The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on two cases involving gay marriage on March 26 and 27, and will issue rulings in June. 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, and another is an expert in the applicable constitutional law issues who has frequently written and spoken on Supreme Court issues. Neil SiegelProfessor of law and political science, director of the Program in Public Law, Duke University nsiegel@law.duke.eduhttp://www.law.duke.edu/fac/siegel Siegel is an expert on constitutional law and theory, and the Supreme Court. He served as special counsel to former Sen. Joseph Biden during the confirmation hearings of John Roberts and Samuel Alito. During the October 2003 term, Siegel clerked for associate justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 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. He and his co-authors filed a federalism-based argument against the Defense of Marriage Act. 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. _ _ _ _Duke experts on a variety of other topics can be found at http://newsoffice.duke.edu/resources-media/faculty-experts.
