Justice & Law Quote by Shana Alexander

“The law changes and flows like water” is Alexander doing two things at once: demystifying legal authority and warning you not to mistake it for bedrock. Water is ordinary, omnipresent, and obedient to gravity; it goes where conditions allow. That’s the subtext: law doesn’t merely “discover” justice on its own. It follows pressure, politics, and the shape of institutions. By choosing a liquid metaphor, Alexander strips the law of its priestly aura and recasts it as a responsive medium - capable of erosion, rerouting, and sudden flooding.

Then she sharpens the image: “the stream of women’s rights law has become a sudden rushing torrent.” The tonal shift from stream to torrent captures the tempo of a particular historical moment, when incremental gains snapped into rapid doctrinal change. Think second-wave feminism colliding with courts and legislatures: employment discrimination, reproductive autonomy, marital and property rights, Title IX, shifting standards around equal protection. Alexander’s “sudden” signals not spontaneity but accumulation - decades of organizing, litigation strategy, and cultural argument finally reaching the tipping point where precedent starts falling in quick succession.

Calling it a torrent is also a sly nod to backlash. Torrents alarm the people living on the banks. The image flatters the movement’s force while admitting the anxiety it produces: when rights expand quickly, opponents frame it as chaos, not correction. Alexander’s intent is to normalize the speed - to suggest that what looks like dangerous overflow is, in fact, long-delayed current finally finding its course.