ISSN 1062-7421
Vol. 12 No. 7 (July 2002) pp. 367-370

WOMEN IN THE BARRACKS: THE VMI CASE AND EQUAL RIGHTS by Philippa Strum. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002. 417 pp. Cloth $34.95. ISBN: 0-7006-1164-9.

Reviewed by Nancy Crowe, Government Department, Dartmouth College.

WOMEN IN THE BARRACKS: THE VMI CASE AND EQUAL RIGHTS is an amazingly complete and richly detailed history of the Virginia Military Institute
(VMI), of both the behind the scenes and the easily visible legal maneuvers that led to the Supreme Court's decision in UNITED STATES v. VIRGINIA,
and of the subsequent integration of VMI. Philippa Strum has read all the relevant legal documents, combed archives, and interviewed many of the key players from VMI, the Department of Justice, and even Supreme Court Justices. The history is so complete that it is difficult to imagine that any relevant bit of information has been left out.

The aims of the book are best explained by the author. First, "it is…about the changes in women's-and men's-roles during the more than 150 years of American history…. It reflects the place of the Supreme Court in American political life and the way the justices both stamp societal change with the legitimization of the Constitution and help shape further change" (pp. 1-2). Second, "another aspect of this story is the generations-long assumption that citizenship meant one thing for women and another for men" (p. 2).

Chapters One, Two and Three provide the necessary background on VMI so that some of the claims the Institute made during the lawsuit can be evaluated later in the book. Chapter One discusses the formation and early history of VMI as a school designed to train teachers and only secondarily to produce soldiers, and it covers its role supporting the Confederacy during the Civil War. Chapter Two continues the history of VMI through the post-World War II period. It is during this period that the rat line (institutionalized hazing) developed; hazing was not an aspect of VMI from its inception. This chapter also covers the racial integration of VMI starting in the late 1960s, which required the school to adapt and change. Chapter Three is an in-depth discussion of the rat line. Because of the rate line, it is important to VMI's culture that everyone be treated exactly the same. As Strum explains, "no one could be expected to withstand VMI's rigors-or embrace them-unless he was certain that everyone else was experiencing the same trial by fire. The only way to ensure that was for everyone to be subjected to exactly the same requirements and to be able to see everyone else at all times" (p. 50). This becomes important in understanding VMI's resistance to admitting women. According to VMI, women would require privacy, and privacy would undermine the assurance that everyone was being treated the same.

Chapters Four and Five cover the general legal background. In particular, these chapters detail the Supreme Court's development of the intermediate scrutiny test for sex discrimination under the Equal

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Protection Clause. Appropriate attention is given to MISSISSIPPI UNIVERSITY FOR WOMEN v. HOGAN, which held that the Mississippi University for Women's all-female nursing school must admit men. Cases dealing with women's participation on juries are also covered, but given the importance of these cases in assessing how society sees women's role as citizens and the connection between military service and citizenship, here more analysis was warranted.

Chapters Six and Seven are aptly titled "Birth of a Lawsuit" and "Countersuit." They show the very different perspectives the Department of Justice and VMI had on the lawsuit. The Department of Justice saw the case as "a simply one about unequal treatment of men and women" (p. 100). To VMI, "the case was about the legitimacy of single-sex education" (p. 100). In many ways, they were talking past one another.

Chapters Eight and Nine are analytical rather than historical, and they are among the highlights of the book. Here, Strum explores the relationship between law and society. As she points out "the VMI case was not really about women in the military," but "the self-proclaimed essence of VMI was and is an exaggerated form of training for combat, and until the idea that women could fight for their country gained popular credence, there was no lawsuit to get them admitted to the Institute" (p. 108). These chapters also explore how women and men are viewed as citizens, how they are viewed as ladies and gentlemen, and the impact of these understandings on the VMI case. There is a thoughtful explanatory and analytical element to these chapters that could have come out more throughout the rest of the book.

The litigation and decision in the district court are covered in Chapters Ten, Eleven and Twelve. The decision ultimately turned on whose view of the case the judge accepted. The judge agreed with VMI-this was a case about the future of single-sex education. According to Strum, the decision made three points. First, VMI's adversative method "was a uniquely successful way to produce leaders" (p. 173). Second, this method "was inappropriate for women and would be harmful to them" (p. 173). Third, "VMI would be harmed by the admission of women"-VMI would have to change (p. 173). In Chapter Twelve Strum provides a helpful critique of the judge's decision, including its misuse of some precedents, and the glaring omission of others (such as any sex discrimination case other than HOGAN).

The litigation and decision in the Fourth Circuit are the subjects of Chapter Thirteen. The court ruled in favor of the Justice Department, holding that VMI's admissions policy violated the Equal Protection Clause. Interestingly, however, the court did not hold that VMI must admit women. Instead, Virginia "could admit women to VMI, it could turn the Institute into a private college, or it could create parallel institutions or programs for women" (p. 194).

