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Klappentext Daniel Pinello's exhaustive study analyzes how federal and state appellate courts treated the civil rights claims of lesbians and gay men between 1981 and 2000. Pinello examines 1,439 votes by 849 appellate judges in 398 decisions and opinions from 87 courts in all federal jurisdictions and 47 states. His investigation reveals that legal variables; judges' personal attributes; environmental factors (juridical ideology, consensual sodomy statutes, and gay civil rights laws); institutional determinants (judicial selection method and term length); and time and interest group participation were significant forces in judicial policymaking. Zusammenfassung It investigates how American appellate courts dealt with the struggle for lesbian-and-gay civil rights during the 1980s and 90s. It explains how diverse factors influenced the adjudication of civil-rights claims during a vital era of the homosexual-rights movement and formulates methodologies for the meaningful quantitative empirical study of law. Inhaltsverzeichnis 1. Introduction; The context of the study; The cases; Case outcome variation by court system and subject matter; Geographic variation; Temporal variation; 2: Case narratives; Child custody, visitation, adoption, and foster care (CVAF); Lesbian and gay family issues not involving CVAF; Cases adjudicating sexual orientation discrimination claims not related to lesbian and gay family issues; Gays in the military; Cases adjudicating the constitutionality of consensual sodomy and related; Solicitation statutes and their Enforcement against gay people; Cases adjudicating the free speech and free association rights of gay people; Miscellaneous cases essential to lesbian and gay rights; Same-sex sexual harassment; Defamation involving homosexuality; Miscellaneous cases not essential to lesbian and gay rights; Conclusion; 3: The lesbian and gay rights claims models; The statistical analysis; Findings; Applying the models; Answers to questions posed in chapter 2; Model performance; Conclusion; 4: Judicial federalism and the 'myth of parity'; Judicial federalism variables; Findings; Conclusion; 5: A test of stare decisis; The legal literature; The political science literature; Lesbian and gay rights claims and precedent; Test one; Test two; Caveats; Conclusion; 6: Conclusion; Location, location, location; The promise of the states; The value of diversity on the bench; Time is on our side, Yes it is!; The vital role of interest groups; The power of precedent; Democrats, republicans, and gay rights; The forces motivating judicial decision making; The quantitative study of rights and of law; Epilogue....
