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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Power Of Dignity, Elizabeth B. Cooper
The Power Of Dignity, Elizabeth B. Cooper
Fordham Law Review
This Essay juxtaposes the historical and judicial equating of homosexuality and stigma with the Court’s development of a jurisprudence of dignity for gay men and lesbians, culminating in its decision in Obergefell v. Hodges. The language of Obergefell reflects an acceptance of and respect for gay men and lesbians that—regardless of one’s actual desire to marry or attitudes toward the institution of marriage—will profoundly change not only how the law treats LGB individuals, but also how we are treated by others, as well as how we perceive ourselves. I do not mean to assert that Obergefell is without its …
Roberts, Kennedy, And The Subtle Differences That Matter In Obergefell, Joseph Landau
Roberts, Kennedy, And The Subtle Differences That Matter In Obergefell, Joseph Landau
Fordham Law Review
By upholding a nationwide right to marry for same-sex couples in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court’s enormously significant decision resolves a major civil rights question that has percolated through our legal system and coursed through our culture for some time. The ruling was not an unforeseen outcome, but it brings welcome clarity by ensuring marriage rights for same-sex couples throughout all fifty states. Building on United States v. Windsor—a 2013 decision striking down section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which prevented gay and lesbian married couples from receiving federal benefits—Obergefell is an important and …
Hail Marriage And Farewell, Ethan J. Leib
Hail Marriage And Farewell, Ethan J. Leib
Fordham Law Review
My conclusion in what follows is that, notwithstanding much rhetoric in the opinion, states have some room to rethink marriage in light of marriage equality. And with some intellectual jujitsu, this opening to rethink the state’s place in relational ordering gives marriage-skeptics another bite at the apple to get something they wanted all along: to decenter the largely religious, gendered, and bourgeois institution of marriage. Justice Kennedy’s opinion has the unfortunate result of reaffirming marriage at the top of a relational hierarchy, yet there are surely other ways we can have civil rights and equality for gay people without marriage …
Up From Marriage: Freedom, Solitude, And Individual Autonomy In The Shadow Of Marriage Equality, Catherine Powell
Up From Marriage: Freedom, Solitude, And Individual Autonomy In The Shadow Of Marriage Equality, Catherine Powell
Fordham Law Review
Obergefell v. Hodges represents a tremendous victory for those of us who believe that each individual has the right to love, form bonds, and create families with whomever one so desires. Through Obergefell and the line of cases from Griswold v. Connecticut and Loving v. Virginia onward, the Court has now repeatedly affirmed the freedoms to plan, to choose, and to create one’s own family as fundamental.
Perspectives On Marriage Equality And The Supreme Court, The Editors
Perspectives On Marriage Equality And The Supreme Court, The Editors
Fordham Law Review
On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Obergefell v. Hodges, one of the most significant civil rights decisions in recent years. For many of our generation, the Court’s conclusion that same-sex couples enjoy the constitutional right to marry simply confirmed deeply held beliefs about the importance of marriage equality and inclusion for all. We recognize, however, that for American society more broadly, the decision has evoked strong feelings on both sides of the marriage equality debate. For some, Obergefell delivered a unique gift that was unimaginable even a few decades ago: the ability of same-sex couples to …
Obergefell'S Conservatism: Reifying Familial Fronts, Clare Huntington
Obergefell'S Conservatism: Reifying Familial Fronts, Clare Huntington
Fordham Law Review
I am delighted with the result in Obergefell v. Hodges, but I am unhappy with the Court’s reasoning. In lieu of a straightforward, and far more defensible, decision based purely on the Equal Protection Clause, Justice Kennedy’s reliance on the Due Process Clause is deeply problematic.
Race, Dignity, And The Right To Marry, Robin A. Lenhardt
Race, Dignity, And The Right To Marry, Robin A. Lenhardt
Fordham Law Review
Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges asserts legal marriage’s capacity to afford same-sex couples a measure of “equal dignity” and belonging too long denied. In this Essay, I ask whether there is any reason to believe that marriage could do the same for African Americans. Could broader entrance into marriage, as some conservatives suggest, provide Blacks—gay and straight—a measure of belonging that has been frustratingly elusive, even as the nation prepares to celebrate the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Thirteenth Amendment’s ratification?
