ABSTRACT
The distinction between public and private has been a central feature of liberal political discourse since its inception. This chapter examines various disputes over what American law and society should regard as public, what as private and as a way of sharpening our perception and increasing our appreciation of the political judgments inherent in any particular use of these terms. In addition to addressing public and political roles and responsibilities, they attempted to define a zone of privacy as a way of delimiting the power of the state. Feminists in the United States have repeatedly battled to redraw the boundaries of public and private and to reveal the political uses to which the public-private distinction has been put. In the United States, such efforts have included the antislavery movement, the antilynching campaigns, recent efforts to stop sexual harassment and domestic violence, welfare mothers' rights movements, and the gay and lesbian rights movement, to name just a few.
