"Jamieson succeeds admirably in presenting a theory of liberty that encompasses both old and new ways of thinking about the concepts, contexts, and limits of liberty, equality, personal dignity, personal responsibility, and diversity that is useful for the application of justice and jurisprudence relevant to feminists and feminist ideals."-Diana Dominguez, Cercles

"Beth Kiyoko Jamieson has written a valuable book. Dedicated to addressing, conceptualizing, and critiquing liberty as a feminist value and from a feminist perspective, she focuses seriatim on three major components of a feminist theory of liberty: identity, privacy, and agency. . . . Her work is stimulating and worthy of wide attention and dialogue."-Gayle Binion, The Law and Politics Book Review

"This is a beautifully written book-well researched, persuasively argued, very intelligent, refreshingly accessible-on a topic of considerable importance and urgency."-Susan J. Brison, Dartmouth College

Grounded in the history of political thought and illuminated by legal studies and feminist theory, this book offers a challenging new approach to thinking about liberty in the wake of decades of criticism of liberalism from feminists, communitarians, and conservatives alike. Fundamental to this approach is the author's argument that liberty and equality are not inconsistent values and that political theory would do well to abandon the dichotomy between "negative" and "positive" liberty.

The principles of liberty Jamieson proposes-identity, privacy, and agency-are not meant to be rigid or universal but rather contextualist and contingent. To demonstrate these principles, she offers a series of three case studies of legal conflicts: for identity, heightened constitutional protection for homosexuals; for privacy, regulation of assisted reproduction such as surrogacy and sperm donation; and for agency, the rights and responsibilities of battered women.