Here’s an interesting piece from this month’s Boston Review magazine by Stanford Professor Pamela S. Karlan, a constitutional expert.
(There’s a handy list of relevant US court cases from one of the commenters at the end of the piece)
Karlan notes hopefully that she “cannot think of a contentious social issue on which public opinion has shifted more rapidly.”, which she says is essential if equality is to be achieved because the US Supreme Court tends to be a reflection rather than a cause of progressive social change.
“We have moved in roughly a generation from a nation in which no state provided legal recognition to same-sex couples to one in which two in five Americans live in states that do: eight states and the District of Columbia now either issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples or recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. Without that change, the Supreme Court would not even consider legal protections for same-sex couples.”
Tags: Boston Review, gay marriage USA, Loving vs Virginia, Pamela Karlan, Pamela S. Karlan, Prop 8
