ABSTRACT
The law of sexual equality provides an exception to almost every generalization which can be made about the Supreme Court during Warren Burger's tenure as chief justice. The Burger Court was less committed to protecting individual rights than the Warren Court had been – except for their respective records on women's rights. The Burger Court was respectful of precendent — except for this departure from sixty years of entrenched precedent. The Burger Court was neither revolutionary nor counter-revolutionary — except for the decade in which it transformed the constitutional law of sex discrimination. If we examine doctrine alone, the Burger Court emerges as the best judicial friend the women's movement ever had. But, then and since, the actual beneficiaries of actual cases include more men than women. The results seem to support Nora Ephron's observation that “the major concrete achievement of the women's movement in the 1970s was the Dutch treat” (1983: 81). This article provides an explanation for the disappointing results of the new doctrine.
