“CATALYST” magazine asked the law professor to share her thoughts on the United States swearing in its first female vice president and connections between the suffrage movement and Black Lives Matter.
Paula Monopoli, JD, Sol & Carlyn Hubert Professor of Law and founding director, Women Leadership & Equality Program, University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, is at the vanguard of scholars exploring the 19th Amendment and its impact.
Her book, “Constitutional Orphan: Gender Equality and the Nineteenth Amendment,” was published by Oxford University Press in 2020, the 100th anniversary of the amendment’s ratification.
“In its most literal sense, the Nineteenth Amendment did not confer a ‘right’ to vote per se,” she writes. “Rather, it simply prohibited the states or the federal government from using sex as a criterion for voter eligibility. In other words, its ratification meant that state and federal impediments to voting based on sex were now unconstitutional. It did not mean that all women in the United States could vote.”
Monopoli explains how the 19th Amendment had implications for federalism, women’s citizenship, and the definition of equality, as well as how gender, race, and class intersect to affect the United States’ constitutional development.
CATALYST magazine asked Monopoli to share her thoughts on the United States swearing in its first female vice president, connections between the suffrage movement and Black Lives Matter, and if she thinks the country will ever have an Equal Rights Amendment.
You can read our conversation with Monopoli in the Spring 2021 issue of UMB’s CATALYST magazine.
The issue also highlights how students have received invaluable hands-on experience preparing COVID-19 vaccines and vaccinating patients at the SMC Campus Center as well as the important COVID-19 research being done across all of our schools. We also share the stories of our graduates, the first recipient of The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings ’76 Scholarship Endowment, the National Center for School Mental Health, and much more.