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Contribution to Book
Concurring Opinion, in What Obergefell v. Hodges Should Have Said: The Nation's Top Legal Experts Rewrite America's Same-Sex Marriage Decision (Jack Balkin ed., 2020)
Books and Chapters
  • Catherine E. Smith, Washington and Lee University School of Law
Description

Jack Balkin and an all-star cast of legal scholars, sitting as a hypothetical Supreme Court, rewrite the famous 2015 opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, which guaranteed same-sex couples the right to marry. In eleven incisive opinions, the authors offer the best constitutional arguments for and against the right to same-sex marriage, and debate what Obergefell should mean for the future. In addition to serving as Chief Justice of this imaginary court, Balkin provides a critical introduction to the case. He recounts the story of the gay rights litigation that led to Obergefell, and he explains how courts respond to political mobilizations for new rights claims. The social movement for gay rights and marriage equality is a powerful example of how—through legal imagination and political struggle—arguments once dismissed as “off-the-wall” can later become established in American constitutional law.

ISBN
9780300221558
Publication Date
1-1-2020
Publisher
Yale University Press
Citation Information
Catherine E. Smith. "Concurring Opinion, in What Obergefell v. Hodges Should Have Said: The Nation's Top Legal Experts Rewrite America's Same-Sex Marriage Decision (Jack Balkin ed., 2020)" (2020)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/catherine_smith/14/