Assignment : Constitutional Law in Action
Moot Court Since this is an online class, each student will prepare written arguments for both sides.Case 1:Same-sex marriage is a hot-button political and legal topic. Historically, marriage has been a policy area that belonged to the states. With the exception of indirect regulation (e.g., tax differences between individuals and married couples), the federal government left marriage to the states. That changed in 1996. The Full Faith and Credit Clause requires states to respect each others laws and court judgments. Congress is delegated the authority to prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof. Concerned that the Full Faith and Credit Clause would require all states to recognize same-sex marriages if one state permitted them, Congress enacted the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. Commonly known as DOMA, the law expressly releases the states from having to recognize same-sex marriages of other states. DOMA was found by a federal trial court to violate both the Tenth Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause (see Letourneau v. Office of Personnel Management, Summary Judgment, July 8, 2010, U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, Civil Action No. 09-10309-JLT). At the time of publication of this text, an appeal had been filed but had not been decided. Working in teams of two, prepare your own moot court. The first team should prepare a five-minute oral argument that DOMA violates the Tenth Amendment, and the second team will be responsible for preparing a five-minute oral argument defending DOMA. For purposes of this assignment, ignore the equal protection issue. Case 2: Locate and review the appellate briefs filed in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), where the Court rejected state bans on same-sex marriage based on fundamental liberty interests of marriage under the Due Process Clause. The briefs can be found at http://www.americanbar.org/publications/preview_home/alphabetical.html. Now consider a legal analysis the Court did not discuss, namely, whether these state laws against same-sex marriage violated the Equal Protection Clause. Working in teams of two, the first team should prepare a five-minute oral argument wherein members present arguments, based on equal protection standards, challenging the constitutionality of state bans on same-sex marriage. Conversely, the second team should prepare a five-minute oral argument asserting why such bans on same-sex marriage comply with the requirements of the Fourteenth Amendments Equal Protection Clause.
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