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 recently. I seek to examine this recent history here. This Note proceeds in three parts. First, it examines Windsor and Perry, the two cases that precipitated the recent legal explosion, with particular emphasis on the features of Windsor and Perry that proved important or useful for later cases. Second, it examines the marriage equality cases that have reached decisions since Windsor and Perry, dividing the litigation into four periods: preliminary district court decisions, final district court opinions, circuit court opinions, and the circuit split that led to the Supreme Court taking the case. Third, it looks at the trends arising out of those decisions.
This Note is particularly relevant now as the litigation that this Note examines finally reaches the Supreme Court. Give it a read today!