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26 Ariz. St. L.J. 413 (1994)
What is Feminism

handle is hein.journals/arzjl26 and id is 425 raw text is: What is Feminism? Owen M. Fiss* De Tocqueville once remarked on the unusual tendency of Americans to give political and social controversies a legal cast.' This observation, made more than a century and a half ago, remains true today, perhaps more so than ever, and is confirmed by the peculiar American engage- ment with feminism. Feminism is the set of biliefs and ideas that belong to the broad social and political movement to achieve greater equality for women. As its governing ideology, feminism gives shape and direction to the women's movement and, of course, is shaped by it. Women seek equality in all spheres of life and use a broad array of strategies to achieve that goal. Feminism does not belong to the law alone. Still, the law has figured prominently in the fight for women's equality, both as a domain to be reformed and as an instrument of reform. As a result, feminism has become of special concern to the legal community. Some lawyers, for example, Catharine MacKinnon, have played an almost architectural role in feminist thought. Others have contributed through more traditional professional activities. Lawsuits to achieve greater equality for women fill the courts, and statutes seeking the same end are now commonplace. Feminism also has been of great importance in recent struggles for power on the Supreme Court. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, President Clinton's first appointment to the Supreme Court, indeed the first by a Democratic president in the last twenty-five years, made her career fighting for women's rights. Simi- larly, the confirmation battles of two recent Republican nominees - Clarence Thomas and Robert Bork - largely centered on feminist issues. In the fall of 1991, the nation was gripped by the allegations of sexual harassment lodged against Clarence Thomas by Anita Hill in * Sterling Professor of Law, Yale University; Law Clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall from August 1964 to July 1965, when the Justice served as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. This paper was presented in December 1992 to the Congreso del Consejo General del Poder Judicial in Madrid and then in March 1993 to the Faculty of Law of Tel Aviv University. It benefitted greatly from the comments in both settings. I also wish to acknowledge the special contribution of my research assistants: Jennifer K. Brown, Brooks Fudenberg, Christopher Kutz, Tracey M. Robertson, and Olivier Sultan. 1. ALEXIS DE TOCQtnEVILLE, 1 DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA 280 (Phillips Bradley ed., 1945).

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