Women, Knowledge Institutions, and Constitutional Law

This Essay argues that knowledge institutions are crucial to the ability of historically disadvantaged groups—including women—to correct the injustices they have suffered. In Part II, the Essay begins by defining knowledge institutions and explaining why they need legal recognition and protection in a constitutional democracy. Part III then argues that knowledge institutions are a resource for challenging conventional understandings and assumptions that may produce injustices not readily remedied through political processes. Knowledge institutions have served this role in several important constitutional battles in the United States—over racial equality, gender equality, and discrimination against same-sex couples.

The claim is not that knowledge institutions will always produce correct understandings of the world, but that the likelihood of their doing so, and of correcting their own prior errors in ways that enable improvement in the human condition, is greater than that of most other secular institutions.