This article takes up what Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Org. may mean for sex equality rights beyond the abortion setting. It details how Dobbs lays the foundation for rolling back and even eliminating Fourteenth Amendment sex equality protections. The work scales these possibilities against a different dimension of the ruling that’s yet to receive the attention that it merits. An important footnote in Dobbs, Footnote 22, sketches a new history-and-tradition-based approach to unenumerated rights under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause. The jurisprudence that this Footnote capacitates could transform the constitutional landscape via new economic and social rights that set the Court on a collision course with the Slaughter-House Cases. Dangers on the economic rights front include reviving Lochner and its political economic principles in new constitutional garb. Dangers on the social rights front, by contrast, include new constitutional family law rules written from the social-conservative right, overriding constitutional and positive law developments that, since the 1960s, have broadly managed family law from and toward the liberal to progressive left. In both these areas, the Court’s decisions would be capable of catching various sex equality protections in their snares. The future in relation to all these prospects may be set by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the swing-vote justice in Dobbs. So, this article attends to the determinants of Kavanaugh’s Dobbs concurrence, and thus Dobbs’ meaning. While matters could obviously get much worse for sex equality rights after Dobbs, Kavanaugh’s concurrence also offers some reason to hope that they won’t. Struggles for sex equality rights may be intensifying and entering distinctively perilous times. Their future, however, has yet to be determined, including by the Supreme Court.

Marc Spindelman, Dobbs’ Sex Equality Troubles, 32 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 117 (2023).

Photo by erayes.org

In L.W. v. Skrmetti, a divided Sixth Circuit panel gave Tennessee the green light to start enforcing its ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Central to that decision, since extended to cover a companion case, was the panel’s distinctive vision of what Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization means for trans people’s constitutional sex equality rights. This brief essay examines that vision and explains why it’s deficient in the face of Dobbs’ insistent promises that it’s a ruling limited to abortion rights. By its own terms, Dobbs announces no authoritative deviation from established legal protections for other constitutional rights, including LGBTQIA+ peoples’ rights, and, more specifically, trans people’s sex equality rights. Beyond being duty-bound to follow Dobbs’ promises—emphasizing abortion’s uniqueness as key to Dobbs’ self-limitations—lower courts should affirm Dobbs’ line-drawing as an exercise seeking to preserve the Court’s institutional legitimacy and the American public’s faith in the rule of law. Dobbs effectively instructs it’s up to the Supreme Court—not lower courts—to decide whether to honor or abandon Dobbs’ promises, including in the Fourteenth Amendment sex equality setting involving trans sex equality rights.

Marc Spindelman, Trans Sex Equality Rights After Dobbs, 172 U. Pa. L. Rev. Online 1 (2023).

Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unsplash.

This essay, originally presented as a talk at the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis on April 30, 2023, as part of the Midwest LGBTQ+ Rights Conference and the Washington University Public Interest Law & Policy Speakers Series, takes up the new intersectional and anti-racist LGBTQIA+ politics. It offers some reflections on those politics, their meanings, and their possible trajectories in the days ahead in light of recent and soon-to-be-released Supreme Court decisions.

Marc Spindelman, The New Intersectional and Anti-Racist LGBTQIA Politics: Some Thoughts on the Path Ahead, 15 ConLawNOW 1 (2023).

Photo by Janine and Jim Eden via Wikimedia Commons.

Queer Black trans politics offer an important frame for understanding the current constitutional moment. This is a moment in which the Supreme Court’s newly enthroned constitutional originalist project is taking off in ways that have race, sex, sexuality, and trans equality rights in its sights. Thinking with queer Black trans politics—and, in particular, their demands for intersectionality and for centering Black trans lives—this Essay presents a distinctive topology of LGBTQ rights and their intersections with constitutional race and sex guarantees. It considers how a queer Black trans-focused intersectional thinking plays out, including in the context of reproductive rights, and traces how intersectionality isn’t only being used by progressives in pro-racial justice directions, but also by social conservatives in regressive ways that warrant attention in anti-racist circles. After surveying what all this means for the future of LGBTQ legal rights, the Essay concludes by underscoring the stakes—both dangers and opportunities—in the days ahead, as pressures on LGBTQ rights continue to mount in the courts and as struggles for LGBTQ rights increasingly shift to the field of politics. With an eye on those shifts, the Essay closes by calling on LGBTQ communities to attend to queer Black trans politics and their visions with care, resisting the ostensible seductions and comforts that a return to older ways of thinking about and practicing “white club” LGBTQ politics might provide.

