Stoddard 1997

"Bleeding Heart: Reflections On Using the Law to Make Social Change"

Thesis: understanding the interrelationship between law and culture, and the use of law for social change

• Goals of legal advocates for gay rights:

1. Protection from discrimination
2. Freedom from intrusion and harassment
3. Some degree of recognition of queer relationships

• New York is culturally more tolerant of queerness, but legally offers no protections/recognition
• New Zealand is culturally intolerant of queerness, but legally offers protections/recognition
• Assumptions:

1. Society needs change, and there are people committed to that change
2. Employing the law to make change is appropriate

The New Zealand Conundrum

• The 'conundrum': New Zealand is legally progressive with respect to queer protections, but is culturally conservative in this respect
• social change and legal change do not always walk hand-in-hand
  • "one does not stimulate the other"

A Paradigm of Reform

• Goals of lawmaking

1. To create new rights and remedies for victims
2. To alter the conduct of the government
3. To alter the conduct of citizens/private entities
4. To express a new moral/standard
5. To change cultural attitudes/patterns

• • "rule-shifting": the traditional role of the law in expressing the formal rulemaking/enforcement function for society
    • the first three goals comprise this role
  • "culture-shifting": advancing the rights and interests of people who have been treated poorly by the law and by the culture, promoting values that should be rights
    • the fourth and fifth goals comprise this role
• The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ("The Act")
  • it had both "rule" and "cultural-shifting" power and met all five goals of lawmaking
  • the Act was the result of "passionate and informal national debate" among Americans that lasted a decade, and this debate is what gave the Act its "culture-shifting" power
  • because the Act was passed by Congress it was received as more legitimate, giving it "rule-shifting" power