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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Supreme Court's Post-Racial Turn Towards A Zero-Sum Understanding Of Equality, Helen Norton
The Supreme Court's Post-Racial Turn Towards A Zero-Sum Understanding Of Equality, Helen Norton
Publications
The Supreme Court--along with the rest of the country--has long divided over the question whether the United States has yet achieved a 'post-racial" society in which race no longer matters in significant ways. How, if at all, this debate is resolved carries enormous implications for constitutional and statutory antidiscrimination law. Indeed, a post-racial discomfort with noticing and acting upon race supports a zero-sum approach to equality: if race no longer matters to the distribution of life opportunities, a decision maker's concern for the disparities experienced by members of one racial group may be seen as inextricable from its intent to …
Body And Soul: Equality, Pregnancy, And The Unitary Right To Abortion, Jennifer S. Hendricks
Body And Soul: Equality, Pregnancy, And The Unitary Right To Abortion, Jennifer S. Hendricks
Publications
This Article explores equality-based arguments for abortion rights, revealing both their necessity and their pitfalls. It first uses the narrowness of the "health exception" to abortion regulations to demonstrate why equality arguments are needed--namely because our legal tradition's conception of liberty is based on male experience, no theory of basic human rights grounded in women's reproductive experiences has developed. Next, however, the Article shows that equality arguments, although necessary, can undermine women's reproductive freedom by requiring that pregnancy and abortion be analogized to male experiences. As a result, equality arguments focus on either the bodily or the social aspect of …