Overview

This book tells the stories of notable historical figures who, by resisting patriarchal laws condemning adultery, gay and lesbian sex, and sex across the boundaries of religion and race, brought about lasting social and political change. Constitutional scholar David A. J. Richards investigates the lives of leading transgressive artists, social critics, and activists including George Eliot, Benjamin Britten, Christopher Isherwood, Bayard Rustin, James Baldwin, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Margaret Mead. Richards shows how ethical empowerment, motivated by love, allowed these figures to resist the injustices of anti-Semitism, racism, sexism, and homophobia, leading to the constitutional condemnation of these political evils in the United States, Britain, and beyond. Love and law thus grow together, and this book shows how and why. Drawing from developmental psychology (including studies of trauma), political theory, the history of social movements, literature, biography, and law, this book will be a thought-provoking tool for anyone interested in civil rights.

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9781107569829

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Reviews

Advance praise: 'Beautifully written and powerfully argued, Richards's Why Love Leads to Justice provides us with a new and original way of thinking about love and justice. A tour de force.' Drucilla Cornell, Rutgers University, New Jersey Advance praise: 'A fascinating account of the ways in which illicit love, both gay and straight, empowered a diverse group of seekers for justice in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.' Kwame Anthony Appiah, New York University, and author of The Ethics of Identity Advance praise: 'In this book, David Richards brings his signature erudition to bear on the relationship between law and love. More specifically, he argues that the formal and informal 'love laws' that determine whom and how we are permitted to love often reflect and reinforce the core injustice of patriarchy. By examining a series of love stories, Richards contends that individuals found the ethical space to challenge patriarchy not in spite of, but because of, their willingness to break with convention. I disagreed with some of the instances raised but kept thinking back to this work long after I finished it. It is a radiant manifesto for love as an ethical faculty.' Kenji Yoshino, Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law, New York University Law School Advance praise: 'This ground-breaking book opens up questions that any psychologist interested in ethical development will want to take seriously. By revealing love as the force that crosses the boundaries created by patriarchy, it invites a new way of thinking about what stands in the way of justice.' Carol Gilligan, University Professor of Applied Psychology and the Humanities, New York University, and author of In a Different Voice and The Birth of Pleasure

Author Information

David A. J. Richards is Edwin D. Webb Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, where he teaches constitutional law and criminal law. He is the author of nineteen books, including recently The Deepening Darkness: Patriarchy, Resistance, and Democracy's Future (with Carol Gilligan, 2009), Fundamentalism in American Religion and Law (2010), and The Rise of Gay Rights and the Fall of the British Empire (2013).

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