The Equality Crisis: Some Reflections on Culture, Courts, and Feminism [1982]

To say that courts are not and never have been the source of radical social change is an understatement. They reflect, by and large, mainstream views, mostly after those views are well established, although very occasionally (as in Brown v. Board of Education, the great school desegregation case) the Court moves temporarily out ahead of public opinion. What women can get from the courts—what we have gotten in the past decade—is a qualified guarantee of equal treatment. We can now expect, for the most part, that courts will rule that the privileges the law explicitly bestows on men must also be made available to women.