Gay Rights and American Law

Gay Rights and American Law investigates how American appellate courts dealt with the struggle for lesbian and gay civil rights during the last two decades of the twentieth century. The study is grounded on an exhaustive database of both federal and state cases, rendered between 1981 and 2000, and of the personal attributes of the judges who decided them, as well as the ideological, institutional, and legal environments in which the decisions were situated. The work both explains how diverse factors influenced the adjudication of civil rights claims during a vital era of the homosexual civil rights movement and formulates promising methodologies for the meaningful quantitative empirical study of law.

Spis treści:
1. Introduction
The context of the study
The cases
Case outcome variation by court system and subject matter
Geographic variation
Temporal variation
2, Case narratives
Child custody, visitation, adoption, and foster care (CVAF)
Lesbian and gay family issues not involving CVAF
Cases adjudicating sexual orientation discrimination claims not related to lesbian and gay family issues
Gays in the military
Cases adjudicating the constitutionality of consensual sodomy and related
Solicitation statutes and their Enforcement against gay people
Cases adjudicating the free speech and free association rights of gay people
Miscellaneous cases essential to lesbian and gay rights
Same-sex sexual harassment
Defamation involving homosexuality
Miscellaneous cases not essential to lesbian and gay rights
Conclusion
3, The lesbian and gay rights claims models
The statistical analysis
Findings
Applying the models
Answers to questions posed in chapter 2
Model performance
Conclusion
4, Judicial federalism and the myth of parity
Judicial federalism variables
Findings
Conclusion
5, A test of stare decisis
The legal literature
The political science literature
Lesbian and gay rights claims and precedent
Test one
Test two
Caveats
Conclusion
6, Conclusion
Location, location, location
The promise of the states
The value of diversity on the bench
Time is on our side, Yes it is!
The vital role of interest groups
The power of precedent
Democrats, republicans, and gay rights
The forces motivating judicial decision making
The quantitative study of rights and of law
Epilogue.