“SUBJECTIVITY IS A CITIZEN”: REPRESENTATION, RECOGNITION, AND THE DECONSTRUCTION OF CIVIL RIGHTS

Abstract

The progressive limits to rights mobilization have become starkly apparent in the past two decades. No new suspect classes have been forthcoming from the Supreme Court since 1977 despite continued demands for legal recognition by lesbians and gays, indigenous peoples and others interested in expanding civil rights doctrine. Public tolerance for civil rights measures has likewise dried up. Since the 1960s, referenda on civil rights have halted affirmative action programs, limited school busing and housing discrimination protections, promoted English-only laws, limited AIDS policies, and ended the judicial recognition of same-sex marriage, among other issues. Nearly 80% of these referenda have had outcomes realizing the Madisonian fear of “majority tyranny”¹ and signaling the Nietzschean dread of a politics of resentment (Brown, 1995, p. 214; Connolly, 1991, p. 64).

Citation

Goldberg-Hiller, J. (2003), "“SUBJECTIVITY IS A CITIZEN”: REPRESENTATION, RECOGNITION, AND THE DECONSTRUCTION OF CIVIL RIGHTS", Studies in Law, Politics and Society (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 28), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 139-188. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1059-4337(02)28006-0