The Constitutional and Legal Rights of Women Cases in Law and Social Change

The Constitutional and Legal Rights of Women: Cases in Law and Social Change is designed to provide undergraduate students with a comprehensive, sophisticated treatment of the legal status of all American women. Authors Baer and Goldstein skillfully blend doctrinal and political developments to document and explain the evolution of women's rights and the law--as well as the dynamics and dissension within the feminist movement. Building on Goldstein's previous editions, this book combines updated material on constitutional law, gender discrimination, and women's rights with new cases and readings on family law, gay rights, and criminal law. This edition takes a more socio-political and institutional approach than other books on women and the law. The authors consider issues such as institutional questions of constitutional interpretation, the scope of judicial power, the balance of federal-state power, the interaction between law and other social and political institutions, and the capacity of law to effect societal change. The inclusion of state and lower federal court decisions greatly strengthens the book's focus on the law's relationship to gendered inequality. Topics also include constitutional history, job discrimination, gender equality, advances in reproductive technology law, divorce, child custody, education, same-sex marriage, pornography, and domestic violence.