ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the limitations of the legal discourses in coming to terms with the ideological effects of actuarial practices. The success of actuarial methods in shaping a new ideological basis for the governance of social life will be marked by its ability to colonize legal discourse with its representations. Actuarial practices are gradually forming a surface over institutions and social policy arrangements that make them nonconductive of political and moral charge. In a 1977 case, Los Angeles Water and Power v. Manhart, the United States Supreme Court considered a challenge to the actuarial use of gender in setting employee benefits. For insurance-oriented thinkers, the Manhart decision is more than wrongly decided; it is an assault on what they conceive of as scientifically established reality. Neither the insurance nor the rights discourse provides an adequate basis for understanding the social policy choices really at stake in Manhart.
