Law Commons^™

Reconstructing The Race-Sex Analogy, Serena Mayeri

William & Mary Law Review

In the standard account, American sex equality law rests on a partial and imperfect analogy to race, developed in the 1970s by feminists intent on establishing formal equality between men and women, and embraced, albeit selectively and uneasily, by lawmakers and judges. But this account, although containing important elements of truth, obscures the creative ways that advocates turned the tables, arguing that principles developed in sex equality jurisprudence could expand the availability of remedies for racial injustice. This Article explores one example of this phenomenon: efforts, led by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, to use the emerging constitutional distinction between detrimental and …