
Remembering the Ladies, Part 2: America's Unwritten Constitution
Yale law professor Akhil Reed Amar continues his course on the Constitution's unwritten implications, arguing that the Nineteenth Amendment's grant of suffrage to women reaches far beyond the ballot box. He traces how it unsettles old rules of marital domicile, reshapes the role of First Lady from Abigail Adams through Eleanor Roosevelt, and bears on presidential succession. Amar rereads Griswold v. Connecticut and Roe v. Wade as decisions addressing laws passed before women could vote, and makes the case that jury service and eligibility for office follow logically from equal political participation, pointedly noting the old excuse that women were once deemed too sentimental for jury duty. The lecture closes with Abigail Adams's letter urging her husband to remember the ladies, tying the argument back to the Revolution itself. Organized around clear chapter stops, this is doctrinal constitutional analysis delivered as a single continuous argument about what the text leaves unsaid.