Making a Supreme Court Case for Gay Marriage
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Much has been made of that factual record, and indeed U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker spent scores of pages laying out a long list of findings that, he wrote, had been established as fact during the contentious, weeks-long trial. Among the findings was proof that rules of marriage had been fluid across history, that gender roles once held as absolute are no longer as important in understanding or defining marriage, and that gays and lesbians had been historically discriminated against to the point that laws aimed specifically at them merit additional judicial scrutiny.
Olson says he and Boies will use those findings of fact to anchor their legal arguments as they defend the case in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and, if the Justices take it, before the Supreme Court perhaps as soon as the 2011 term. "We have exhaustive and comprehensive highly favorable findings of fact and conclusions of law by an experienced and respected jurist who carefully examined the evidence presented by our nine experts and eight lay witnesses, and the best arguments and evidence that skilled lawyers on the other side could present," he says. "We feel that we have a powerful and compelling record to lay before the appellate courts. We can't do more than that.
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http://www.time.com/time/politics/ar...#ixzz0wEHkgzSl