Marc Spindelman, Queer Black Trans Politics and Constitutional Originalism, 13 ConLaw NOW 93 (2022).

Photo: Columbus police forcibly move a group of Black queer and trans protesters and allies disrupting the 2017 Pride parade.

The Shower’s Return takes a close look at the litigation leading up to the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, holding that lesbian women, gay men, and trans people are legally entitled to the sex discrimination protections afforded by Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Written before the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock, the article was first published as a six-part serialized essay in the Ohio State Law Journal Online over the summer of 2020 (see below for all six parts in their original form).

See video discussions of parts I-III under the A / V tab.

Marc Spindelman, The Shower’s Return: An Essay on the LGBT Title VII Sex Discrimination Cases, 82 Ohio St. L.J. Online 128 (2021).

Photo by Jan Antonin Kolar on Unsplash.

This brief commentary mines prospects that Justice Neil Gorsuch's majority opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County opens up for Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization—and thus for the future of abortion rights.

Marc Spindelman, Justice Gorsuch’s Choice: From Bostock v. Clayton County to Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, 13 ConLawNOW 11 (2021).

Many people think that the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock is a textualist decision. It is, but it isn’t, hence the paradox of Bostock’s paradox, which explains why this decision is a very big deal—much bigger than the simple representations of it as textualist handiwork capture.

Marc Spindelman, Bostock’s Paradox: Textualism, Legal Justice, and the Constitution, 69 Buff. L. Rev. 553, (2021).

Photo by Matt Popovich on Unsplash.

Chief Justice John Roberts’s decision in June Medical provided the swing vote in the case. This work explains how deeply it wraps its arms around Planned Parenthood v. Casey and so marks a path for the future of abortion rights.

Marc Spindelman, Embracing Casey: June Medical Services L.L.C. v. Russo and the Constitutionality of Reason-Based Abortion Bans, 109 Geo. L.J. Online 115, (2020).

Photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash.

Written before the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock, The Shower’s Return takes a close look at the litigation leading up to the Court’s landmark decision, holding that lesbian women, gay men, and trans people are legally entitled to the sex discrimination protections afforded by Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Recently republished in the Ohio State Law Journal Online (see above), the document below collects all six parts in their original form.

See video discussions of parts I-III under the A / V tab.

Marc Spindelman, The Shower’s Return: An Essay on the LGBT Title VII Sex Discrimination Cases, 81 Ohio St. L.J. Online 81 (2020).

Photo by Zhang Kenny on Unsplash

This work is adapted from remarks delivered at the Women in Legal Education Section’s Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lifetime Achievement Award Luncheon for Robin West, on January 3, 2020, in Washington, D.C.

The remarks focus on the meaning and lasting impact of the brackets contained in West’s famous 1987 essay, The Difference in Women’s Hedonic Lives: A Phenomenological Critique of Feminist Legal Theory.

Marc Spindelman, Robin’s Brackets, 21 Geo. J. Gender & L. 547, (2020).

Photo by Georgetown Climate Center.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Masterpiece Cakeshop has been widely regarded as a narrow, shallow, and modest decision. To the contrary, it is a rich, multi-faceted decision that cleaves and binds the parties to the case, carefully managing conflictual crisis. Masterpiece Cakeshop’s Homiletics unpacks the depth of substantive lawmaking and moral-political teaching contained in the opinion, showing how it reaches for a moral-political ideal of fraternity, discussed here as a civic ideal of sibling love.

Marc Spindelman, Masterpiece Cakeshop’s Homiletics, 68 Clev. St. L. Rev. 347, (2020).

Photo by Neonbrand on Unsplash.

This piece offers a real-time analysis of the prospects for Ohio’s proposed 2018 “down syndrome abortion ban,” H.B. 214, if it were to be enacted and its constitutionality challenged. The piece demonstrates why H.B. 214 is inconsistent with the existing constitutional rules governing abortion rights both previability and postviability, and why a court could properly conclude it must be struck down. More than meets the doctrinal eye, the piece takes a careful look at how reason-based abortion bans work and should be understood by legal and non-legal actors alike.

Marc Spindelman, On the Constitutionality of Ohio’s “Down Syndrome Abortion Ban,” 79 Ohio St. L.J. Furthermore 19, (2018).

