Abstract
Few people in America in the 1790s considered women to be equal to men legally and socially. Believers in gender equality were even rarer among elite southern males who lived in a society that relied upon patriarchal authority and prescribed roles, behaviors, and attitudes for its social leaders. In this context, St. George Tucker's personal and judicial expressions of women's rights evince an unusually progressive perspective that places him in the vanguard of social and legal reform in the early republic. This directly rebuts Christopher Doyle's assertions in his examination of Tucker's commitment to gender equality and social reform. It also raises interesting questions regarding limits on judicial reform in the early republic, especially those reforms sought by Republican judges. ...
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2006
Recommended Citation
Mark D. McGarvie, Transforming Society Through Law: St. George Tucker, Women's Property Rights and an Active Republican Judiciary, 47 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 1393 (2006).
