The Constitution of Interests: Beyond the Politics of Rights
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Many of America's most important social and political movements--abolition, women's suffragette, civil rights, women's liberation, gay and lesbian rights--have organized in the shadow of the law. All are based in their theoretical opposition to the law. Yet at the same time, they are dependent on the laws that prohibit them. Law is thus formed as much through the dynamic tensions that govern how these laws are received as through their official decree. Legal forms such as contracts, property, and rights also constitute social and political life because they structure our world. John Brigham here focuses on four ideological movements and their strategies, among them the struggle over the closing of gay bathhouses in the early years of the AIDS crisis and the radical feminist use of rage and radical consciousness in anti- pornography campaigns. The effect of law on politics, Brigham convincingly reveals, is pervasive precisely because political life finds its expression in a surprising variety of legal forms. Law Thought provoking and informative.
PrefaceCh. 1Legal Forms: Toward a Constitutive Theory1Ch. 2Rights to Profligacy? Sex and AIDS, the Early Years29Ch. 3Professions of Realism: An Institutional Form51Ch. 4Remedial Law: The Ideology of Informalism77Ch. 5Radical Legal Consciousness: Sex and Rage103Ch. 6The Constitution of Interests: Rethinking Legalism129Notes155Bibliography197Index219
