How did we get to Dobbs? Reproduction, gender, and the law

Undergraduate / Graduate

This course will situate the landmark Dobbs decision, which held that the U.S. Constitution does not confer a right to abortion, within four widening concentric horizons of interpretation. The first horizon is legal: we will examine other relevant landmark cases on privacy and "history and tradition," as well as the state-state, state-federal, and public-private legal relations of the emerging abortion landscape. The second is jurisprudential--debates in legal scholarship over pertinent issues such as the liberty and equality rights of 14th Amendment, bodily integrity, and fetal personhood. Third will be social science that situates the conservative legal movement in the contexts of American constitutional development, historical patterns of political recurrence, and the political economy of the "family values" discourse. The fourth horizon will draw from social and political theory to consider other possible civic, biopolitical, economic, psychological, and racial dimensions to the legal regulation of reproduction and motherhood. This course is an LLSO junior colloquium and will accordingly require a substantial independent research paper.