Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Batlan reviews Mayeri, "Reasoning from Race"

We always pay attention when the JOTWELL legal history section posts new material. The latest is a review of Reasoning from Race, by Serena Mayeri (University of Pennsylvania). Reviewer Felice Batlan (IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law) introduces the book as follows:
Scholars have understood well that second wave feminism has deep roots in the Civil Rights Movement. Only in recent years, however, have historians explored the full extent of the material and ideological connections between these two movements.  Reasoning from Race brings this agenda to the field of legal history.  It examines what it meant for feminist legal advocates to use race analogies, how this changed over time, and how ultimately civil rights lawyers then attempted to reason from sex. In doing so, Meyeri seeks to demonstrate that the Civil Rights Movement and the Women’s Rights Movement cannot be understood in isolation from each other. Rather the movements were in dialogue with one another, taking the lead from and piggybacking on each other at different times.
The full review is available here.