ISBN: PB: 9780300221558

Yale University Press

January 2021

400 pp.

23,5x15,6 cm

PB:
£37.50
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What Obergefell v. Hodges Should Have Said

The Nation's Top Legal Experts Rewrite America's Same-Sex Marriage Decision

Jack Balkin and an all-star cast of legal scholars, sitting as a hypothetical Supreme Court, rewrite the famous 2015 opinion in "Obergefell v. Hodges", which guaranteed same-sex couples the right to marry. In eleven incisive opinions, the authors offer the best constitutional arguments for and against the right to same-sex marriage, and debate what Obergefell should mean for the future.

In addition to serving as Chief Justice of this imaginary court, Balkin provides a critical introduction to the case. He recounts the story of the gay rights litigation that led to Obergefell, and he explains how courts respond to political mobilizations for new rights claims. The social movement for gay rights and marriage equality is a powerful example of how – through legal imagination and political struggle – arguments once dismissed as "off-the-wall" can later become established in American constitutional law.

About the author

Jack M. Balkin is Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School. He is the founder and director of Yale's Information Society Project and directs the Abrams Institute for Freedom of Expression at Yale.