This collection engages with current issues on equal protection in the USA, as seen from the perspectives of leading academics in this area. Contributors with a range of perspectives interrogate the legal, theoretical and factual assumptions which shape case law and consider the extent to which they satisfactorily address contemporary concerns with social hierarchies and norms. Divided into five parts, the study focusses on the connections between equal protection jurisprudence, discrimination in its contemporary manifestations, the implications of identity politics and the moral and political conceptualizations of equality that represent the parameters of debate. Drawing on historical analysis and disciplinary insights of the social sciences, the book bridges the gap between theory and practice. The themes presented and analyses developed are among some of the most contentious currently in America, and will be of interest not just to lawyers and legal academics, but also to inter-disciplinary social science researchers, including sociologists, economists and political scientists.

Chapter 1 Introduction, Anne Richardson Oakes; Part I Equality and the Dead End of Equal Protection; Chapter 2 Original Sins, Continuing Wrongs, Francisco Valdes; Chapter 3 Equal Protection's Dead End, or the Slave's Undying Claim, Sora Han; Part II The Formulae for Stasis; Chapter 4 Equal Protection as Intentional Blindness, Ian F. Haney López; Chapter 5 Judging Opportunity Lost, Mario L. Barnes, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Erwin Chemerinsky; Chapter 6 The Troubled Adolescence of City of Boerne v. Flores, William D. Araiza; Part III Racial Justice in Education; Chapter 7 Racial Liberalism and School Desegregation Jurisprudence, Michael Paris; Chapter 8 Supreme Court Opinions on Equal Protection in Education and Their Use of Social Science Research, Janet W. Schofield, Pat K. Chew; Chapter 9 The State's Compelling Interest in Substantive Equality, Jennifer S. Hendricks; Part IV The Possibilities of Equal Protection; Chapter 10 Ball of Con(stitutional)Fusion, John G. Culhane; Chapter 11 Unequal Protection for Sex and Gender Nonconformists, Julie A. Greenberg; Chapter 12 Bringing Equal Protection Out of the Tax Closet, Anthony C. Infanti; Part V Pushing the Boundaries; Chapter 13 Equal Protection and the Immigrant, Laura A. Hernández; Chapter 14 Applying an Equal Protection Methodology to Speech and Religion Cases, Patrick M. Garry; Chapter 15 Equal Protection and Environmental Justice, Haydn Davies; Part VI Afterword; Afterword, Martha Albertson Fineman;