Beyond Race, Sex, and Sexual Orientation : Legal Equality without Identity /
The conventional interpretation of equality under the law singles out certain groups or classes for constitutional protection: women, racial minorities, and gays and lesbians. The United States Supreme Court calls these groups 'suspect classes'. Laws that discriminate against them are gene...
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
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Cambridge :
Cambridge University Press,
2013.
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| Online Access: | View fulltext via EzAccess |
| Summary: | The conventional interpretation of equality under the law singles out certain groups or classes for constitutional protection: women, racial minorities, and gays and lesbians. The United States Supreme Court calls these groups 'suspect classes'. Laws that discriminate against them are generally unconstitutional. While this is a familiar account of equal protection jurisprudence, this book argues that this approach suffers from hitherto unnoticed normative and political problems. The book elucidates a competing, extant interpretation of equal protection jurisprudence that avoids these problems. The interpretation is not concerned with suspect classes but rather with the kinds of reasons that are already inadmissible as a matter of constitutional law. This alternative approach treats the equal protection clause like any other limit on governmental power, thus allowing the Court to invalidate equality-infringing laws and policies by focusing on their justification rather than the identity group they discriminate against. |
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| Item Description: | Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 13 Apr 2016). |
| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (292 pages) : digital, PDF file(s). |
| ISBN: | 9781139087643 (ebook) |