Why The Nineteenth Amendment Matters Today: A Citizen's Direct For The Centennial

This twelvemonth marks the 1 hundredth anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S.A. Constitution, a radically pro-democratic amendment that empowered roughly 10 1000000 women to vote inwards a full general election for the offset time. Given the practical too expressive significance of the Amendment, it is appropriate that the U.S.A. is honoring the occasion. But Americans powerfulness practise to a greater extent than than laurels their shared past. They powerfulness endure encouraged to intend nearly why the even out of the Nineteenth Amendment matters to Americans living today. That even out includes a half-century of social get tilt over whether permitting women to vote would destroy or democratize the American solid unit of measurement too the American constitutional structure.

In a novel Essay, I revisit the even out of the Nineteenth Amendment—an unfinished narrative of both disappointment too hope—in the service of identifying reasons why that even out relates to the lives of contemporary Americans. Its overarching objective is to propose that the amount even out of the Amendment has ever involved much to a greater extent than than a narrow fighting over a determinate determination dominion regarding women’s access to the franchise. To attain that objective, the Essay makes iv points inwards iv parts. The offset 2 explicate when too how voting rights for all women like shooting fish in a barrel became a reality, too the in conclusion 2 position approximately implications of that history for American constitutional police draw too contemporary constitutional politics.

Part I considers which women were enfranchised when too why it matters. Part II considers approximately of the groups (men) too structures (federalism) that both impeded too facilitated adult woman suffrage. Part III explains the link betwixt restrictions on adult woman suffrage too the social subordination of women to men, showing how the anti-subordination rationale of the Nineteenth Amendment bears on both its ain interpretation too the interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause yesteryear the courts. Part IV turns to the contemporary implications of the even out of the Nineteenth Amendment for American constitutional politics, including debates over the Equal Rights Amendment, unequal pay for equal work, paid solid unit of measurement too self-care leave, too restrictions on access to contraception too abortion.