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Tribe's response can be found on Balkinization: http://balkin.blogspot.com/2008/05/larry-tribe-on-liberty-and-equality.html

Deborah, I too get the sense (from gay service members who have recently left the military) that ''don't ask, don't tell'' is generally disfavored by a broad segment of the military community. And I would be delighted for the Supreme Court to use this context as an occasion to rethink its stance on military deference if or when the case arrives ...

Phil, I don't understand your post's statement about how the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces in United States v. Marcum didn't ''cite Bowers v. Hardwick and the illegality of homosexuality per se.'' This implies that the Marcum court could properly have cited Bowers but decided not to do so. But Marcum could not have properly cited Bowers, ...

Good point, Eric, I had confused the respondents who had said they were ''unfavorable'' toward a justice with those who were ''not sure,'' and it would be the latter group that would contain most folks who don't know any justices. The former group might contain people who couldn't produce justices on their own but were still willing to opine on ...

I agree that much of the Rasmussen poll puzzle presented by Eric is solved by the Findlaw survey results presented by Diane. I take Eric’s puzzle to be why Americans rate the Supreme Court more highly than its constituent members (especially when we suspect that the Congress is not necessarily more highly rated than its individual members). I take ...

Gerken Opening Post (Round 2)Yesterday Kenji Yoshino and I debated whether, as a purely predictive matter, liberty or equality offers the more promising framework for litigating gay rights claims (our posts are here and here, with short essays on the topic here and here). Today I want to address whether there is a normative reason to ...

There must be something in the water in the West Coast. A few hours ago, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (sitting in Seattle) handed down another pro-gay decision in Witt v. Department of the Air Force. Like the California Supreme Court decision issued six days ago, this opinion marks a significant advance for gay rights. In Witt, ...

A few months ago, my colleague Heather Gerken and I had the pleasure of attending a symposium at the University of Tulsa Law School to honor the work of Laurence Tribe. We both spoke on Tribe's theories of liberty and equality, focusing on the case of gay rights. Following Tribe, we think these two concepts are sufficiently intertwined that it is ...

To basically concur with Eric's post on the Constitutional Commentary article and the New York Times op-ed on the confirmation process, I think the article is banal and the op-ed is confused. First, let's do the article.  To advert again to the Casablanca line popular in this forum-I am shocked, shocked!-that justices are being cagey about ...

 ''Removing Saddam Hussein was the right decision early in my presidency, it is the right decision now, and it will be the right decision ever.'' —President George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., March 12, 2008 ''Let me live here ever / So rare a wondered father and a wise / Makes this place Paradise.''—William Shakespeare, London, England, circa ...