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Full-Text Articles in Law
Coming Out: Decision-Making In State And Federal Sodomy Cases, Susan Ayres
Coming Out: Decision-Making In State And Federal Sodomy Cases, Susan Ayres
Susan Ayres
In 1791, American states were enacting laws against sodomy at the same time they ratified the Bill of Rights, the first ten constitutional amendments meant to safeguard fundamental rights of individuals in a free society. In a March 1789 letter to James Madison, Thomas Jefferson asserted that a bill of rights was necessary to give the judiciary the power to protect such individual rights. Ironically, that which the judiciary gives, it may also take away, since "[t]he legislator is a writer. And the judge a reader."
This Article deconstructs recent sodomy cases in order to challenge judicial adoption or reinscription …
Lawrence V. Texas: When Profound And Deep Convictions Collide With Liberty Interests, Nancy J. Knauer
Lawrence V. Texas: When Profound And Deep Convictions Collide With Liberty Interests, Nancy J. Knauer
Nancy J. Knauer
This Essay offers a brief analysis of Lawrence v. Texas, arguing that Justice Kennedy's recognition of a liberty interest is preferable to the Equal Protection analysis urged by the Petitioners and advanced by Justice O'Connor. Equality arguments based on orientation and group affiliation in the absence of a core right to sexual autonomy reinforce a view of stable gay identities that is ultimately disingenuous and disempowering. After seventeen years of attempts by pro-gay advocates to bifurcate conduct from status and sidestep Bowers v. Hardwick, Justice Kennedy's majority opinion has conclusively put the sex back into homosexual. Under Equal Protection analysis, …
Rebuilding The Closet: Bowers V. Hardwick, Lawrence V. Texas, And The Mismeasure Of Homosexual Historiography, Jody L. Madeira
Rebuilding The Closet: Bowers V. Hardwick, Lawrence V. Texas, And The Mismeasure Of Homosexual Historiography, Jody L. Madeira
Articles by Maurer Faculty
In an effort to engage in such specification, this paper will first address the mischaracterization of history in Bowers, which portrays the historic legal and ecclesiastical penalties of what the Court labels as "homosexual activities" as a continuous, unitary narrative extending from the halls of the Emperors Theodosius and Justinian to the legislative assembly rooms of Georgia and Texas. This illusory perspective portrays the criminalization of sodomy (and therefore the identity of homosexuality itself) as an impossible cultural continuum. The impossibility of this continuum lies not only in its implicit assumption that states and other lawmaking entities throughout history shared …
Coming Out: Decision-Making In State And Federal Sodomy Cases, Susan Ayres
Coming Out: Decision-Making In State And Federal Sodomy Cases, Susan Ayres
Faculty Scholarship
In 1791, American states were enacting laws against sodomy at the same time they ratified the Bill of Rights, the first ten constitutional amendments meant to safeguard fundamental rights of individuals in a free society. In a March 1789 letter to James Madison, Thomas Jefferson asserted that a bill of rights was necessary to give the judiciary the power to protect such individual rights. Ironically, that which the judiciary gives, it may also take away, since "[t]he legislator is a writer. And the judge a reader."
This Article deconstructs recent sodomy cases in order to challenge judicial adoption or reinscription …
The Deliberate Contruction Of Families Without Fathers: Is It An Option For Lesbian And Heterosexual Mothers, Nancy Polikoff
The Deliberate Contruction Of Families Without Fathers: Is It An Option For Lesbian And Heterosexual Mothers, Nancy Polikoff
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
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