Michigan Law Review Volume 102 Issue 7 2004 Foreword: Loving Lawrence Pamela S. Karlan Stanford Law School Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr Part of the Fourteenth Amendment Commons, Jurisprudence Commons, Sexuality and the Law Commons, and the Supreme Court of the United States Commons Recommended Citation Pamela S. Karlan, Foreword: Loving Lawrence, 102 MICH. L. REV. 1447 (2004). Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol102/iss7/1 This Colloquium is brought to you for free and open access by the Michigan Law Review at University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Michigan Law Review by an authorized editor of University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. FOREWORD: LOVING LAWRENCE Pamela S. Karlan* When you come to a fork in the road, take it. - Lawrence Peter (Yogi) Berra Two interracial couples. Two cases. Two clauses. In Loving v. Virginia,1 the Supreme Court struck down a Virginia statute outlawing interracial marriage. In Lawrence v. Texas,2 the Court struck down a Texas statute outlawing sexual activity between same-sex individuals. Each case raised challenges under both the Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Loving marked the crystallization, a dozen years after Brown,3 of the antisubordination principle: Virginia's law ran afoul of the Equal Protection Clause because it reflected nothing more than arbitrary and invidious discrimination "designed to maintain White Supremacy."4 In reaching that conclusion, the Court employed a then-novel formulation: strict scrutiny.5 Chief Justice Warren noted that in cases * Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law, Stanford Law School.