Author Archive | Dale Carpenter

Two more today, one in Tennessee apparently letting an anti-gay-marriage state constitutional amendment go to the ballot and one in the Eighth Circuit reversing a district judge’s ruling that Nebraska’s gay-marriage ban is unconstitutional. That makes five losses in one week. The Eighth Circuit decision, which can be read here, is especially important. It’s significant […]

For the third time in a week, a state court has rejected the claims of gay-marriage litigants. The decision comes from a Connecticut trial court, which granted summary judgment to the state in a suit claiming that the civil unions recognized in Connecticut since last year fall short of marriage, and thus deny the plaintiffs […]

Almost a week has now passed since the New York Court of Appeals handed down its decision denying state constitutional claims to same-sex marriage. Previously, I’ve discussed my thoughts on the court’s legal analysis. Now I want to explore some effects of the decision on the cause of same-sex marriage. First, the New York decision […]

According to this article, the Boston Globe will soon require its gay employees to get married in order to keep their same-sex partners’ benefits: A memo sent to the Globe’s Boston Newspaper Guild members, and obtained by the Herald, states that Massachusetts gay Guild employees can extend their benefits to their partners only if they […]

In addition to the due process argument, the New York gay-marriage plaintiffs claimed that denying them marriage violated the state constitution’s guarantee of equal protection. (Here, New York generally follows federal precedent, offering no more protection than would be offered under the federal constitution.) The court confronted two arguments for heightened scrutiny: first, that denying […]

The New York marriage decision raises many interesting questions. I plan, over a few posts, to deal with some of them: (1) the due process claim; (2) the equal protection claim; (3) the legal rationality of excluding same-sex couples from marriage; and (4) some implications of the decision for the future of gay marriage. First […]

By 4-2, the court held that the state constitution does not compel the recognition of same-sex marriages. The matter, said the court, is for the state legislature to decide. It is the first state high court to address the substance of a gay-marriage claim since the Massachusetts decision in 2003. The ruling, coming from a […]

I don’t like most of the terms used to describe libertarian beliefs: Free markets? Not everything is about economic markets, and left-wing critics have a field day pointing out that government itself establishes the underlying rules of the market. Market liberal? Again not everything is about economic markets, and just generally, yuck. Classical liberal? Kind […]

For a paper I’m working on, I’m collecting recent examples of conventional wisdom among health professionals that turned out to be wrong once the issue was studied in more depth. I’m not looking for eccentricities, but for generally accepted theories that had a reasonable basis, but have since been refuted or at least strongly challenged. […]

Over at the Housing Bubble Blog, I’m seeing more and more stories like this: Boston Globe: After having her home on the market for nearly a year, with about 30 showings, multiple price drops, and only one not-so-tempting offer, Phyllis Troia decided to try something different. She put her Dutch colonial in Plymouth up for […]

I need to know, relatively soon (and just as a favor to a relative), whether there is any law in Pennsylvania relating to whether a religious congregation has the right to overrule a Board of Directors’ selection of the congregation’s religious leader (minister, priest, rabbi, etc.). If you don’t know Pennsylvania law, law from other […]

I can’t say that I follow the debate over executive compensation very closely, but I do follow the fortunes of homebuilder stocks. And I’ve noticed that CEOs of many of the major homebuilders (e.g. Hovnanian, KB Homes, Toll, Lennar), received many millions of dollars in compensation last year. It’s true that their companies were very […]

Leo, quoting this VC post, attacks willful defiance of the law by the ABA and others: The most “massive resistance” in the name of diversity has been the broad and scandalous refusal to abide by California’s Proposition 209, which bans preferences and quotas in state jobs, hiring and education. Mayors, city attorneys and even judges […]

Minnesota Public Radio (temporary link): The attorneys jockeying to lead the lawsuits against UnitedHealth Group Inc. will have to answer some questions first, beginning with: How many women and minorities does your firm employ? On Monday, Magistrate Judge Franklin Noel ordered the law firms vying to be named lead counsel to answer that question by […]

I’ve noticed in a variety of contexts that there are some rather well-educated, articulate individuals out there who have what seems to me to be a fanatical, quasi-religious belief in “international law”, and the idea that it should trump any other conflicting consideration. In the constitutional law field, this is reflected in the argument that […]