Equal Rights Amendment And Its Failure In American Constitutional History

The equal rights amendment (abbreviate to ERA) has been proposed since 1923, experienced a tortuous process. Although it revived in the 1970s and was successively passed in both houses of congress, it still failed in the states approval process after ten years for lacking the support of three states. This dissertation tries to select the documents from a legal history perspective and separate the experience of the ERA from the main line of the feminist movement. According to the form of legal texts itself , writer hopes to discuss the deep reason of the ERA's failure in legal. The paper passes through a line of "what is equality between men and women", "whether it could be achieved by amendment mode", "Is it likely to achieve the object by this kind of text of the ERA", and "whether the text of amendment could get into the constitution of the United States", and finds the normative defects which are hidden in numerous failure factors. On the other hand, by combining the existing Chinese background documents with some English original documnts, writer also hopes to fill the blanks of knowledge in this field as well as give her own contribution.The way that discussing in a chronological order makes up the basic structure of this paper.The first chapter analyses the background of the ERA, including briefly indicating the women's suffrage movement which has a direct relationship to the ERA, selecting certain documents in a legal history perspective to discuss the changes of social situation and the text of the amendment from the first time when it was proposed to its silent period in 1960s, and revealing the transformation of the controversial focus.The second chapter discusses three modes which were likely to achieve the object of equality and eliminate gender discrimination in the view of the feminist movement supporters. By analyzing advantages and disadvantages of these modes respectively, it comes to a rational reason to choose the amendment mode.The third chapter narrates the revivement of ERA in 1970s and its next failure. Then, it analyses some problems of the amendment's text and further discusses the word"equality"in the text. At last , writer considers that the failure of the ERA is not about the mistake of mode choice, but for the defects of text itself.The fourth chapter tries to reflect the failure of ERA from the view of American constitutional tradition. After briefly introducing the historical constitutional amendments and anlaysing their common characteristics, writer compare the ERA with the 19th amendment and the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment, finally leads to the conclusion that the symbolic value of its text is the further reason why the ERA does not correspond to American constitutional tradition and get out of it.The epilogue introduces the progress of "state equal clauses" and the equal protection clause in protecting gender equality after the failure of ERA, further emphasizes the point– what failed is just the text itself.