Obergefell Case Summary

The Obergefell decision is a landmark case that deals with a much greater debate than just that of the legality of same-sex marriage. The majority opinion of the court ruled in favor of the guaranteed right to marriage in every U.S. state regardless of the sex of the individuals involved. While the advancement of liberal social rights is evident in this opinion, the ruling, perhaps more importantly, confronts the struggle between the dissenting views of the nature of Constitutional revision. Through the Obergefell majority opinion and Scalia’s dissent, we see a profound and necessary debate regarding how to treat our nation’s founding document moving forward. The core issue in the Obergefell case is whether the right to marry whomever is a “fundamental right” of American citizens. While our biases and preconceived notions of liberty and social rights
Since its ratification, our nation’s founding document has rightly governed us as a collective state. But, significantly, the Constitution did not predict modern social and political predicaments that would require legal judgment, nor could it have predicted such developments. This results in a situation in which modern frontiers of justice cannot be ruled upon by using the document that defines our democratic order. In dealing with this profound issue, two schools of thought have arisen, and they are both put on display in this case. In the majority opinion, we can see the concept of the “living Constitution,” defined by modern applications to the Constitution as new and unpredictable injustices appear. The opinion of the court explains that this “method respects our history and learns from it without allowing the past alone to rule the present” (576 U. S. p. 16 (2015). In applying this view, the majority of the court