The dramatic, untold story of how women battled blatant inequities in America's legal system. As late as 1967, men outnumbered women twenty to one in American law schools. With the loss of deferments from Vietnam, reluctant law schools began admitting women to avoid plummeting enrollments. As women entered, the law resisted. Judges would not hire women. Law firms asserted a right to discriminate against women. Judges permitted discrimination by employers against pregnant women. Courts viewed sexual harassment as, one judge said, "a game played by the male superiors." Violence against women seemed to exist beyond the law’s comprehension. In this landmark book, Fred Strebeigh shows how American law advanced, far and fast. He brings together legal evidence and personal histories to portray the work of concerned women and men to advance legal rights in America. Equal combines interviews with litigators, plaintiffs, and judges, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Catharine MacKinnon, along with research from private archives of attorneys who took cases to the Supreme Court, to narrate battles waged against high odds and pinnacles of legal power. Equal, in the words of Professor Suzanne A. Kim of Rutgers Law School, is a book for "anyone interested in how each individual can improve our society through compassion, drive, and creativity."

The Constitutional and Legal Rights of Women: Cases in Law and Social Change is designed to provide undergraduate students with a comprehensive, sophisticated treatment of the legal status of all American women. Authors Baer and Goldstein skillfully blend doctrinal and political developments to document and explain the evolution of women's rights and the law - as well as the dynamics and dissension within the feminist movement. Building on Goldstein's previous editions, this book combines updated material on constitutional law, gender discrimination, and women's rights with new cases and readings on family law, gay rights, and criminal law. This edition takes a more socio-political and institutional approach than other books on women and the law. The authors consider issues such as institutional questions of constitutional interpretation, the scope of judicial power, the balance of federal-state power, the interaction between law and other social and political institutions, and the capacity of law to effect societal change. The inclusion of state and lower federal court decisions greatly strengthens the book's focus on the law's relationship to gendered inequality. equality, advances in reproductive technology law, divorce, child custody, education, same-sex marriage, pornography, and domestic violence. Special features include: a timetable of national women's rights cases and legal changes; readings that present opposing views on issues such as pornography, rape, and the battered woman syndrome; historical coverage; discussion questions following most cases; and a supplemental website.

Winner of the LA Times Book Prize in Current Interest An instant New York Times Bestseller! “Stirring…Lithwick’s approach, interweaving interviews with legal commentary, allows her subjects to shine...Inspiring.”—New York Times Book Review “In Dahlia Lithwick’s urgent, engaging Lady Justice, Dobbs serves as a devastating bookend to a story that begins in hope.”—Boston Globe Dahlia Lithwick, one of the nation’s foremost legal commentators, tells the gripping and heroic story of the women lawyers who fought the racism, sexism, and xenophobia of Donald Trump’s presidency—and won After the sudden shock of Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016, many Americans felt lost and uncertain. It was clear he and his administration were going to pursue a series of retrograde, devastating policies. What could be done? Immediately, women lawyers all around the country, independently of each other, sprang into action, and they had a common goal: they weren’t going to stand by in the face of injustice, while Trump, Mitch McConnell, and the Republican party did everything in their power to remake the judiciary in their own conservative image. Over the next four years, the women worked tirelessly to hold the line against the most chaotic and malign presidency in living memory. There was Sally Yates, the acting attorney general of the United States, who refused to sign off on the Muslim travel ban. And Becca Heller, the founder of a refugee assistance program who brought the fight over the travel ban to the airports. And Roberta Kaplan, the famed commercial litigator, who sued the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville. And, of course, Stacey Abrams, whose efforts to protect the voting rights of millions of Georgians may well have been what won the Senate for the Democrats in 2020. These are just a handful of the stories Lithwick dramatizes in thrilling detail to tell a brand-new and deeply inspiring account of the Trump years. With unparalleled access to her subjects, she has written a luminous book, not about the villains of the Trump years, but about the heroes. And as the country confronts the news that the Supreme Court, which includes three Trump-appointed justices, will soon overturn Roe v. Wade, Lithwick shines a light on not only the major consequences of such a decision, but issues a clarion call to all who might, like the women in this book, feel the urgency to join the fight. A celebration of the tireless efforts, legal ingenuity, and indefatigable spirit of the women whose work all too often went unrecognized at the time, Lady Justice is destined to be treasured and passed from hand to hand for generations to come, not just among lawyers and law students, but among all optimistic and hopeful Americans.

A definitive overview of court decisions and legislative victories in the fight for gender equality in U.S. history. Women and the Law: Leaders, Cases, and Documents chronicles the evolution of women's rights from the Revolutionary War to the present day. Spanning the gamut of legal concepts, court decisions, justices, and organizations, this extensive reference also explores a broad range of issues from sexual harassment and spousal abuse to the gender gap in voting and the custody challenge of Baby M. Profiles of Susan B. Anthony, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anita Hill, Betty Friedan, and other activists explore their roles in bringing the issue of equal rights for women to the forefront of U.S. politics. A thorough review of key legislative acts, including the 19th Amendment, the Equal Pay Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, Title IX of the Educational Amendments, and more recent rulings like the Violence against Women Act of 1994 reveals the successes, failures, and tenacious efforts of those who are fighting to achieve gender equality in the United States.

2013 marks the 40th anniversary of the US Supreme Court's abortion decision in Roe v. Wade. In recent years, attempts to overturn the ruling have reached a fevered pitch, with nearly 100 new laws going into effect. The chilling effect of these laws has been to establish a reproductive health care system in these states that makes abortion legal in name only, and which places women - especially poor, rural or those of colour - into a separate health care class, with few choices or control. Featuring a foreword by Gloria Feldt.