Legal Legibility: Gender and Sexual Classifications in the Law

A growing body of literature examines either how state and legal institutions directly classify and categorize people along the lines of sex, gender, and sexuality or how such institutions set the parameters by which other social institutions must do so. Synthesizing this scholarship, this article conceptualizes these related social practices as constellations of biopolitical sorting, or processes that regulate both individual bodies and broader populations in line with state classification efforts. This review focuses on three key areas that have been central to this line of research: identity, citizenship and immigration, and institutional access and placement. It reveals how processes of biopolitical sorting aimed at sex, gender, and sexuality cut across social domains to shape the life chances of regulated individuals, as well as to contour what the very categories of sex, gender, and sexuality mean across contexts. The article concludes with broad analytical takeaways from this body of research and a discussion of directions for future research, including a focus on artificial intelligence, state formation and maintenance, and the constitutive relationship of law and identity.