The California Same-Sex Marriage Ruling: What it Says, What it Means, and Why It's Right By MICHAEL C. DORF

Last week, the California Supreme Court handed down a landmark ruling legalizing same-sex marriage in the nation's most populous state. With the decision in In re Marriage Cases, California becomes only the second state in the country to grant same-sex couples the right to enter into marriages that are in name as well as substance the full equal of opposite-sex couples' marriages.

Like the ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in the 2003 case of Goodridge v. Dep't of Public Health, last week's California ruling rested in part on the fact that the state already provided same-sex couples the option of entering into state-sanctioned domestic partnerships (sometimes called "civil unions") with the same legal benefits and responsibilities as marriage. Maintaining a separate name for the institution that applied where same-sex couples are involved, both the California and Massachusetts high courts said, was a form of second-class citizenship for the members of such couples..

In this column, I shall lay out the key features of the California Supreme Court ruling and then consider its likely consequences. Finally, I shall defend the ruling against the charge that the Court acted precipitously, moving faster than public opinion (in particular, public opinion in California itself, as measured in a relatively recent ballot initiative), and thus illegitimately.

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