Democratic Constitutionalism and the Marriage Revolution
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ARTICLES STAGES OF CONSTITUTIONAL GRIEF: DEMOCRATIC CONSTITUTIONALISM AND THE MARRIAGE REVOLUTION Anthony Michael Kreis* ABSTRACT Do courts matter? Historically, many social movements have turned to the courts to help achieve sweeping social change. Because judicial institutions are supposed to be above the political fray, they are sometimes believed to be immune from ordinary political pressures that otherwise slow down progress. Substantial scholarship casts doubt on this ro- manticized ideal of courts. This Article posits a new, interactive theory of courts and social movements, under which judicial institutions can legitimize and fuel social movements, but outside actors are necessary to enhance the courts’ social reform efficacy. Under this theory, courts matter and can be agents of social change by educating the public and dislodging institutional inertia in the political branches. This Article addresses these competing visions of judicial capacity for social change in the context of the struggle for marriage equality. Specifically, it considers the extent to which courts were responsible for Americans warming to LGBT rights and coming to new understandings of family, examining evidence marshaled from court rulings, polling data, interviews with federal and state judges, interviews with state elected officials, legislative histories, and media accounts. The Article concludes that courts played a vital role in fueling the marriage equality revolu- tion. They were not, however, unbridled agents of social change because external forces were necessary to maximize the impact of courts’ actions. * Visiting Assistant Professor of Law, Chicago-Kent College of Law. Ph.D., University of Georgia, J.D., Washington and Lee University, B.A., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I am thankful for the various forms of support and insight from Kathy Baker, Ryan Bakker, Felice Batlan, Alex Boni-Saenz, Peg Brinig, Dale Carpenter, Erwin Chemerinsky, Rob Christiansen, Bill Eskridge, J. Amy Dillard, Mary Dudziak, Chai Feldblum, Martha Fineman, Cynthia Godsoe, Linda Greenhouse, Tim Holbrook, Nan Hunter, Nancy Leong, Hillel Levin, Heidi Li Feldman, Stefanie Lindquist, John Maltese, Anthony Madonna, Joe Miller, Brian Murchison, Sheldon Nahmod, Michael Perry, Sally Brown Richardson, Caprice Roberts, Mark Roark, Steve Sanders, Chris Schmidt, Liz Sepper, Reva Siegel, Eric Segall, Joan Shaughnessy, Carolyn Shapiro, Rod Smolla, Christian Turner, Joe Ura, Rich Vining, Sonja West, Teena Wilhelm, Vicky Wilkins, and Robin Fretwell Wilson. I appreciate feedback from the University of Illinois’ Harry Krause Emerg- ing Family Law Scholars Workshop and 2016 Loyola University Chicago School of Law Constitu- tional Law Colloquium. Finally, thanks go to Justice David Baker, Judge Bernard Friedman, Justice Beth Robinson, Chief Justice Marsha Ternus, and Judge Vaughn Walker for generously taking the time to be interviewed and improve the piece. 871 872 JOURNAL OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW [Vol. 20:4 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION.................................................................................... 873 I. THE DIALECTICAL COURTS ............................................................. 875 A. Precedent.......................................................................................... 877 B. Support-Structures ............................................................................ 878 C. Political Reinforcement ...................................................................... 878 D. Administrative Implementation ........................................................... 878 E. Rights Consciousness Effect ............................................................... 879 F. Legitimization .................................................................................. 879 II. MARRIAGE AND THE BOUNDED NATURE OF RIGHTS ..................... 879 III. COURTS AND THE PUBLIC-AT-LARGE ............................................ 896 A. States and the Backlash Thesis ........................................................... 897 B. National Temperature ....................................................................... 902 C. Mood Shifts: Courts or the Secularization of America? .......................... 908 D. Conclusion ....................................................................................... 908 IV. THE STATUTORY EVOLUTION OF FAMILY LAW ........................... 909 A. Hawaii ........................................................................................... 910 B. Vermont ........................................................................................... 912 C. Massachusetts .................................................................................. 