The Volokh Conspiracy - Potential Consequences of Enacting the Equal Rights Amendment:

The Legal Times just published my op ed analyzing the potential effects of enacting the Equal Rights Amendment, which congressional Democrats resuscitated in March, after a 25 year hiatus. An excerpt:

In March, congressional Democrats resuscitated the Equal Rights Amendment, which fell just short of ratification in 1982. Renamed the Women's Equality Amendment, the ERA is now up for consideration again after a 25-year hiatus...

The conventional wisdom among jurists and legal scholars is that the ERA will make little difference . . .

In reality, the ERA may well have a considerably greater impact than many imagine. Perhaps predictably, some effects will be welcomed by supporters and will upset social conservatives.

What is surprising, however, is how many of the ERA's probable effects will come as an unpleasant surprise to the amendment's predominantly liberal supporters. If enacted, the ERA will likely curtail governmental affirmative action for women and invalidate public school programs that provide targeted assistance to African-American boys, results that many liberals are likely to deplore.

The article focuses on predicting the likely consequences of the ERA. It does not address the question of whether those consequences are desirable or not. However, for what it's worth, I personally support the ERA because I think that most of the likely effects discussed in the article are good ones.

	[Ilya Somin, June 5, 2007 at 6:15pm] Trackbacks Potential Consequences of Enacting the Equal Rights Amendment: The Legal Times just published my op ed analyzing the potential effects of enacting the Equal Rights Amendment, which congressional Democrats resuscitated in March, after a 25 year hiatus. An excerpt: In March, congressional Democrats resuscitated the Equal Rights Amendment, which fell just short of ratification in 1982. Renamed the Women's Equality Amendment, the ERA is now up for consideration again after a 25-year hiatus... The conventional wisdom among jurists and legal scholars is that the ERA will make little difference . . . In reality, the ERA may well have a considerably greater impact than many imagine. Perhaps predictably, some effects will be welcomed by supporters and will upset social conservatives. What is surprising, however, is how many of the ERA's probable effects will come as an unpleasant surprise to the amendment's predominantly liberal supporters. If enacted, the ERA will likely curtail governmental affirmative action for women and invalidate public school programs that provide targeted assistance to African-American boys, results that many liberals are likely to deplore. The article focuses on predicting the likely consequences of the ERA. It does not address the question of whether those consequences are desirable or not. However, for what it's worth, I personally support the ERA because I think that most of the likely effects discussed in the article are good ones.