Harvard Law & Policy Review

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Small Government is a Conservative Value – Except When It’s Not

By Isaac Saidel-Goley* Support for small, decentralized government with increased local control is often described as a fundamental principle of conservative ideology and a primary talking point for conservative politicians. Conservative politicians and pundits often use this rhetoric as a strategy to attack progressive candidates and policy by portraying them as overbearing or even pseudo-dictatorial. Yes, big, centralized government is seen as the antithesis of conservative values—except …

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Gay rights wins small, not big, at the Supreme Court

By Tom Watts* Today, on the anniversary of Lawrence v. Texas and United States v. Windsor, the Supreme Court declared in Obergefell v. Hodges that states that deny legal recognition to same-sex couples are violating the Constitution. Marriage equality is the law of the land. This is a victory for the gay rights movement, which has been fighting for the right to marry for over forty years. It vindicates the enormous tide of lower-court decisions over the past two years. This is a great …

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From Windsor to Obergefell: The Struggle for Marriage Equality Continued

To mark today's oral arguments in the same-sex marriage cases, HLPR online has released a Student Note from Volume 9.2 early! The Note is Tom Watts's From Windsor to Obergefell: The Struggle for Marriage Equality Continued. Tom Watts, a fourth-year JD/MPP at Harvard Law School and Harvard Kennedy School, writes: Prior scholarship has examined the legal history of the gay rights movement, but the post-Windsor flurry of litigation has only begun to be studied because it happened so quickly and …

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Same-sex Marriage Preview IV

By Tom Watts* This is the fourth and final post in a series of blog posts previewing some of the conceptual questions that may appear in the same-sex marriage oral arguments on Tuesday. Part I is here, Part II is here, and Part III is here. In the previous three posts, I discussed the ways in which the Supreme Court might analyze the validity of the state same-sex marriage bans under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The plaintiffs also argue that the bans violate …

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Same-sex Marriage Preview III

By Tom Watts* This is the third in a series of blog posts previewing some of the conceptual questions that may appear in the same-sex marriage oral arguments on Tuesday. Part I is here, and Part II is here. In previous posts, I discussed whether same-sex marriage bans classify by sexual orientation. If they do, the next question the Supreme Court must answer is what level of scrutiny a sexual orientation classification should receive. Race classifications receive strict scrutiny, which almost …

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Same-sex Marriage Preview II

By Tom Watts* This is the second in a series of blog posts previewing some of the conceptual questions that may appear in the same-sex marriage oral arguments on Tuesday. Part I is here. In the previous post, I discussed the prospect of the Supreme Court deciding that a state same-sex marriage ban was a sexual orientation classification on the face of the law. In this post, I’ll consider the route to concluding that the bans should receive scrutiny as sexual orientation classifications …

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