Photo by Maria Oswalt on Unsplash.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s announcement in Obergefell v. Hodges—that the Constitution promises marriage equality for same-sex couples—quickly and broadly swept the nation as a powerful symbol of social progress: of justice, of liberty and equality, of dignity, of freedom, delivered. But the case, particularly in dissent, is revolutionary in other ways. Not least among them, it marks not just a step forward but also a return to modes of thinking, and even unreason, about lesbian and gay rights and same-sex intimacies on inglorious display in Bowers v. Hardwick. This work shows how unreason and fantasy govern in Obergefell’s dissents, paying particular attention to the lead dissent by Chief Justice John Roberts. It engages the fearsome and mythic structure of some of what can only be described as Obergefell’s dreams.

Marc Spindelman, Obergefell’s Dreams, 77 Ohio St. L.J. 1039, (2016).

Photo: Max Halberstadt, via Wikimedia Commons.

The contemporary history of gay male sexuality—the full history—has not been written. Within it is an ideology of sexual freedom that has played a significant role. This work describes the ideology of sexual freedom, including its valorization of sexual violence, abuse, and injury, up to and including death, traces some of the ideology’s implications for thinking about HIV/AIDS, and documents its actual operation in theorizing about sexuality by and among gay men in the “high” years of the epidemic. [N.B. Sexual Freedom’s Shadows, below, is a companion work that extends this work’s claims.]

Marc Spindelman, Sexuality’s Law, 24 Colum. J. Gender & L. 87 (2013).

Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

This short work introduces and sets the stage for a colloquium published by the Ohio State Law Journal in the wake of the Supreme Court’s momentous 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges.

Marc Spindelman, A Reader's Guide to the Obergefell v. Hodges Colloquium, 77 Ohio St. L.J. 905 (2016).

Photo: Elvert Barnes, via Wikimedia Commons.

Chris Fairman, Professor and Associate Dean for Faculty at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, died unexpectedly in July, 2015. Among many tributes to his service and gifts to the College and to legal education generally, this work explores one of his many lessons to all of us, delivered through his delight in what may be termed Shockfreude.

Marc Spindelman, Shockfreude and the Very Democratic Teachings of “Professor Fuck”, 77 Ohio St. L.J. 515 (2016).

Photo: Moritz College of Law.

This short introduction sets the historical stage for a symposium published in the Journal of Legal Education on the legal academy’s responsibility to address the individual and systemic injustices now connoted by the name “Ferguson.”

Marc Spindelman, Ferguson and Its Impact on Legal Education Symposium: An Introduction, 65 J. Legal Educ. 263 (2015) (Introduction, as Guest Editor).

Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

This review of Dale Carpenter’s “Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v. Texas“ (2012) offers an alternative perspective on the case. Organized around the story the book tells about Tyrone Garner and his life, the analysis here assesses some of what Lawrence may mean not only for sexual orientation equality but also for equality along the often-intersecting lines of gender, class, and race. Reconsidered in this light, Lawrence is not the singular victory for lesbian and gay civil rights it’s often taken to be, but a complexly mixed opinion about and for equality in society and under law.

Marc Spindelman, Tyrone Garner’s Lawrence v. Texas, 111 Mich. L. Rev. 1111 (2013).

Photo: OutHistory.org.

This piece offers an analysis of the prospects for Ohio’s proposed 2013 “Heartbeat Bill,” H.B. 125, if it were enacted and its constitutionality challenged. The piece demonstrates why H.B. 125 is inconsistent with existing Supreme Court precedent, thought not in every last respect.

Marc Spindelman, On the Constitutionality of Ohio’s Proposed “Heartbeat Bill”, 74 Ohio St. L.J. 147 (2013).

Photo by Hush Naidoo on Unsplash.

Taking a critical perspective on the question of feminism’s situation, this essay urges feminists to consider the benefits, both theoretical and political, of doing feminism without feminism. This essay sketches possible agendas from different feminist perspectives, the idea being to point out how feminism’s present and its future—a future without feminism but not without everything feminists have fought for and cared about—can be as bright a promise and sign of hope as it ever was in the high points of feminism’s past.

Marc Spindelman (2011) “Feminism Without Feminism,” Issues in Legal Scholarship: Vol. 9: Iss. 2 (Legal Feminism Now), Article 8.

Photo by Lindsey LaMont on Unsplash.

Theories of progressive constitutionalism have long since passed the point of achieving critical mass. The term “progressive constitutionalism” now rings familiar in many ears. But does it yet describe a discernible method of constitutional interpretation? This Foreword introduces the Ohio State Law Journal Symposium “Reflections on Progressive Constitutionalism: Theory, Practice and Critique.”