915 D. California ........................................................................................ 922 E. Vermont 2007–2009 ....................................................................... 929 F. Maryland ........................................................................................ 936 G. Marriage Without Courts? ................................................................ 939 H. The Legislative Response Before Windsor ........................................... 943 V. FORMS AND LIMITS OF EXECUTIVE AND ADMINISTRATIVE ACTION ...................................................................................... 946 A. California ........................................................................................ 947 B. The Emerging of National Civil Disobedience ...................................... 957 1. Oregon ..................................................................................... 960 2. New Mexico ............................................................................. 965 3. New York ................................................................................. 967 4. Rhode Island ............................................................................ 971 5. Maryland ................................................................................. 973 C. Conclusion ....................................................................................... 975 CONCLUSION: THE DIALECTICAL COURTS.......................................... 979 Mar. 2018] STAGES OF CONSTITUTIONAL GRIEF 873 Their insulation and the marvelous mystery of time give courts the capacity to appeal to men’s better natures, to call forth their aspirations, which may have been forgotten in the moment’s hue and cry. —Alexander Bickel (1962)1 The battle for same-sex marriage would have been better served if [same-sex couples] had never brought litigation, or had lost their cases. —Gerald N. Rosenberg (2006)2 We draw down on a capital of trust, a deposit of trust. We spend that capital of trust, and we have to rebuild that capital. —Anthony M. Kennedy (2015)3 INTRODUCTION A substantial proportion of Americans believes courts can save us from ourselves. There is a prominent strain of romanticism in American political discourse, particularly among progressives and legal academics, that judicial institutions are above the fray—that they rise above the lowbrow business of politics to do right by marginalized communities.4 One need look no further than anniversaries of Brown v. Board of Education to see Americans celebrating the notion that courts can and should be champions of ideas whose times have yet to come. Americans’ “attachment,” as Gerald Rosenberg once described it,5 to the portrayal of judges triumphantly vindicating the rights of the repressed and the downtrodden fails to find wide-scale support in much of the literature studying courts.6 Indeed, many scholars criticize perceptions of dominant 1 ALEXANDER M. BICKEL, THE LEAST DANGEROUS BRANCH: THE SUPREME COURT AT THE BAR OF POLITICS 253 (1962). 2 Gerald N. Rosenberg, Courting Disaster: Looking for Change in All the Wrong Places, 54 DRAKE L. REV. 795, 813 (2006). 3 Elliot Spagat, Justice Anthony Kennedy Compares Gay Marriage Uproar to Anger After Flag Burning Case, U.S. NEWS (July 15, 2015), http://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2015/07/15/justice-kennedy- acknowledges-gay-marriage-controversy. 4 See, e.g., John Ferejohn & Larry D. Kramer, Judicial Independence in a Democracy: Institutionalizing Judicial Restraint, in NORMS AND THE LAW 161–62 (John N. Drobak ed., 2006) (discussing the tension be- tween judicial independence and accountability); Neal Kumar Katyal, Legislative Constitutional Inter- pretation, 50 DUKE L.J. 1335, 1335 (2001) (distinguishing constitutional interpretation by courts from constitutional interpretation by Congress); Douglas Laycock, Constitutional Theory Matters, 50 TEX. L. REV. 767, 767–69 (1987) (examining the relevance and implications of different constitutional theories for the judiciary in contrast to the political branches). 5 GERALD N. ROSENBERG, THE HOLLOW HOPE: CAN COURTS BRING ABOUT SOCIAL CHANGE? 9 (2d ed. 2008). 6 See Robert A. Kagan, A Consequential Court: The U.S. Supreme Court in the Twentieth Century, in CONSEQUENTIAL COURTS: JUDICIAL ROLES IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE 199 (Diana Kapiszewski, 874 JOURNAL OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW [Vol. 20:4 judicial power as detached from the historical realities of backlash and re- sistance to judicial authority.7 This raises the question: who is right about the role of courts in social change? Recent social reform attempts have revived this question.8 Beginning in the early 1990s, same-sex marriage advocates systematically used litigation as a tool for social change against stiff popular