Associate Dean Amar Comments on Same Sex Marriage and U.S. Supreme Court for NPR, Mercury News
Vikram Amar, Associate Dean and Professor of Law at UC Davis School of Law, commented for media including Bay Area National Public Radio affiliate KQED and the San Jose Mercury News on the prospects for U.S. Supreme Court review of lower court rulings that overturned the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and invalidated California's same-sex marriage ban Proposition 8.
In an extended interview on KQED's Newsfix program, Amar discussed the Supreme Court's standard for review, whether or not the Court might combine the DOMA and Prop. 8 cases, whether political and social trends regarding the acceptance of same-sex marriage might affect the Justices' willingness to hear the cases, the continuing importance of standing as an issue in the cases, and related issues.
"I think it would be extremely unlikely for the Court to grant review of Prop. 8 and not DOMA," Amar said, summarizing the most likely scenario. "I think it would also be extremely unlikely for the court to deny the Prop. 8 case altogether -- that is, to just leave the Ninth Circuit decision alone. I think they will either grant cert in both the DOMA and the Prop. 8 case, or perhaps more likely they will grant it in the DOMA case and sit on the Prop. 8 case, and we won't know what they're going to do with that until after they resolve DOMA."
On December 7, the Court announced that it would hear the Prop. 8 case and one of the DOMA cases, United States v. Windsor.
Vikram Amar, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor of Law with the UC Davis School of Law, is a national authority in the fields of constitutional law, civil procedure, criminal procedure, and remedies. His biweekly column for Justia.com, a leading provider of online legal information, centers on his expertise in constitutional law.