Congress's Power To Enforce Fourteenth Amendment Rights: Lessons From Federal Remedies The Framers Enacted , Robert J. Kaczorowski
Congress's Power To Enforce Fourteenth Amendment Rights: Lessons From Federal Remedies The Framers Enacted , Robert J. Kaczorowski
Faculty Scholarship
Professor Robert Kaczorowski argues for an expansive originalist interpretation of Congressional power under the Fourteenth Amendment. Before the Civil War Congress actually exercised, and the Supreme Court repeatedly upheld plenary Congressional power to enforce the constitutional rights of slaveholders. After the Civil War, the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment copied the antebellum statutes and exercised plenary power to enforce the constitutional rights of all American citizens when they enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and then incorporated the Act into the Fourteenth Amendment. The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment thereby exercised the plenary power the Rehnquist Court claims the …
Agency, Equality, And Antidiscrimination Law , Tracy E. Higgins, Laura A. Rosenbury
Agency, Equality, And Antidiscrimination Law , Tracy E. Higgins, Laura A. Rosenbury
Faculty Scholarship
The Supreme Court increasingly has interpreted the Equal Protection Clause as a mandate for the state to treat citizens as if they were equal-as a limitation on the state's ability to draw distinctions on the basis of characteristics such as race and, to a lesser extent, gender. In the context of race, the Court has struck down not only race-specific policies designed to harm the historically oppressed, but race conscious policies designed to foster racial equality. Although in theory the Court has left open the possibility that benign uses of race may be constitutional under some set of facts, in …
Chase Court And Fundamental Rights: A Watershed In American Constitutionalism, The , Robert J. Kaczorowski
Chase Court And Fundamental Rights: A Watershed In American Constitutionalism, The , Robert J. Kaczorowski
Faculty Scholarship
Three weeks before he died in May 1873, the frail and ailing Salmon P. Chase joined three of his brethren in dissent in one of the most important cases ever decided by the United States Supreme Court, the Slaughter-House Cases.1 This decision was a watershed in United States constitutional history for several reasons. Doctrinally, it represented a rejection of the virtually unanimous decisions of the lower federal courts upholding the constitutionality of revolutionary federal civil rights laws enacted in the aftermath of the Civil War. Institutionally, it was an example of extraordinary judicial activism in overriding the legislative will of …
Nineteenth Century Interpretations Of The Federal Contract Clause: The Transformation From Vested To Substantive Rights Against The State , James L. Kainen
Nineteenth Century Interpretations Of The Federal Contract Clause: The Transformation From Vested To Substantive Rights Against The State , James L. Kainen
Faculty Scholarship
During the early nineteenth century, the contract clause served as the fundamental source of federally protected rights against the state. Yet the Supreme Court gradually eased many of the restrictions on state power enforced in the contract clause cases while developing the doctrine of substantive due process after the Civil War. By the end of the nineteenth century, the due process clause had usurped the place of the contract clause as the centerpiece in litigation about individual rights. Most analyses of the history of federally protected rights against the state have emphasized the rise of substantive due process to the …
Searching For The Intent Of The Framers Of Fourteenth Amendment , Robert J. Kaczorowski
Searching For The Intent Of The Framers Of Fourteenth Amendment , Robert J. Kaczorowski
Faculty Scholarship
IN 1946 JUSTICE HUGO BLACK DECLARED that one of the objects of the fourteenth amendment was to apply the Bill of Rights to the States. He was confident that an analysis of the intent of the framers of the amendment would support his assertion. A few years later the Supreme Court requested such an investigation, but when the analysis was made and the results presented to it, the Supreme Court concluded that the framers' intent could not be determined. The uncertainty surrounding the intent of the framers of the fourteenth amendment has had profound implications on the application of that …