Welfare reform, the 'mainstreaming' of the
mentally ill and mentally challenged, affirmative action for historically discriminated
against groups, greater openness to useful and deserving immigrants suffering political injustice in their native lands and effective campaign finance reforms are all common liberal rallying issues. This paper shows however, that by pairing his analysis of what such legally propelled reform measures were supposed to do, in terms of changing society, with how they actually functioned in the American political reality, Steven M. Gillon places the blame squarely on the heads of several bodies. By examining Gillon's book "That's Not What we Meant to Do: Reform and its Unintended
Consequences in the 20th Century," the paper shows how he blames legislatures, legislators, the expectations of the American polity as well the laws themselves, for the failure of these movements and the laws they generated to have their intended consequences in American society.