In Support of the Equal Rights Amendment

Abstract

The basic premise of the Equal Rights Amendment is that sex should not be a factor in determining the legal rights of women, or of men. Most of us, I think, agree with this fundamental proposition. For example, virtually everybody would consider it unjust and irrational to provide by law that a person could not go to law school or be admitted to the practice of law because of his or her sex. The reason is that admission to the bar ought to depend upon legal training, competence in the law, moral character, and similar factors. Some women meet these qualifications and some do not; some men meet these qualifications and some do not. But the issue should be decided on an individual, not a group, basis. The fact of maleness or femaleness should be irrelevant. This remains true whether or not there are more men than women who qualify. It likewise remains true even if there be no women who presently qualify, because women potentially qualify and might do so under different conditions of education and upbringing. The law, in short, owes an obligation to treat females as persons, not statistical abstracts.