How and Why Was Feminist Legal Strategy Transformed, 1960-1973?

Abstract

   This document project explores how, during the 1960s, legal feminists overcame decades of division to unite around a dual strategy for constitutional change that simultaneously pursued judicial reinterpretation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. constitution and the passage of a federal Equal Rights Amendment. Although feminists developed an effective plan for changing women's constitutional status through litigation and advocacy, there were some downsides to achieving and implementing this consensus, including a more narrow definition of legal equality within the feminist community and the need to balance advocacy of the ERA with litigation that drew on the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

   


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