Abstract: Sunstein explores the issue of law and its impact on women's quality of life, scrutinizing how law sustains and supports discrimination against women and how it might embody a commitment to sex equality. Sunstein proposes what he coins an ‘anticaste principle’ which forbids law from turning a morally irrelevant characteristic such as sex into a systematic source of social disadvantage. Focusing on the situation in which women's sexual and reproductive capacities are turned into objects for the use and control of others, Sunstein critiques American sex discrimination law, makes proposals for national and international legal change, and comments on the limitations of market mechanisms in ending discrimination.

Keywords: American law, anticaste principle, antidiscrimination principle, market economy, reproduction, sex discrimination, sex equality, sexuality,