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27 J. Legal Education 120 (1975-1976)
Book Reviews

handle is hein.journals/jled27 and id is 128 raw text is: BOOK REVIEWS SEX-BASED DISCRIMINATION: TEXT, CASES & MATERIALS. By Kenneth M. Davidson, Ruth Bader Ginsburg & Herma Hill Kay. St. Paul, Minn: West Publishing Co. 1974. Pp. XXXV, 1081. $15.50. (hard- bound). During its most recent Term, the United States Supreme Court heard, decided or elected to review six' cases raising constitutional issues of sex- based discrimination. ,By way of relevant contrast, for the entire tenure of the Court from Marshall through Warren,2 the Court's major decisions con- cerning the constitutional status of women can be counted, literally, upon the fingers of one hand.3 To the extent that the quantity of decision-making by itself measures judicial concern about a given subject, two inferences readily unfold from these statistics. Firstly, until its decision of Reed v. Reed,4 our highest Court deemed the legal implications of being female in America a consistently and profoundly insignificant matter.5 Secondly, within the current decade, this historical pattern of relegating issues of dis- crimination against females to a well-sealed dungeon beneath the Constitu- tion has changed. These Supreme Court phenomena brightly signal the propitious nature of the work of Professors Davidson, Ginsburg and Kay, in their co-authorship IDuring this Term, the Court decided Cohen v. Chesterfield County School Board and Cleveland Board of Education v. La Fleur, 414 U.S. 632, 42 U.S.L.W. 4186 (1974), holding that certain mandatory maternity leaves violate due process of law. The Court heard argument in Shevin v. Kahn, prob. Jd. noted, 42 U.S.L.W. 3246 (1973), on February 25-26, 1974 (challenging Florida exclusion of widowers from $500 property tax exemption) and in Geduldig v. Aiello, prob. Jd. noted, 42 U.S.L.W. 3362, on March 26, 1974 (challenging California exclusion of pregnancy- related disabilities from employee-paid insurance system). It noted probable juris- diction in Edwards v. Healy, 42 U.S.L.W. 3468 (1974) (challenging Louisiana ex- clusion of females from jury duty), and it granted certiorari in Ballard v. Laird, 42 U.S.L.W. 3467 (1974) (challenging mandatory military discharge policy more stringent for male members). 2The year 1971 marks the original occasion upon which the Court saw fit to invoke principles of equal protection to invalidate a state statute which discrim- inated expressly against female applicants for estate administrator. Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71, 92 S.Ct. 251, 30 L.Ed.2d 225 (1971). 3 Bradwell v. Illinois, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 130 (1873); Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412, 28 S.Ct. 324, 52 L.Ed. 551 (1908); Goesaert v. Cleary, 335 U.S. 464, 69 S.Ct. 198, 93 L.Ed. 163 (1948); Hoyt v. Florida, 368 U.S. 57, 82 S.Ct. 159, 7 L.Ed.2d 118 (1961). Treated in a section entitled, The Tradition, in Davidson, Ginsburg & Kay, Sex-Based Discrimination (hereinbelow, Sex-Based Discrimination), this hand- ful of significantly single-minded decisions was first analyzed in L. Kanowitz, Women and the Law: The Unfinished Revolution 150-156, 171-172 (Univ. New Mexico Press, 1969). 4 See footnote 2, supra. 5 Some may choose to dispute the fairness of this inference Insofar as the insti- tution of our highest Court is concerned. Those who do ought first to examine the majority opinions in Goesaert v. Cleary and Hoyt v. Florida, cited at foot- note 3, supra, and to consider the indisputable flippancy with which two of the greatest jurists of this century, Felix Frankfurter and John Harlan, respectively, treated constitutional questions of women at work and on jurie8.

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