Marc Spindelman, Foreword: Progressive Constitutionalism Considered, 72 Ohio St. L.J. 1069 (2011).

Photo by Hello I’m Nik on Unsplash.

In the early days of January 2011, delivering on a promise from the Republican Pledge to America, the U.S. House of Representatives amended House Rule XII to require that “all measures introduced in the House . . . that are intended to become law” must be accompanied by a document citing “as specifically as practicable the power or powers granted to Congress in the Constitution to enact the” proposed measure. This article explores the implications of the change and how it might signify a move by Congress to take the Constitution and Congress’s role in interpreting it more seriously than in recent years.

Marc Spindelman, House Rule XII: Congress and the Constitution, 72 Ohio St. L.J. 1318 (2011).

Photo by Obi Onyeador on Unsplash.

Tim Dean’s book-length reflections on barebacking subculture, an event in themselves, also supply an occasion for examining same-sex sexuality as it is lived by a number of men who have sex with men. This review essay of Dean’s “Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking” (2009) explores the book’s foundational claims and closes with a question about how to respond. This is a companion piece to Sexuality’s Law, and in its own way advances, via Dean’s work, the materiality of its claims.

Marc Spindelman, Sexual Freedom’s Shadows, 23 Yale J.L. & Feminism 179 (2011).

Photo: Univ. Illinois

A critical theory of existing conditions of the social world written not simply to document but in order to change them, sex equality theory’s power derives from its apprehension of social reality, including its facts and truth, among them, sexuality’s role in producing the sex-based inequalities that pervasively define social life. This work—a contribution to a Festschrift honoring the pathbreaking work of Catharine A. MacKinnon—documents the contributions of gay men to pushing sex equality theory forward.

Marc Spindelman, Gay Men and Sex Equality, 46 Tulsa L. Rev. 123 (2010).

Photo by Madalena Veloso on Unsplash.

This Foreword introduces Ohio State Law Journal’s Ginsburg Symposium, marking Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s fifteenth year as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. The symposium collects essays that, if not pointing to a full-fledged jurisprudential method, refer to and capture a perceptible and distinct style—ever smart, careful, attentive to detail—that epitomizes a judicial craft.

Marc Spindelman, Foreword: Justice Ginsburg’s Benchwork, 70 Ohio St. L.J. 797 (2009).

This contribution to Ohio State Law Journal’s Ginsburg Symposium explores Justice Ginsburg’s jurisprudence in the new light of progressive constitutionalism. This piece reconsiders the standard idea that a great justice is to be known by the law she has made from the Bench. From a progressive constitutionalist perspective, a new paradigm—and dream of the great justice—is in order, one that casts Justice Ginsburg’s judicial work in a distinctive form of light.

Marc Spindelman, Toward a Progressive Perspective on Justice Ginsburg's Constitution, 70 Ohio St. L.J. 1115 (2009).

Photo: Steve Petteway via Wikimedia Commons.

This article critiques conventional liberal arguments for the constitutional right to die on liberal grounds. It contends that these arguments do not go far enough to recognize and address private, and in particular structural, forms of domination. It presents an alternative that does, which is thus more respectful of true freedom in the context of death and dying, and also more consistent with liberalism. After discussing obstacles to the achievement of a constitutional right to die that encompasses freedom from both public and private domination, the article closes with a significant reform project within bioethics that might help bring it about.

Marc Spindelman, Death, Dying, and Domination, 106 Mich. L. Rev. 1641 (2008).

Photo by Nick Scheerbart on Unsplash.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller was clearly one of the most eagerly anticipated decisions of the Court’s 2007 Term. The Court’s first formal pronouncement on the meaning of the U.S. Constituition’s Second Amendment in generations, the ultimate declaration was virtually a foregone conclusion. This Foreword introduces Ohio State Law Journal’s Heller Colloquium, with essays that engage, in various ways, the the originalism debates spawned by Justice Scalia’s opinion, propelling those debates forward.

Marc Spindelman, Foreword: Some Early Views on District of Columbia v. Heller, 69 Ohio St. L.J. 603 (2008).

Photo by Timothy Dykes on Unsplash.

When, in late April 2006, the Ohio Supreme Court agreed to hear State v. Carswell —a case over whether Ohio’s then-recently enacted “Marriage Amendment” abolishes protections unmarried victims of domestic abuse currently receive under state law—it set the stage to deliver cultural conservatives some bad news. No matter how the court ruled, their movement would suffer defeat, setting back their efforts in Ohio and elsewhere to pass and enforce anti-gay marriage amendments as well as the larger reclamation project of which they have been a part: the push to redistrict the law as a zone of faith-based and traditional morality. This article unpacks the prospects for Carsewell’s meaning and its legal and social impact.

