Law, Gender, and Injustice

Joan Hoff is Research Professor of History at Montana State University, former Executive Secretary of the Organization of American Historians, and coeditor of the international Journal of Women's History.

A fascinating social history of women's rights, centered on a lengthy and discouraging series of constitutional confrontations .... a remarkably complete accounting of a historical trail that shape us all .... Law, Gender, and Injustice is an elegant example of the very best in feminist theorizing. - Patricia J. Williams (Women's Review of Books) Joan Hoff's legal history of U.S. women is a provocative, comprehensive, and realistic reinterpretation of women's legal status during the entire period of U.S. history. The book is sure to stimulate controversial reassessments of women's experience with the legal system. - Mary Frances Berry,Geraldine R. Segal Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania Requisite for establishing women's legal history as a field. . . . Hoff's work is pivotal for both its conceptualization of the issues and its periodization of the field. . . . In contending with law as it was as well as with law as it is and ought to be, Hoff not only synthesizes recent scholarship, but she also charts new territory especially with regard to a chronological framework. - Norma Basch (The Journal of Women's History) A brilliant, original, and thought-provoking book must reading for anyone interested in the full emancipation of women. (Ms. Magazine)