Adam Liptak, Gay, Gay Marriage, Law Professors, Quote of the Day, SCOTUS, Supreme Court

How Long Until SCOTUS Finds A Constitutional Right To Same-Sex Marriage?

It could come sooner than you might think, a prominent professor predicts.

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Somewhere between the next two and six years, the court will be ready to do it, assuming the composition of the court does not change.

— Professor Michael J. Klarman of Harvard Law School, author of From the Closet to the Altar: Courts, Backlash, and the Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage (affiliate link), commenting to the New York Times about when the U.S. Supreme Court might vindicate marriage equality nationwide.

(An amusing quip from another law professor, after the jump.)

Adam Liptak’s interesting piece for the Times quotes a number of prominent professors on how and when the Supreme Court might address gay marriage squarely on the constitutional merits. The most colorful comment comes from Professor Jason Mazzone of the University of Illinois, writing over at Balkinization:

Whatever the merits of Judge Robert J. Shelby’s ruling today that Utah’s same-sex marriage ban violates the Fourteenth Amendment, his opinion would have appeared considerably more judicial had he resisted the urge to give Justice Scalia the finger.

Eh, don’t worry about Justice Scalia; he can give as good as he gets:

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As Jennifer Senior noted in her great interview of Justice Scalia from earlier this year, his dissents in gay cases have been less “pungent” lately. But I suspect a dissent by him in Kitchen v. Herbert would smell richly of fire and brimstone.

Utah Ruling Means No Respite for the Supreme Court on Same-Sex Marriage [New York Times]
Judge Shelby and Justice Scalia [Balkinization]
From the Closet to the Altar: Courts, Backlash, and the Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage
[Amazon (affiliate link)]

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