Marc Spindelman, State v. Carswell: The Whipsaws of Backlash, 24 Wash. U. J.L. & Pol’y 165 (2007).

Photo: Dan Konik, Statehouse News Bureau.

These remarks were excerpted from a panel discussion at the Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law’s Eighth Annual “Gender, Sexuality and the Law” Symposium. I spoke alongside Juhu Thukral, Melissa Ditmore, Denise Brennan, and GG Thomas on a panel titled “Sex Work Explored: Rethinking the Laws Regulating Prostitution,” moderated by Melissa Sontag and Lisa Gerson.

Marc Spindelman, Some Thoughts on Same-Sex Prostitution, 8 Geo. J. Gender & L. 1013 (2007).

Photo by Kosta via CreativeCommons.

Within living memory, marriage equality for same-sex couples was a political and legal impossibility, officially a reductio ad absurdum. For a time, after the right to marry became a centerpiece and organizing ideal within the lesbian and gay communities, it was deeply anti-normative to see and register the marriage project’s successes as entailing costs, including costs that even some inside the LGBT communities might foreseeably, if unintentionally, bear. Homosexuality’s Horizon is a contemporaneous effort to venture such a tally by focusing its energies on a landmark Massachusetts marriage equality decision and what it might mean for, and do to, victims and survivors of domestic and sexual abuse, both straight and lesbian and gay.

Marc Spindelman, Homosexuality’s Horizon, 54 Emory L.J. 1361 (2005).

Photo by Ranurte on Unsplash.

This short Foreword introduces Ohio State Law Journal’s 2004 Symposium, Equality, Privacy, and Lesbian and Gay Rights after Lawrence v. Texas, which includes the first wave of analysis and criticism after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision.

Marc Spindelman, Foreword: Equality, Privacy and Lesbian and Gay Rights After Lawrence v. Texas, 65 Ohio St. L.J. 1057 (2004).

Photo by Bill Mason on Unsplash.

For forty years, ever since the Warren Court “revolution,” Yale Kamisar has been a leading force in constitutional criminal procedure. This short introduction sets up sketches of Yale from a few of his friends, who attest to his influence and some of the reasons for it, not to forget memorable portraits of Yale himself. Although these tributes stand here on their own, they can, and perhaps should, be read as of a single piece with the contributions to the Festschrift for Yale simultaneously published in the Michigan Law Review, which includes my own contribution entitled, simply, Yale.

Marc Spindelman, Sketches of Yale Kamisar, 2 Ohio St. J. Crim. L. 1 (2004).

Photo: Univ. Michigan.

Yale Kamisar does have, as Nancy King has said, a story for every occasion. Some of my favorite—and I definitely have my share—reflect Yale’s gaudium certaminis: his “joy of battle” in Gerald Gunther’s helpful translation. My contribution to the Michigan Law Review’s Festschrift for Yale unpacks some of the well-known and less-well-known aspects of Yale’s “battle tales,” and reflects on Yale’s operative critical account of power and law.

Marc Spindelman, Yale, 102 Mich. L. Rev. 1747 (2004).

Photo: The Law Quadrangle: Univ. Michigan.

The lesbian and gay communities reacted to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas—striking down state sodomy laws on Due Process grounds—with unbridled enthusiasm. It is easy to appreciate the reasons why. Much more difficult to see, even today, is what Lawrence looks like to those concerned with inequality between sexes. This article explores the unmistakable danger signs that the ruling raised from the perspective of these concerns, which in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s historic ruling in Bostock may yet come to wider light.

Marc Spindelman, Surviving Lawrence v. Texas, 102 Mich. L. Rev. 1615 (2004).

Photo: OutHistory.org

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc.—holding that same-sex sexual harassment can be actionable under federal sexual harassment law—changed the social context against which it was decided. In refusing to de-sexualize same-sex sexual violence or render it invisible, Oncale disrupts the conventional social meanings that that violence has had. In addition to suggesting the sex equality future that Oncale opened up, this work takes critical aim at Janet Halley’s queer theoretic critique of Oncale, explaining its deeper logics and its own dangers.

Marc Spindelman, Sex Equality Panic, 13 Colum. J. Gender & L. 1 (2004).

