Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Feminist Foundations of Family Law

Thomas Byers Memorial Outstanding Publication Award from the University of Akron Law Alumni Association Much has been written about womens rights pioneer Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Historians have written her biography, detailed her campaign for womans suffrage, documented her partnership with Susan B. Anthony, and compiled all of her extensive writings and papers. Stanton herself was a prolific author; her autobiography, History of Woman Suffrage, and Womans Bible are classics. Despite this body of work, scholars and feminists continue to find new and insightful ways to re-examine Stanton and her impact on womens rights and history. Law scholar Tracy A. Thomas extends this discussion of Stantons impact on modern-day feminism by analyzing her intellectual contributions toand personal experiences withfamily law. Stantons work on family issues has been overshadowed by her work (especially with Susan B. Anthony) on womans suffrage. But throughout her fifty-year career, Stanton emphasized reform of the private sphere of the family as central to achieving womens equality. By weaving together law, feminist theory, and history, Thomas explores Stantons little-examined philosophies on and proposals for womens equality in marriage, divorce, and family, and reveals that the campaigns for equal gender roles in the family that came to the fore in the 1960s and 70s had nineteenth-century roots. Using feminist legal theory as a lens to interpret Stantons political, legal, and personal work on the family, Thomas argues that Stantons positions on divorce, working mothers, domestic violence, childcare, and many other topics were strikingly progressive for her time, providing significant parallels from which to gauge the social and legal policy issues confronting women in marriage and the family today.