Remembering the Ladies, Part 1 (LAW-CONST2)
This lecture introduces America's 'feminist Constitution,' analyzing how the Nineteenth Amendment challenges the original popular sovereignty narrative where women lacked suffrage. It argues that courts should consider legislative history's male dominance when evaluating laws related to women's equality, using a hypothetical Violence Against Women Act.
📚The Constitution claims supremacy because the people ordained it. Akhil Reed Amar shows how the Nineteenth Amendment, once adopted, quietly unsettles that whole story.
This lecture opens the chapter on America's feminist Constitution. Amar lays out the popular sovereignty theory that makes the Constitution supreme, then argues that women's suffrage calls into question the fairness of a founding and Reconstruction in which women had no vote. Using a hypothetical Violence Against Women Act, he contends that courts should hesitate to strike down laws protecting women's equality on the strength of an overwhelmingly male legislative history.
Whose Constitution Do We Actually Live In? (LAW-CONST2)
Next · Lecture 14Remembering the Ladies, Part 2 (LAW-CONST2)