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Cummings & NeJaime on Marriage Equality Lawyering

By Lawrence Solum

Scott Cummings (University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) - School of Law) & Douglas NeJaime (Loyola Law School Los Angeles) have posted Lawyering for Marriage Equality (UCLA L. Rev. Vol. 57, p, 1235, 2010). Here is the abstract:

Critics of litigation seeking to establish the right of same-sex couples to marry argue that it has produced a backlash undercutting the movement for marriage equality. In this account, movement lawyers emerge as agents of backlash: naively turning to the courts ahead of public opinion, ignoring more productive political alternatives, and ultimately hurting the very cause they purport to advance by securing a court victory that mobilizes opponents to repeal it. This Article challenges the backlash thesis through a close analysis of the California case, which contradicts the portrait of movement lawyers as unsophisticated rights crusaders and casts doubt on the causal claim that court decisions upholding same-sex couples? right to marry have harmed the movement.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on July 28, 2010 (boomark / email).