Loving v. Virginia in a Post-Racial World: Rethinking Race, Sex, and Marriage

In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that laws prohibiting interracial marriage were unconstitutional in Loving vs. Virginia. Although this case promotes marital freedom and racial equality, there are still significant legal and social barriers to the free formation of intimate relationships. Marriage continues to be the sole measure of commitment, mixed relationships continue to be rare, and same-sex marriage is only legal in 6 out of 50 states. Most discussion of Loving celebrates the symbolic dismantling of marital discrimination. This book, however, takes a more critical approach to ask how Loving has influenced the “loving” of America. How far have we come since then, and what effect did the case have on individual lives?

Kevin Noble Maillard is an Associate Professor of Law at Syracuse University where he teaches family law, trusts and estates and on the subjects of children and the law, adoption, and popular culture and the law. He has written about and lectured on nontraditional families, racial intermixture, the role of marriage in America, civil liberties within the family, and popular culture and the law. His work has been published in the New York Times, Cardozo Law Review, SMU Law Review, Fordham Law Review and Law and Inequality. He is a frequent presenter at legal and interdisciplinary conferences.

Rose Cuison Villazor is an Associate Professor of Law at Hofstra Law School. She teaches and writes in the areas of race, citizenship, property and immigration law. Her articles have appeared in the New York University Law Review, California Law Review, Washington University Law Review and Southern California Law Review. In 2011, she received the AALS Minority Section Derrick A. Bell, Jr Award, which is given to a junior faculty member who, through activism, mentoring, teaching and scholarship, has made an extraordinary contribution to legal education, the legal system or social justice.