CORNELL UNIVERSITY MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICEOct. 7, 2014

Supreme Court cert denial in same-sex marriage cases a good deal for liberals and conservatives alike

Michael Dorf, Constitutional law expert and Professor of Law at Cornell University speculates on what led the Supreme Court to yesterday’s cert denials in today’s Dorf on Law blog post: http://www.dorfonlaw.org/2014/10/cert-denied-is-justice-delayed-scotus.html

Dorf says:

“Yesterday’s cert denials in the same-sex marriage cases surprised most observers, including me. The likely impact of the cert denials was pretty well understood immediately.

“The harder question is what were the internal dynamics of the Court that led to the cert denial.

“Perhaps the denial was kind of a deal. The liberals get what they really want – nationwide same-sex marriage is inevitable. The conservatives avoid having to write dissents that will make them look like bigots to their grandchildren. The Court as a whole gets a relatively peaceful term in which hot-button cultural issues are not especially prominent. I’m not suggesting this ‘deal’ was explicit, but it’s relatively easy to imagine how it would take shape without anybody calling it a deal.”

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