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Full-Text Articles in Law

Strange Bedfellows: How An Anticipatory Countermovement Brought Same-Sex Marriage Into The Public Arena, Michael C. Dorf, Sidney Tarrow Apr 2014

Strange Bedfellows: How An Anticipatory Countermovement Brought Same-Sex Marriage Into The Public Arena, Michael C. Dorf, Sidney Tarrow

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Since the 1980s, social movement scholars have investigated the dynamic of movement/countermovement interaction. Most of these studies posit movements as initiators, with countermovements reacting to their challenges. Yet sometimes a movement supports an agenda in response to a countermovement that engages in what we call “anticipatory countermobilization.” We interviewed ten leading LGBT activists to explore the hypothesis that the LGBT movement was brought to the fight for marriage equality by the anticipatory countermobilization of social conservatives who opposed same-sex marriage before there was a realistic prospect that it would be recognized by the courts or political actors. Our findings reinforce …


Is Japan Ready To Legalize Same-Sex Marriage?, Yuki Arai Jan 2014

Is Japan Ready To Legalize Same-Sex Marriage?, Yuki Arai

Cornell Law School LL.M. Student Research Papers

Marriage is one of the most significant stages in one’s life. For many decades, gays and lesbians have been excluded from the legal institution of marriage solely because of their sexual orientation. However, the situation concerning same-sex marriage has drastically changed in many societies including the U.S. in the past several years. This recent wave of the opening of same-sex marriage has yet to reach my home country, Japan. In Japanese society where no religion opposing to same-sex activity is influential, gays and lesbians have not been persecuted criminally or religiously, which caused the absence of gay and lesbian rights …


Mini-Domas As Political Process Failures: The Case For Heightened Scrutiny Of State Anti-Gay Marriage Amendments, Steve Sanders Jan 2014

Mini-Domas As Political Process Failures: The Case For Heightened Scrutiny Of State Anti-Gay Marriage Amendments, Steve Sanders

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.


Weather Permitting: Incrementalism, Animus, And The Art Of Forecasting Marriage Equality After U.S. V. Windsor, Jeremiah A. Ho Jan 2014

Weather Permitting: Incrementalism, Animus, And The Art Of Forecasting Marriage Equality After U.S. V. Windsor, Jeremiah A. Ho

All Faculty Scholarship

Within LGBT rights, the law is abandoning essentialist approaches toward sexual orientation by incrementally de-regulating restrictions on identity expression of sexual minorities. Simultaneously, same-sex marriages are become increasingly recognized on both state and federal levels. This Article examines the Supreme Court’s recent decision, U.S. v. Windsor, as the latest example of these parallel journeys. By overturning DOMA, Windsor normatively revises the previous incrementalist theory for forecasting marriage equality’s progress studied by William Eskridge, Kees Waaldijk, and Yuval Merin. Windsor also represents a moment where the law is abandoning antigay essentialism by using animus-focused jurisprudence for lifting the discrimination against the …


The Evolution Toward Judicial Independence In The Continuing Quest For Lgbt Equality, Susan J. Becker Jan 2014

The Evolution Toward Judicial Independence In The Continuing Quest For Lgbt Equality, Susan J. Becker

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Judicial decisions that hold same-sex marriage bans unconstitutional, no matter how that conclusion is reached, overturn laws or constitutional provisions that were passed with the support of a democratic majority. This Article takes an in-depth look at judicial activism and judicial independence to determine whether such victories for same-sex litigants were done properly by the judiciary. In the eyes of the Framers, an independent judiciary was to be a crucial check on the other branches’ constitutional limitations. With this in mind, judicial independence—where, in contrast with activism, judges meticulously apply the well-examined facts to controlling precedent without accounting for majority …


The Ninth Circuit’S Treatment Of Sexual Orientation: Defining “Rational Basis Review With Bite”, Ian C. Bartrum Jan 2014

The Ninth Circuit’S Treatment Of Sexual Orientation: Defining “Rational Basis Review With Bite”, Ian C. Bartrum

Scholarly Works

When the Ninth Circuit handed down Witt v. Department of the Air Force, President Obama and then-Solicitor General Kagan declined to take an appeal to the Supreme Court. At the time, it seemed that most advocates of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” believed that the administration made that decision because it was afraid the Supreme Court would reverse the Ninth Circuit. If that fear was perhaps well-founded in 2009, it is certainly less so now. In the wake of SmithKline Beecham Corp. v. Abbott Laboratories, as well as recent District Court decisions, opponents of federal constitutional protection for gay people …


Civil Rights 3.0, Nan D. Hunter Jan 2014

Civil Rights 3.0, Nan D. Hunter

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

It is now commonplace to hear the LGBT rights movement being described as the last, or the next, or today’s, pre-eminent civil rights issue. This chapter will explore what that means from several perspectives: What does the label tell us about the civil rights paradigm itself? If the achievement of marriage equality is the great civil rights achievement of this generation, what does that suggest about a future for equality more generally? How have new forms of, and technologies for, movement building affected the idea and practice of civil rights? Does the civil rights paradigm have a future? I focus …