Sex and the Constitution: Sex, Religion, and Law from America's Origins to the Twenty-First Century - Softcover

Geoffrey R. Stone is the author of the prize-winning Perilous Times. He is the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago and one of our nation’s leading constitutional scholars.

Writing confidently and expertly about several centuries of American laws regulating sex, Stone shows that the line between moral and religious reasoning was almost always illusory. . . . Sex and the Constitution is most persuasive when Stone turns to America, and his comprehensive knowledge of constitutional law is put on full display. He is especially good on the eighteenth century, bringing a bracing and much-needed dose of reality about the Founders’ views of sexuality. . . . [A] very important book. — Annette Gordon-Reed (New York Review of Books)

A comprehensive history and analysis of our law's fitful and frequently schizophrenic treatment of sex...A story that is both fascinating and maddening...This book brings us all the way up to the controversies of our day (including gay marriage) and offers tantalizing glimpses of some of the legal battles that lie ahead...Those interested in adding historical context to their thinking about these hot button issues would be well-advised to add Stone's book to their summer reading list. — David Wecht (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

This masterpiece is the rarest of combinations: a page-turner that is also a magisterial font of wisdom. — Laurence H. Tribe, author of The Invisible Constitution

This fascinating account of how sexual mores, religion, and law have intersected or—more often—collided throughout American history is really about even more than that. It’s about the role of law in maintaining a civil society in a diverse twenty-first-century America, and a call to the Supreme Court to step up to the challenge. — Linda Greenhouse, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and Knight Distinguished Journalist in Residence at Yale Law School

A volume of lasting significance that quickly will become essential reading not only for law students and scholars but for all who want to better understand sweeping cultural transformations that continue to roil society. — Lee C. Bollinger, president, Columbia University

Magnificent and monumental—a stunning blend of dispassionate analysis and deep moral conviction. Think that the United States was born as a Christian nation? Think again. — Cass R. Sunstein, Robert Walmsley University Professor, Harvard University

A superb examination of the history of how the law has regulated sexual behavior and sexual expression from the ancient world to today. — Erwin Chemerinsky, dean and Raymond Pryke Professor of First Amendment Law, University of California, Irvine School of Law

Sex, which has simultaneously inspired and eluded regulation through the ages, has been the focus of many of our greatest constitutional controversies. No one is better suited than the always erudite and lucid Geoffrey Stone to provide the panoramic treatment that the subject deserves. Unless you are the rare person who has no interest in either the Constitution or sex, you will want to read this book. — David Cole, author of Engines of Liberty: The Power of Citizen Activists to Make Constitutional Law

This title is a commanding synthesis of scholarship on over two centuries of American legal debate and practice regarding these issues, and would work well as the core text for a course of the subject. . . . Stone’s analysis is highly recommended for anyone seeking an introduction to the history of U.S. law and sexual expression. — Publisher's Weekly