Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-2014
Journal Title
Journal of Legal Analysis
ISSN
1946-5319
DOI
10.1093/jla/lau002
Abstract
This article asks what the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion in United States v. Windsorstands for. It first shows that the opinion leans in the direction of marriage equality but ultimately resists any dispositive “equality” or “federalism” interpretation. The article next examines why the opinion seems intended to preserve for itself a Delphic obscurity. The article reads Windsor as an exemplar of what judicial opinions may look like in transition periods, when a Bickelian Court seeks to invite, not end, a national conversation, and to nudge it in a certain direction. In such times, federalism reasoning and rhetoric—like declining to announce the level of scrutiny and appearing to misapply the justiciability doctrines—may be used as a way station toward a particular later resolution.
First Page
87
Last Page
150
Num Pages
64
Volume Number
6
Issue Number
1
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Rights
This article is available under the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC license and permits non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Recommended Citation
Neil S. Siegel,
Federalism as a Way Station: Windsor as Exemplar of Doctrine in Motion,
6
J. Legal Analysis
87
(2014).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/facscholar/2243
File Type
Included in
Constitutional Law Commons, Jurisprudence Commons, Law and Gender Commons, Law and Politics Commons, Sexuality and the Law Commons, Supreme Court of the United States Commons