Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

This Article explores the topic of family diversity through a comparative analysis of law in the United States and South Africa. Juxtaposing these countries sheds light on shortcomings of the United States’s jurisprudence on family diversity. The comparative analysis also helps illuminate the path ahead for reforming both countries’ laws to better respect family diversity.

The Article proceeds in two parts. Part I examines the United States’s and South Africa’s competing approaches to same-sex marriage. Both countries’ highest courts ruled that excluding same-sex couples from marriage is unconstitutional, but they took divergent paths to reach that conclusion. This Article contends …

In controversial constitutional cases, courts sometimes grant the government an extended period of time to correct rights violations — what I call “remedial grace periods” — hoping that the postponed implementation of change will temper backlash. The most well-known example of such remedial delay followed the United States Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education II. This Article spotlights a more recent remedial grace period. In Minister of Home Affairs v. Fourie, South Africa’s highest court ruled that depriving same-sex couples of marriage was unconstitutional. It could have implemented same-sex marriage immediately by reading it into law, but …