Photo: Queer Zine Archives

This essay—originally published before the Supreme Court issued its decision in Lawrence v. Texas—examines the gay rights litigation strategy pursued in the case, and questions its sexual politics from a sex equality perspective.

Marc Spindelman, Sodomy Politics in Lawrence v. Texas, Jurist (June 12, 2003).

Photo by Matt Popovich on Unsplash.

This essay examines the states’ rights arguments deployed in the Oregon v. Ashcroft litigation. It maintains that these arguments reflect bad politics—politics of complicity—that self-styled liberals should resist and reject.

Marc Spindelman, A Dissent from the Many Dissents from Attorney General Ashcroft’s Interpretation of the Controlled Substances Act, 19 Issues in Law & Med. 3 (2003).

Serious concerns about pervasive, persistent, and unjustified social inequalities have prompted a small—but growing—number of academic commentators to raise some hard and troubling questions for those who would like to legalize physician-assisted suicide. Ronald A. Lindsay’s “Should We Impose Quotas? Evaluating the ‘Disparate Impact’ Argument Against Legalization of Assisted Suicide,” seeks to answer some of those questions, engaging equality-based critiques of the arguments for legalizing assisted suicide. This work shows some of the ways Lindsay’s thoughtful analysis still comes up short.

Marc Spindelman, Legislating Privilege, 30 J. Law, Med. & Ethics 24 (2002).

This article challenges the conventional thinking about the Supreme Court’s decision in Bowers v. Hardwick, arguing that one need not read Hardwick to have “held” that the Due Process Clause affords no protection to private, consensual “homosexual sodomy.” Rather, through a fresh reading, the article maintains that one can interpret Hardwick to have avoided a decision on the merits of the substantive due process claim presented in the case. This alternative reading permits Hardwick to be regarded as having established a kind of prudential interpretive rule, the implications of which provide context for both Romer v. Evans and Hardwick’s formal reversal in Lawrence v. Texas.

Marc Spindelman, Reorienting Bowers v. Hardwick, 79 N.C. L. Rev. 359 (2001).

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash.

As a cultural figure, the gay man with AIDS has played an important, though often subliminal, role in the efforts to legalize physician-assisted suicide. From one perspective it is not difficult to understand why. One of the strongest arguments for physician-assisted suicide is that it can provide the terminally ill with relief from extreme pain and suffering. Through his body and his story, the terminally ill gay man with AIDS lends an extremely sympathetic face to the campaign to legalize assisted suicide. But why is his sexuality so rarely, if ever, the subject of discussion in this debate? Is the sexuality of the gay man with AIDS really irrelevant to our decision whether to allow him to end his life through physician assisted suicide?

Marc Spindelman, Some Initial Thoughts on Sexuality and Gay Men with AIDS in Relation to Physician-Assisted Suicide, 2 Geo. J. Gender & L. 91 (2001).

Photo: Nat’l Inst. of Health via Wikimedia Commons.

Ahead of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., this article assessed the prospects for Joseph Oncale’s claims of same-sex sexual harassment. Demonstrating the force and impact of feminist insight and theory in its initial conception of what happened to Oncale as because of sex within the meaning of Title VII, this article offered an account for why the Court should have—as it ultimately did—embraced Oncale’s sex equality claim.

Marc Spindelman & John Stoltenberg, Oncale: Exposing Manhood, 8(1) UCLA Women’s L.J. 3 (1997).

Photo by Clyde Thomas on Unsplash.

This review of Margaret Otlowski’s 1997 book, Voluntary Euthanasia and the Common Law, assesses the risks of thinking about death and dying in terms of personal "autonomy" and "self-determination" as diverting attention from the ways in which death and dying are social experiences that individuals do not undergo in radical isolation. The review is published as part of an exchange on voluntary euthanasia, including a reply by Otlowski.

Marc Spindelman, The Risks of a Neat Theory of Euthanasia, 8 Books-on-Law (Nov., 1998) (reviewing Margaret Otlowski, Voluntary Euthanasia and the Common Law (1997)).

Photo by Olga Kononenko on Unsplash

This article explores legal and cultural distinctions between abortion and assisted suicide, arguing that these distinctions provide courts with grounds for holding that the Fourteenth Amendment's promise of liberty does not include a general liberty to commit assisted suicide.

Marc Spindelman, Are the Similarities Between a Woman's Right to Choose an Abortion and the Alleged Right to Assisted Suicide Really Compelling?, 29 U. Mich. J. L. Reform 775 (1996).