The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on two cases involving gay marriage on March 26 and 27. Hollingsworth v. Perry is a challenge to a California law banning gay marriage, and United States v. Windsor disputes the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which also defines marriage as solely an opposite-sex institution. Two Duke Law professors have co-written and filed amicus briefs with the Supreme Court regarding those cases.
Laurence Helfer Harry R. Chadwick Sr. Professor of Law, Duke University Law School helfer@law.duke.edu http://www.law.duke.edu/fac/helfer Helfer, a leading scholar of international law and international human rights, filed an amicus brief in Hollingsworth in which he and his co-authors cite foreign and comparative law supporting the legality of same-sex marriage. Helfer was appointed as the inaugural Jacob L. Martin Fellow in the U.S. State Department's Office of the Legal Adviser in 2011 to serve as an adviser to government attorneys on global trends relating to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights. He explained the human rights foundation of LGBT rights when he addressed a United Nations Human Rights Council meeting in March 2012. From the brief: http://tinyurl.com/dylz783 "(T)his Court should consider the reasoning of authorities in other countries that have determined that it violates the fundamental rights of same-sex couples to exclude them from the institution of marriage. Those decisions rest upon principles common to our own understanding of the rights protected under the Fourteenth Amendment, including the liberty to make fundamental choices for one's own life free from government intervention, the dignity and worth of all persons, and equality under the law. Because Proposition 8 offends those fundamental principles, it violates our Constitution." Ernest Young Alston & Bird Professor of Law, Duke University Law School young@law.duke.edu http://www.law.duke.edu/fac/young Young is one of the nation's leading authorities on the constitutional law of federalism, constitutional interpretation and constitutional theory. Young and his co-authors filed a federalism-based argument against the Defense of Marriage Act. From the brief: http://tinyurl.com/c33c36w "Congress's establishment of a competing federal definition of family undermines the states' sovereign authority to define, regulate and support family relationships. Federal law is massively intertwined with state law, and state officials implement many federal programs, like Medicaid, in parallel with their own legal regimes. DOMA thus wreaks confusion and imposes substantial administrative costs that undermine states' attempts to define marriage for themselves. These contradictory legal regimes impose costs on individuals as well, who cannot rely on a single body of law to settle their domestic status or hold a single set of officials politically accountable."