Despite Cornell's creativity, extensive research, and erudite references, the book is not entirely satisfactory. Most immediately, it builds broad general theory from stated but largely unproven premises: (1) One's “sexuate being,” defining and representing one's sexual self, is a/the critical foundation of personhood, and (2) the state is largely responsible for our exclusionary views of normalcy in the “imaginary domain.” Each premise is repeated throughout and functions as the framework within which Cornell offers legal analyses and suggestions for reform of public policy concerning primarily pregnancy and parenting, but they are not effectively explored as to their centrality, and some readers will remain unpersuaded.

Although it is nearly axiomatic that feminist theory, of which Cornell is self-consciously a major source, serves to challenge sex role orthodoxy, it is rather less clear that the enterprise of feminist jurisprudence is advanced by defining the essence of individuals as inherent in their sexuate natures. By this I mean to separate and applaud the very critical case that must be made, and is made by Cornell, for full freedom and equality whatever one's sexual orientation. It might be noted that a fair application of strict scrutiny analysis to sexual orientation would render unconstitutional all forms of governmental discrimination on the basis of this criterion. Few classifications better fit a test designed to address characteristics that are immutable, historically the basis of arbitrary exclusion, and unrelated to one's ability to contribute to society. But is this case against what is, in my mind, purely and simply bigotry necessarily advanced by an argument that one's sexuate being is the essence of the person from which principles of freedom, generally, do themselves flow? Perhaps this is but a quibble as to how critical sexuality is to freedom in social and political spheres of life, which is arguably a case apart from equal acceptance and integration of people of all sexual orientations into the fabric of society. The former case is not made particularly effectively by Cornell.

I have more problems with the excessive reliance on the proposition that the state is the source of the exclusionary social norms that all but heterosexual men and heterosexual women who are deferential to men are understood to experience. There is a general axiom in law and society research that, “awaiting contrary proof,” public policy is more often than not presumed to be a dependent variable, a phenomenon to be explained by other social institutions and forces. Law is seen not as the source of social norms but as a reflection of these values, buttressing and reinforcing them. Cornell's analysis of patriarchy demonstrates the weakness of viewing the state as the problem. “For my purposes, the word patriarchy indicates the manner in which a woman's legal identity remains bound up with her duties to the state as wife and mother within the traditional heterosexual family. Our feminist demand must be for the full release of women from this legal identity that is wholly inconsistent with the recognition of each of us as a free and equal person” (pp. 101–2).

Arguably, patriarchy, which long predates the development of formal institutions of government and law, would continue to exist even if there were no state policies enforcing its strictures. It is, therefore, difficult to understand not only which policy changes will undo patriarchal institutions but also how any changes in contemporary law would necessarily effect positive social change in this arena. The case that is seriously in need of being made is how and under what circumstances the state can effectively intervene and undo the conditions of disempowerment and exclusion that are endemic in the social order. This may be a Herculean task, if not a fool's errand. Carol Smart, in Feminism and the Power of Law (1989), suggests that the law is unreformably patriarchal and that women must look elsewhere to further their interests. The danger, Smart (p. 3) notes, is to buy into the law's “overinflated view of itself.”

Cornell's work would have benefited from more effective copy editing. Some statements, such as that Congress “overturn[ed]” Geduldig v. Aiello (1974) in the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 (p. 66), are not accurate. (By statutory law, Congress could not undo the constitutional doctrine of the case denying that discrimination on the basis of pregnancy is sex discrimination under the fourteenth Amendment.) Other debatable observations would have been aided by documentation, for example: “There is widespread agreement among psychologists and psychoanalysts that addiction is inseparable from a blocked longing to be a person” (p. 81).