Justice Scalia's Dissents and the Post Windsor Same-Sex Marriage Cases

Professor Ruthann Robson, City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law

There have been a spate of federal judges declaring state constitutional or statutory provisions banning recognition of same-sex marriage unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment: 

De Leon v. Perry, from the Western District of Texas;
Bostic v. Rainey  from the Eastern District of Virginia;
Bourke v. Beshear from the Western District of Kentucky; 
Bishop v. United States from the Northern District of Oklahoma;
Obergefell v. Wymyslo from the Southern District of Ohio;
Kitchen v. Herbert, from the District of Utah;
Lee v. Orr applicable only to Chicago.

Other than Lee v. Orr, in which the judge was only ruling on an earlier start date for same-sex marriage than the Illinois legislature had declared, the judges in each of these cases relied on Justice Scalia's dissenting opinions.

In "Justice Scalia’s Petard and Same-Sex Marriage," over at CUNY Law Review's "Footnote Forum," I take a closer look at these cases and their relationship to Shakespeare's famous phrase from Hamlet.

 

"A petard, from a seventeenth century manuscript of military designs" via