Catharine MacKinnon, whose work on sexual harassment and pornography has earned her a reputation as one of the nation's most prominent feminist legal theorists, will be the commencement speaker for the University of California, Davis, law school's graduation ceremony at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, May 23, in Recreation Hall. Law degrees will be conferred upon 80 men and 77 women during the ceremony, which also includes student speaker David Harris and faculty speaker Margaret Johns. Among her peers, MacKinnon, a professor of law at the University of Michigan, is regarded as one of the pioneers of feminist law. One of feminist law's main tenets is that traditional law, written and interpreted from a male perspective, needs to be radically revamped to move women from the periphery of the law to the center. MacKinnon was among the first legal scholars to develop a concept of sexual harassment that defined a man's unsolicited sexual advances toward a woman co-worker as sexual discrimination, and not merely a "personal" matter, as it had been defined by some courts. Her argument was contained in her first book, "Sexual Harassment of Working Women" (1979). In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court accepted MacKinnon's definition of sexual harassment as sex discrimination, in a case on which MacKinnon assisted as co-counsel. MacKinnon also has attacked traditional views of the First Amendment with respect to pornography and obscenity laws. She links pornography with violence against women, and argues that the Supreme Court's definition of obscenity as prurient material offensive to community standards provides no barrier to that violence. Those views were incorporated into a 1983 Minneapolis ordinance banning the "graphic sexually explicit subordination of women." The city council endorsed the proposal, but could not override a mayoral veto. MacKinnon wrote a similar ordinance for Indianapolis that became law there in 1985, but a federal appeals court ruled it unconstitutional. Although MacKinnon's interpretation of the First Amendment as it applies to pornography -more- 2-2-2 MacKinnon at Law School Commencement has yet to set a legal precedent in the United States, it was accepted in Canada in late February. The Supreme Court of Canada, in upholding the country's obscenity law, ruled that the nation's equal-rights law must take precedence over freedom of expression when pornography is the issue. Prior to joining the law faculty at the University of Michigan in 1990, MacKinnon was a visiting professor at Yale University, Harvard University, Stanford University, UCLA, the University of Chicago, the University of Minnesota and York University. She has a bachelor's degree in government from Smith College, a law degree from Yale's law school and a doctoral degree in political science from Yale. MacKinnon serves on the legal committee of the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund. Her books include "Feminism Unmodified" (1987), "Pornography and Civil Rights: A New Day for Women's Equality" (1988) and "Toward a Feminist Theory of the State" (1989).