When I was in third grade, my teacher asked us to come up with a current-events question and then gather opinions on the topic from several adults. In the end, we were supposed to write a report or something--I don't remember--but I do remember the assignment as if it happened yesterday. After talking it over with my mom, I decided to ask: Should the ERA be passed? In 1977 this was a big issue, so all the adults I polled had opinions about it.

Fast-forward to today. If my niece, Lucy, who's now in third grade, were to ask adults the same question, she'd probably get blank stares. The Equal Rights Amendment is long dead, right? While the topic was hot in the '70s and early '80s (Gallup polls conducted during those years found that 90 percent of adults were familiar with the ERA), today the proposed constitutional amendment guaranteeing women "equality of rights under the law" has completely slipped from the radar screen. It's a question that hasn't been posed by the Gallup folks--not to mention little girls from small-town America--for seven years.

But all that may change soon. Inspired in part by an article published in the spring 1997 issue of William and Mary Journal of Women and the Law, a campaign to reintroduce the ERA for ratification is heating up. The amendment, first written in 1923 by Alice Paul, was approved by Congress and sent to the states in 1972 with a seven-year deadline for ratification. Later, a three-year extension was passed, but by 1982, supporters had managed to sign on only 35 of the 38 states needed to add the amendment to the Constitution.

At that point, it seemed like the ERA was over. But the William and Mary article uncovered an interesting loophole, a "three-state strategy" for ratification based on the reasoning that, while the ERA had only 10 years in which to be passed, in 1992 a 203-year ratification period was accepted as valid for the Madison congressional pay-raise amendment, first introduced in 1789 by James Madison. If Congress, and, if needed, the Supreme Court, accepts the argument that passage of the Madison Amendment sets a precedent, then all ERA supporters need to do is find three more states to take the equal-rights pledge. In Congress, the issue has been kept alive for years by its chief sponsors: Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy and New York Representative Carolyn Maloney.

Ratification, of course, is easier said than done. The states left to ratify--Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, and Virginia--are home to decidedly conservative legislatures, and, according to Roberta Francis, chair of the pro-ratification lobbying group ERA Summit, some opponents have already started shoring up legislative defenses against a reinvigorated push.