Same Sex Marriage

There are two things former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement ’92 won’t do: Tell you where he stands on same-sex marriage, and grouse about the controversy that enveloped him last spring when he resigned from his law firm in order to continue defending U.S. House of Representatives Republicans in litigation over the Defense of Marriage Act.

At “Challenging and Litigating DOMA's Constitutionality”— an event that was co-sponsored by the Harvard Law School American Constitution Society, Lambda, and the Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Journal—Mary Bonauto, the Civil Rights Project Director at Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), spoke about litigating the Defense of Marriage Act in federal courts in the wake of the Department of Justice's recent decision to stop defending the law.

In an op-ed titled “Too Hot to Handle ,” which appeared in the July 1 American Lawyer, Harvard Law School Professor David B. Wilkins ’80 and Ben W. Heineman, Jr. explore how law firms should evaluate a partner’s wish to represent a controversial client.

As the ground shifts, an expert evaluates the role of litigation.

In 2007, when Erika Rickard was a 2L at Harvard Law, same-sex marriage had been legal in Massachusetts for more than three years. By that…

The following op-ed was published in the Boston Globe on January 5, 2007: Deval Patrick is off to a bad start. If the amendment to prohibit gay marriage ever reaches the people, I shall vote against it. I regret that the Supreme Judicial Court, in its closely divided 2003 decision in the Goodridge case, proclaimed that the state Constitution requires same-sex marriage.

Professor Heather Gerken says it can.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health last fall has allowed gay marriage in the commonwealth--at least for now.