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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Glucksberg Renaissance: Substantive Due Process Since Lawrence V. Texas, Brian Hawkins
The Glucksberg Renaissance: Substantive Due Process Since Lawrence V. Texas, Brian Hawkins
Michigan Law Review
On their faces, Washington v. Glucksberg and Lawrence v. Texas seem to have little in common. In Glucksberg, the Supreme Court upheld a law prohibiting assisted suicide and rejected a claim that the Constitution protects a "right to die"; in Lawrence, the Court struck down a law prohibiting homosexual sodomy and embraced a claim that the Constitution protects homosexual persons' choices to engage in intimate relationships. Thus, in both subject matter and result, Lawrence and Glucksberg appear far apart. The Lawrence Court, however, faced a peculiar challenge in reaching its decision, and its response to that challenge brings …
Some Effects Of Identity-Based Social Movements On Constitutional Law In The Twentieth Century, William N. Eskridge Jr.
Some Effects Of Identity-Based Social Movements On Constitutional Law In The Twentieth Century, William N. Eskridge Jr.
Michigan Law Review
What motivated big changes in constitutional law doctrine during the twentieth century? Rarely did important constitutional doctrine or theory change because of formal amendments to the document's text, and rarer still because scholars or judges "discovered" new information about the Constitution's original meaning. Precedent and common law reasoning were the mechanisms by which changes occurred rather than their driving force. My thesis is that most twentieth century changes in the constitutional protection of individual rights were driven by or in response to the great identity-based social movements ("IBSMs") of the twentieth century. Race, sex, and sexual orientation were markers of …
Marriage And Belonging, Ann Laquer Estin
Marriage And Belonging, Ann Laquer Estin
Michigan Law Review
Marriage is a quintessentially private institution. Justice Douglas put the point this way in 1965, writing for the Supreme Court in Griswold v. Connecticut: "We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights - older than our political parties, older than our school system. Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects. Yet it is an association …
Finding Gold In The Rainbow Rights Movement, Shayna S. Cook
Finding Gold In The Rainbow Rights Movement, Shayna S. Cook
Michigan Law Review
In her history of the past fifty years of the gay and lesbian civil rights movement, Patricia Cain recounts the litigation successes and failures that contributed to the legal status of gays and lesbians in the Untied States today. Clearly an insider who has marched with the movement every step of the way, Cain provides a comprehensive account of all fronts of the battle in state and federal courts since 1950. But while Rainbow Rights serves as a good primer on the legal challenges and the key themes uniting them, the book reads like an account of a struggle ending …
Word Games, War Games, Diane H. Mazur
Word Games, War Games, Diane H. Mazur
Michigan Law Review
In 1993, the country's interest in the issue of military service by gay citizens escalated to a level that can only be described as a national obsession, and "obsession" is by no means too strong a term. The subject of gay servicemembers was debated within all three branches of government, all ranks of the military, and all walks of civilian life.1 The issue of military service by gay citizens became a line in the sand, a cultural standoff on issues as sensitive and disparate as sexuality, patriotism, civil rights, and civic obligation. Janet Halley2 returns to that time of obsession …
History Unbecoming, Becoming History, Toni M. Massaro
History Unbecoming, Becoming History, Toni M. Massaro
Michigan Law Review
The last few decades have seen a torrent of legal commentary supporting gay equality and attacking the punishment, failure to protect, and refusal to affirm gay conduct and identity. William Eskridge, a prominent voice in this fin-de-siecle literature, now draws together and expands on his previous work in Gaylaw: Challenging the Apartheid of the Closet. Though far more successful in shaping the uses of the past than in showing the way to the future, the book instructs even where it fails. It augurs a century that could well witness the end of official discrimination against gay individuals, and the relegation …
Attainder And Amendment 2: Romer's Rightness, Akhil Reed Amar
Attainder And Amendment 2: Romer's Rightness, Akhil Reed Amar
Michigan Law Review
Call me silly. In fact, call me terminally silly. For despite Justice Scalia's remarkably confident claim, I believe, and shall try to prove below, that the Romer Court majority opinion invalidating Colorado's Amendment 2 was right both in form and in substance, both logically and sociologically. I stress "form" and "logic" at the outset because I share Justice Scalia's belief in the importance of these things in constitutional adjudication. I also share his commitment to constitutional text, history, and structure, and his suspicion of "free-form" constitutionalism. And so I shall highlight the text, history, and spirit of a constitutional clause …