prisoners' rights. She was a
regular—and regularly unforgettable—speaker at the orientation for first-year
students, when she urged students to maintain their integrity and keep their lives
balanced between their studies and their human relationships. She created a "Law
and Justice" film series, the Sister Heart Project for assisting women in prison,
and the law school's annual reception honoring members of the building services
staff. Posthumously, Professor Mitchell was given the 20 1 lUPUI Inspirational
Woman Award and lUPUI's Bynum Mentor Award.

During the years that we shared on the faculty, the law school faced several
painful, challenging, divisive issues. I recall in particular two: one involved a

gift to the school that some of us thought should not have been accepted; the
other involved concern about the conduct of a junior member of the faculty that
led to claims by him that she and I had, for inappropriate reasons, prevented him
from securing tenure. In each situation. Professor Mitchell and I were on the

same "side," but in each case she wrote her own statements and expressed her
views separately. With respect to the gift, for example, several ofus collaborated

on letters urging rejection of the gift; Professor Mitchell agreed that the gift

should be rejected, but she wrote her own letter. While I never discussed with her
the reasons for her separate statements, I believe that she sought a softer, more
compassionate tone than others ofus achieved. Ofcourse, part ofthe explanation
also may have been her keen sensitivity to language and her poet's search for
precisely the right words and phrases—an eloquence the rest of us did not
achieve.

There probably never is a "right" time for anyone to die, but it seems

particularly unfair that Professor Mitchell died when she did. Much of her life
had been spent taking care of other people—her children, and then her ailing
mother, who died in 2007. These responsibilities over, she was entering into a
period of great joy and ftilfillment in her life. Personally, she was gloriously
happy. Professionally, she had done a great deal of research for an article about

the concept of human dignity
—

"its sources, content, coherence"—and its
implications for prisoners: "do or should criminals forfeit that dignity so as to

lose a dignity argument for better treatment in prison?"^ We all are the losers for
not having the benefit of her writing on this and other topics.

It is difficult to write about Professor Mitchell without sinking into cliches.

She was luminous, gentle, and strong. Rarely does a day pass without my
wanting to tell her about something I've read or heard—sometimes an outrage
against human dignity, sometimes an act of great courage that she would
appreciate. I keep her in my mind at all times and try to live up to the high
standard she set. I hope that all whom she influenced will do the same.

Mitchell, supra note 2, at Pt. I.A.4.