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Abstract:
This essay develops the concept of vulnerability in order to argue for a more responsive state and a more egalitarian society. Vulnerability is and should be understood to be universal and constant, inherent in the human condition. The vulnerability approach is an alternative to traditional equal protection analysis; it represents a post-identity inquiry in that it is not focused only on discrimination against defined groups, but concerned with privilege and favor conferred on limited segments of the population by the state and broader society through their institutions. As such, vulnerability analysis concentrates on the institutions and structures our society has and will establish to manage our common vulnerabilities. This approach has the potential to move us beyond the stifling confines of current discrimination-based models toward a more substantive vision of equality.

equality, constitutional law, critical theory, feminism, gender, race, class, disability, social contract theory, jurisprudence, human capacities, law and society

Abstract:
This essay will be a chapter in Social Citizenship and Gender, edited by Joanna Grossman and Linda McClain (Cambridge University Press 2009). It addresses the anomaly that after four decades of using the ideal of equality to confront gender-skewed distributions of power we, still we find a politics of gender subordination and domination embedded in society and its ideological and structural institutions, including law. Why is it that the realization of gender equality - even after all these years of theorizing, arguing, and strategizing - remains strangely illusive? Part of the answer is found in the fact that in our ongoing struggle for gender equality we have been constrained by philosophical and jurisprudential concepts shaped and handed down to us by our forefathers. This chapter proposes that one way to render equality less illusive is to move beyond gender and build a more comprehensive framework on the concept of universal human vulnerability. This new theoretical investigation will focus on privilege, as well as discrimination, and reflects on the benefits allocated through the organization of society and its institutional structures. Such an approach could move us closer to securing substantive equality and social rights in the United States.

equality, gender, feminist theory, family, dependency, vulnerablity, critical theory

Abstract:
This article traces the religious roots of American family law and the way that those roots still impact possibilities for and reaction to reform of law and the ways in which they shape contemporary politics in the United States. Traditional or fundamentalist religious conceptions of the family are incompatible with the three significant 'revolutions' in social and cultural attitudes about women and gender equality that occurred in the United States during the latter part of the 20th century: the gender equality revolution; the sexual revolution; and the no-fault divorce revolution. As the changes in attitudes and behavior associated with these social movements were codified into laws governing the family, opposition and backlash have emerged. Today there are two ways in which this resistance is mobilized: the 'Value Voter,' whose influence in politics has greatly increased, particularly in the 2004 elections, and the social and academic movement known as the 'Marriage Movement.' The Marriage Movement is made up of religious conservatives, but also includes secular advocates for bringing back a more stable, less divorce friendly family.

family, religion, critical theory, gender equality, law reform