Feminism, Marriage, and the Law in Victorian England, 1850-1895.

SHANLEY, Mary Lyndon [Ruth Bader Ginsburg].

$5,500.00

Item Number: 147831

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.

First edition of this comprehensive study of Victorian reforms in marriage law and how it reshapes our understanding of the feminist movement of that period. Octavo, original cloth with gilt titles to the spine. Presentation copy, inscribed by Bill Bader on the front free endpaper, “2 June 1997, For Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, The very greatest female jurist the common law world has ever seen, With high personal regard & esteem, Bill Bader.” American lawyer and jurist Ruth Bader Ginsburg served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until her death in 2020 and was responsible for some of the most eventful legal decisions of the past half-century. Nominated by President Bill Clinton in 1993 to replace retiring justice Byron White, Ginsburg became the first Jewish woman and the second woman to serve on the Court, after Sandra Day O’Connor. Ginsburg spent much of her legal career as an advocate for gender equality and women’s rights, winning many arguments before the Supreme Court. During her tenure as associate justice of the Supreme Court, Ginsburg received attention for her fiery and passionate dissents that reflected liberal views of the law. She was popularly dubbed “the Notorious R.B.G.”, a moniker she later embraced. She authored several important majority opinions related to gender discrimination, voting rights, and affirmative action in cases such as United States v. Virginia (1996) which struck down the Virginia Military Institute’s  male-only admissions policy as violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Olmstead v. L.C. (1999) in which the Court ruled that mental illness is a form of disability covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, and Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services, Inc. (2000) in which the Court held that residents have standing to seek fines for an industrial polluter that affected their interests and that is able to continue doing so. Fine in a near fine dust jacket, with light bumping and rubbing to the extremities of the dust jacket. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box.

"Molly Shanley's book will be important both for political theorists and for scholars of women's studies. She explores with great care and thoroughness the connections between nineteenth-century feminist argument and activism on the one hand, and familiar liberal principles of justice and equality on the other. The book contributes greatly to our understanding of the development of modern liberalism and modern feminism as two related foundations of our current ways of thinking" (Nannerl O. Keohane, Wellesley College).