Currie Lecture 2016 | Guido Calabresi, Equality in the American Constitution [20:22-25:25]

but it is still there and pushing. What about other groups? What kind of equality do gays want? Kenji Yoshino, my law clerk and student, has made very clear that he thinks that gays want 1st Amendment equality. Leave us alone and let us flaunt. Let us be ourselves and do whatever we want. What kind of equality do women want? It's very interesting because if you look back in the women's movement, you see two very powerful strands. One which says, 1st Amendment, we are who we are. We don't need anything from you. We don't want to be like you. Let us be ourselves. Another strand which says, no, we have been created in some ways. We have to be held that maybe we should behave like men. Pauli Murray, a remarkable woman who was an African-American graduate of the Yale Law School, became the first African-American woman priest in the Episcopal Church and was also probably gay. When they named the college for her, they did everything in one person. Which is a bit much. But anyway, she tried very hard to pull these two strands together. She saw it and tried to do it. It didn't completely work. I should tell you that in my talks class many, many years ago, I was talking about some aspects of this with respect to women and said, of course, if women want equality on their own terms, it's going to be slower in being given, because the dominant group is much more ready to give equality on its own terms. You'll be like us, then give equality and you can be yourself. This student said what you're saying is just another male trick to slow us down. I said, it may be, but I think it may be what women want. Think about what you really want. And we argued and she graduated three or four years later. I get a note from her saying, dammit, you're right. It was Catherine McKinnon, it was Catherine McKinnon who had come to a decision that what she wanted was equality on her own terms. So which is it that one wants? Now, today, for the first time you are getting something which may say, we want 14th Amendment equality, but we want the right to plot. That is, that is what, in some way, Hispanics have been pushing for Spanish language and other things. Maybe the coalition of Hispanics and women will be able to push for it, because I say there is no logical necessity that 14th Amendment equality doesn't have a right to plot, but it is very hard and I'm still enough quite clear that it is going to go. Okay. Okay. This is kind of the background of where we are. Now, the problem with 14th Amendment equality role is that it does mean that some people are bearing the burden of this affirmative action. You never do affirmative action without putting a burden on someone. So let's come back for a moment to Aaron Cooper. And as I was thinking about this, I thought, this is beautiful, this is great, but whose lives will be lost? Whose lives is what court say it is worthwhile losing because equality is a value greater than life? Not the Supreme Court, you know? Not people in Washington, it was, would be some kids in that school, in little honor.