ABSTRACT
The most obvious role of the Supreme Court may be to resolve questions of constitutional principle, but the Court is also drawn into disputes over how we define certain social realities. The Court’s decisions rarely acknowledge this role, nor have the Justices developed a body of doctrine to guide their rulings on social facts. Nonetheless, the interaction of the enduring principles of our Constitution with the changing facts of our society cannot be avoided. Social facts are especially important in the recurring questions surrounding our definition of a legal person. In the Bong Hits case discussed in the first chapter, the dispute over free speech reflected a fundamental disagreement on whether minors are the same as adults or in a distinct category of their own. Perhaps the most important recurring question to come before the Court is Who is a full person with all legal rights? The Court’s answers in the realm of race, gender, and abortion—that women and African Americans gained status as legal persons and fetuses did not—is one way to characterize some of the most significant and controversial developments in the last century of constitutional interpretation.
