Academic

Hume on State Supreme Courts & Same-Sex Marriage Amendments

By Lawrence Solum

Robert J. Hume (Fordham University) has posted Understanding the Impact of State Supreme Courts: An Event History Analysis of Same-Sex Marriage Amendments on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

This paper assesses the impact of state supreme courts on controversial public policies by studying the enactment of state constitutional amendments prohibiting same-sex marriage. I find that institutional differences among state supreme courts and state constitutional systems can account for when same-sex marriage amendments are likely to pass. For example, I show that states are more likely to approve same-sex marriage amendments when state supreme court justices are elected, since the public has less confidence in elected justices and is less likely to support their decisions on controversial issues. I also show that same-sex marriage amendments are more likely to pass when states permit citizens to propose constitutional amendments directly through the initiative process. My findings suggest that the impact of state supreme courts is not constant but variable depending on attributes of state courts and state constitutional systems.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on July 22, 2009 (boomark / email).