More from YUP:

Law’s Promise, Law’s Expression
Visions of Power in the Politics of Race, Gender, and Religion

Kenneth L. Karst

Chosen as an “Outstanding” book on the subject of human rights in North America for 1995 by The Gustavus Myers Center for the study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America

The conservative “social issues agenda” is targeted to voters who have felt left out, even threatened, by the successes of the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, and the gay rights movement. The agenda centers on the expressive capacities of law and promises a cultural counterrevolution. It evokes visions of an earlier social order in which most citizens who were black or female or gay stayed “in their place”—and the place was a subordinate one. In this lively and provocative book, a constitutional law scholar argues eloquently that most of the social issues agenda for law violates the constitutional principle of equal citizenship.