Law Commons^™

Commentators have noted that equal protection doctrine is in a state of transformation. The nature of that transformation, however, is poorly understood. This Article offers a clearer view of the change underway. This Article is the first to reveal and synthesize three major trajectories along which the U.S. Supreme Court has begun to move. First, the Court has begun to blur the line that it previously drew between facial discrimination and disparate impact. Second, the Court has begun to collapse its previously established tiered standards for reviewing discrimination. These two trajectories combine to produce a third trajectory of change: by …

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 …