"Sex and Privacy in American Law presents empirical analyses of civil and criminal state court decisions applying the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision in Lawrence v. Texas. After tracing key historical and legal developments leading up to the Lawrence decision's decriminalization of sodomy on substantive due process grounds in 2003, the study employs both quantitative and qualitative content analyses of 307 cases citing Lawrence over the two decades since it was decided. Results indicate that judicial decisions rarely embraced broad readings of Lawrence in criminal cases. In fact, Lawrence's long-term impact on criminal law has largely remained as limited as some commentators predicted shortly after the case was decided. In civil cases, courts tended not to rely on Lawrence significantly in most business and employment law cases. Courts that applied Lawrence in family law disputes - especially those involving same-sex couples - often construed the case narrowly at first, but broadened their interpretations after Obergefell v. Hodges brought marriage equality to the United States. Lawrence also impacted LGBTQ+ civil rights claims. Statistically significant geographic differences were found relating to how courts used Lawrence in those cases, with judges in Northeastern and Pacific coastal states having applied the precedent broadly, while judges in Southern and Midwestern states tending to have applied the case more narrowly. The implications are explored generally and within the specific context of the constriction of substantive due process rights in the wake Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization."--

"Over its half-century of public life, Roe v. Wade took on meanings that extended far beyond its original purpose of protecting the privacy of the doctor-patient relationship. At various times, it forced us to confront hard questions about judicial activism and restraint, the believability of science, racial justice, the suppression of religion, and much more. Mary Ziegler explores the transformations of meaning that have kept abortion on the front lines of our political and social battles"--

A chilling look at post 9/11 America: a woman visited by the Secret Service because of her anti-war sign; a woman fired from her job for her car bumper sticker; a school classroom entered after midnight by police, who photographed the students' anti-war artwork. Rothschild, editor of The Progressive magazine, tells the civil liberty stories of ordinary Americans whose rights have been trampled on and reveals an America that is becoming less and less free.

The Poverty of Privacy Rights makes a simple, controversial argument: Poor mothers in America have been deprived of the right to privacy. The U.S. Constitution is supposed to bestow rights equally. Yet the poor are subject to invasions of privacy that can be perceived as gross demonstrations of governmental power without limits. Courts have routinely upheld the constitutionality of privacy invasions on the poor, and legal scholars typically understand marginalized populations to have "weak versions" of the privacy rights everyone else enjoys. Khiara M. Bridges investigates poor mothers' experiences with the state--both when they receive public assistance and when they do not. Presenting a holistic view of just how the state intervenes in all facets of poor mothers' privacy, Bridges shows how the Constitution has not been interpreted to bestow these women with family, informational, and reproductive privacy rights. Bridges seeks to turn popular thinking on its head: Poor mothers' lack of privacy is not a function of their reliance on government assistance--rather it is a function of their not bearing any privacy rights in the first place. Until we disrupt the cultural narratives that equate poverty with immorality, poor mothers will continue to be denied this right.