This decision led to the creation of the Virginia Women's Institute for Leadership (VWIL) at Mary Baldwin College, and to the litigation of the constitutionality of VWIL, all covered in Chapters Fourteen, Fifteen and Sixteen. VMI and VWIL were both designed to produce leaders, but they used different, and supposedly gender-appropriate, methods of doing so. VMI was based on the adversative system, VWIL on cooperation (p. 203). These different methods become one of the

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key aspects of the VMI case from this point forward. Importantly, as Strum points out, there were also key differences in the way VMI and the Department of Justice viewed the Equal Protection Clause. On the one hand, "the VMI legal team argued, in effect, that the clause applied to groups. Women had to be given the same opportunities as men if women AS A GROUP were likely or able to take advantage of them" (p. 219). VMI maintained that, as a group, would neither succeed at nor be interested in attending VMI. On the other hand, the Justice Department presumed "that the equal protection clause protected the rights not of the 'most' but of the individual. A woman denied an opportunity that the state offered a man could rightly claim that the equal protection clause had been violated" (p.
220). The district court again ruled in favor of VMI. The court of appeals, likewise, ruled in favor of VMI, and in so doing finally accepted VMI's original understanding of the case as being about the future of single-sex education.

Chapters Seventeen through Twenty are concerned with the VMI case as it moves to the Supreme Court. Strum thoroughly covers the arguments made by
both sides, including the decision by the United States to advocate the use of strict scrutiny for sex discrimination cases. She also details the many public interest groups that became involved in the case as amicus curiae, preparation for the case by the Justices' clerks, and the oral argument of the case. In Chapter Twenty, there is a fascinating, albeit unfootnoted, discussion of the conference vote by the Justices. There are also many interesting stories about opinion drafting garnered from Strum's interviews with Justices Ginsburg and Scalia. The decision is now history. In an opinion by Justice Ginsburg, the Court ruled that VMI's exclusionary
admission's policy violated the Equal Protection Clause, and that VWIL was not an adequate alternative. This was not a case about the future of single-sex education as VMI maintained, it was about whether a woman had the right to attend VMI if she so chose. Strum is attentive to Ginsburg's use of scrutiny in this decision; while there is no mention of strict scrutiny in her opinion, Ginsburg does refer to "skeptical scrutiny" (p. 287), plays up the phrase "exceedingly persuasive justification" (p. 286) from Hogan, and admitted to Strum later that, as Strum puts it, "the line between strict scrutiny and intermediate scrutiny was now blurred" (p.
287).

The final two chapters of the book cover the integration of the VMI. Although this is still an ongoing process, Strum captures an important reason why the process is so difficult: "administrators were determined to make 'it' work, but the nature of 'it' created a problem. Viewing the arrival of women in terms of their impact on men suggested a belief that the Institute was still a home for men and those few women who could emulate men, rather than an institution that framed its mission in terms of
both sexes" (pp. 317-18).

This brings up one criticism of the book. As richly detailed as the book is, Strum could have done more to situate it within existing literature. Why did VMI administrators continue to view VMI as a "home for men"? The answer requires looking at the Court's ability to change attitudes. As such, attention to studies on the implementation, compliance with and resistance to Court decisions could have greatly enhanced the chapters on the integration of VMI. Likewise, there are excellent theoretical discussions of the interplay between law and society and the understanding of women as citizens by

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Linda Kerber and other women's historians that would have helped Strum further develop the citizenship aspect of the VMI story.

At points the book errs too far on the side of historical detail and lacks a theoretical framework or analytical stance. For example, there is a discussion of the appointment of Justice O'Connor that does not appear to advance the aims of the book. Likewise, Chapter Seventeen goes into some depth on how people thought the Justices might vote in the VMI case before it was argued. If the book's aims are to explore changes in gender roles, the role of the Court in changing society, and the meaning of citizenship, then more analysis and reflection on what the VMI case meant for each of these was warranted. Strum does do this in places. In her discussion of Ginsburg's opinion in VMI, for instance, Strum states that "by situating the VMI case in its historical context, Ginsburg had eliminated the 'gender outlaw' argument while using a Court opinion as an educational tool. Taken out of context, the VMI litigation might e seen as no more than an
attempt by unfeminine women to do something bizarre" (p. 291). The book would have benefited from more analysis of this sort.

That said, the strengths of the book should not be underplayed. It is copiously researched, and well-documented. There is scarcely a fact about the VMI case that is not discussed between its covers. The result is that we know a great deal more about the VMI case than we did before. This is a book that will serve as an important reference on the VMI case for some time to come.

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Copyright 2002 by the author, Nancy Crowe