The constitution of interests
Subtitle: beyond the politics of rights
By: John Brigham.
Publisher: New York University
Published: 1996
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 224
Subjects: Law -- United States; Jurisprudence -- United States; Law -- United States -- Philosophy; Law and politics; Civil rights -- United States; Sex and law -- United States
Description: Clearly, the structure of authority in this country rests on how Americans understand the nature and relationship of law and politics. Law consists of pronouncements from the courts, but also of what we think of these pronouncements: should abortion be a choice or is it murder? Law is formed as much through the dynamic tensions that govern how these laws are received as through their official decree.

Legal forms - contracts, property, rights - similarly do not reflect pre-existing or natural categories but themselves constitute social and political life because they dictate how we conceptualize our world. Even activists who seek reform inadvertently reinforce the traditional legal remedies against which they rally, oftentimes relying on legal institutions while claiming to be free of them.

John Brigham's book focuses on four particular ideological movements and their strategies, including the emphasis placed by gay men on their rights during the legal struggle over the closing of gay bathhouses in the early years of the AIDS crisis and the radical feminist use of rage and radical consciousness in anti-pornography campaigns. The effect of law in politics, Brigham convincingly reveals, is constitutive precisely when political life finds its meaning in various legal forms.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 197-217) and index.
Table of contents: title: Legal forms : toward a constitutive theory; title: Rights to profligacy? : sex and AIDS, the early years; title: Professions of realism : an institutional form; title: Remedial law : the ideology of informalism; title: Radical legal consciousness : sex and rage; title: The constitution of interests : rethinking legalism.