Many of America's most important social and political movements–abolition, women's suffragette, civil rights, women's liberation, gay and lesbian rights–have organized in the shadow of the law. All are based in their theoretical opposition to the law. Yet at the same time, they are dependent on the laws that prohibit them. Law is thus formed as much through the dynamic tensions that govern how these laws are received as through their official decree. Legal forms such as contracts,...
