"A Brief and Argument in Favor of the Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution and Its Effect on Alimony, Custody of Children, Differential Age of Marriage and Protective Labor Legislation for Women".
[ERA], Sachar, Hon. Libby E. and Joyce Capps. "A Brief and Argument in Favor of the Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution and Its Effect on Alimony, Custody of Children, Differential Age of Marriage and Protective Labor Legislation for Women". [NP]: National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs, April 1963.
Prepared for the Civil and Political Rights Committee of the President's Commission on the Status of Women. 8-1/2 x 11" sheets, 72pp; + preliminary pages and appendices; bound in a pressboard binder with mustard yellow covers; typed label at front with ink notation, "Doc. II-37". Very good.
A brief for an Equal Rights Amendment. Six chapters review: "Alimony"; "Duty to Support"; "Custody of Children"; "Differential Ages for Contracting Marriage, and Other Discriminatory
Prohibitions on the Right to Marry"; "Protective Legislation"; and "Inapplicability of the Fourteenth Amendment". The appendices treat: "State Alimony and Maintenance Laws"; "Basic Duties of Support Imposed by State Law"; and, "Age at
which Children's Right to Support Terminates". The introduction opens with the quiet, but damning sentence: "This
memoranda is based on the accepted fact that laws and practice in a great measure discriminate arbitrarily and solely because of sex". It
goes on to point out that "[l]egislative action within the various states which have sought to grant rights to women, rights which they
do not have by virtue of the Constitution, is not adequate since it does not affect discriminations on the federal level nor does it cover
women of those states which have not adopted such laws. Nether has it prevented states from adopting laws which established
discriminative practices in an arbitrary manner against women". The authors review the wide range of inequities existing under
state law. In discussing alimony, for instance, they note two states have no provision for alimony and "Pennsylvania's
alimony is limited to divorce on the ground of insanity". The authors address criticism of the proposed amendment and
conclude "The proposed amendment does not protect rights. It would give legal rights to women which they do not now
have under the constitution - for the first time".
Co-author Libby Sachar, appointed as a Superior Court Judge in 1946, was the first woman to serve on the New Jersey
Bench. (Ruth M. Patt profiles her in UNCOMMON LIVES: EIGHTEEN EXTRAORDINARY JEWS FROM NEW JERSEY.)
The National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs, now Business and Professional Women/USA,
evolved out of the Women's War Council created during World War I to organize the war effort on the home front,
especially women workers. Formally established on July 6, 1919, the Federation was the first organization wholly dedicated
to issues of the working women. From inception the NFBP advocated equal pay for equal work and became an earlier and
staunch supporter of Alice Paul's proposed Equal Rights Amendment. When President John F. Kennedy established The
President's Commission on the Status of Women in 1961 with Eleanor Roosevelt as chair, the Federation and other
like-minded groups saw an opportunity to advance the ERA. Although some were skeptical of the administration's
commitment to women's rights, the presence of Robert F. Kennedy, Orville Freeman, Abraham Ribicoff and Arthur
Goldberg, key cabinet members, gave the commission particular authority. The Commission issued its final report in
October 1963, just six months after this brief. Whatever momentum women had achieved faltered with President
Kennedy's assassination in November. The Commission, however, marked the emergence of a new push for the Equal
Rights Amendment. An exemplary brief on the ERA, submitted by an important women's organization, documenting the
kind of arguments considered by The President's Commission on the Status of Women.
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