Constitutional Culture, Social Movement Conflict and Constitutional Change: The Case of the de facto ERA

Abstract

Social movements change the ways Americans understand the Constitution. Social movement conflict, enabled and constrained by constitutional culture, can create new forms of constitutional understanding-a dynamic that guides officials interpreting the open-textured language of the Constitution's rights guarantees. To show how constitutional culture channels social movement conflict to produce enforceable constitutional understandings, I consider how equal protection doctrine prohibiting sex discrimination was forged in the Equal Rights Amendment's defeat.