Everyday Law for Gays and Lesbians: An Introduction
This is the (revised) introductory chapter of a book that I am currently writing. The book is titled "Everyday Law for Gays and Lesbians", and is part of Paradigm Publishers' Everyday Law series. The introductory chapter - indeed, the entire book - is built upon and around the power of narrative. I begin the chapter with a personal narrative that illustrates what I refer to as the current predicament of the lesbian and gay movement. In the first part of the chapter, I survey the social and legal landscape that surrounds the movement, explain why I view the current situation as a predicament, and consider the source of that predicament. Then, in the second part of the chapter, I set the stage - and the tone - for the remainder of the book by suggesting that the narratives of individual lesbians and gay men, told in their own words, are a radical and powerful tool for advancing us (meaning all lesbians and gay men) toward the unqualified acceptance that we seek. As I explain in the chapter, my goal in writing this book is to empower and inspire each of us to deploy these narratives in the most effective way possible. In keeping with this view of the power of the individual narrative, I argue that it is up to each of us to draw attention to and challenge the ubiquitous privileging of heterosexuality in our society. And, the title of the book and the series notwithstanding, I further eschew overreliance on legal strategies for effecting change; instead, in the course of the book, I discuss both potential legal and non-legal avenues for effecting change. I would greatly appreciate any comments that you might have on the chapter or any suggestions that you might have regarding coverage for the book.
The Myth of Superiority
This Article re-considers the relationship between federal and state courts as fora for the resolution of civil rights claims. In his renowned 1977 article, The Myth of Parity, 90 Harv. L. Rev. 1105, Professor Burt Neuborne set forth the argument that the federal courts were institutionally superior to state courts in handling federal constitutional claims. In the succeeding 22 years, gay litigants seeking to establish and vindicate civil rights have generally fared better in state courts than they have in federal courts. This might, of course, be nothing more than a consequence of the political orientation of the federal judges appointed by Presidents Reagan and Bush during these years. However, this Article argues that the gay rights experience reveals certain institutional characteristics of state courts that make them systemically better-situated (or at least no less well-situated) to demonstrate empathy for minority concerns in certain carefully-defined situations. In so concluding, the Article urges that forum-shopping civil rights attorneys abandon an irrebutable presumption in favor of federal courts.
Aristocratic Century: The sinews of power: political
In his excellent book on the Secretaries of State, Mark Thomson offered ‘the paradox of continuing domination of the aristocracy and the simultaneous insignificance of the House of Lords, per se ’. It is true that, by the beginning of the eighteenth century, the supremacy of the House of Commons in financial matters was a wellestablished convention. The claims of the Commons to an undisputed control over money matters, which had been urged before the Civil War, were resumed immediately after the Restoration and a protracted dispute with the House of Lords began. In 1661 the Lords resolved that there were no precedents in history for this new claim by the House of Commons. In 1671, the Commons retorted that taxation ought not to be questioned by the Lords and in 1678 they reiterated that supply was ‘the undoubted and sole right of the Commons’ and ‘ought not to be changed or altered by the House of Lords’. The Lords' attempt in 1692 to assess their own taxes was also abandoned, though they retired under cover of a rather insubstantial smoke-screen that they maintained their power of amendment to be a ‘fundamental, inherent and undoubted right from which their lordships can never depart’. That established, they departed. Geoffrey Holmes quotes a nice example from 1702 when the bishop of Carlisle found himself the only peer answering to a money bill, ‘no other lord in the House regarded what was doing, this being only (pro forma) to preserve a seeming right to dissent from, or amend, any part of a money bill’.