Article

Tradition as Justification: The Case of Opposite-Sex Marriage

Kim Forde-Mazrui

Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law

I am grateful for the comments I received on earlier drafts from Richard Banks, Rebecca Brown, Janet Giele, Phoebe Haddon, Michael Helfand, Fred Schauer, and Molly Walker. I also received helpful feedback from the participants in workshops at Duke Law School, the University of Minnesota Law School, Stanford Law School, the University of Virginia School of Law, and Wake Forest School of Law, as well as from attendees at my keynote speech at the Lavender Law Conference in San Francisco in September 2008, and from participants in the MidAtlantic People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference at Temple University James E. Beasley School of Law in January 2009 and the Third National People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference at Seton Hall University School of Law in September 2010. Student workshops at the University of Virginia and at Fairhaven College, Western Washington University, also provided useful feedback. The University of Virginia School of Law reference librarians, including Ben Doherty and Alison White, provided superb assistance. A special thanks to Jared Campbell, Evan Didier, Sarah Fritsch, Sarah Johns, Tim Lovelace, Chris Mincher, and Hadi Sedigh for their diligent research assistance and very helpful discussions. I welcome comments at kimfm@virginia.edu.

A central point of contention in the national debate over same-sex marriage is the importance of preserving tradition. That debate also features prominently in constitutional litigation over bans on same-sex marriage. Opponents of such bans argue that tradition is an illegitimate justification for the bans, while defenders of traditional marriage contend that tradition is not only a legitimate justification, but is in fact sufficiently important to withstand heightened judicial scrutiny.

This Article assesses tradition as a justification for laws challenged on equal protection grounds, with a focus on laws that limit marriage to opposite-sex couples. The Article makes two main points. First, it concludes that a state’s interest in preserving tradition— including the tradition of opposite-sex marriage—is probably legally sufficient to survive the most deferential standard of rational basis review under the Equal Protection Clause.

Second, this Article argues that courts should nonetheless view tradition with skepticism when it is offered to justify laws challenged on equal protection grounds. Tradition exhibits certain features, or “indicia of suspectness,” that counsel skepticism. Those features include tradition’s speculative utility, rhetorical appeal, and manipulability. Additionally, tradition is especially suspicious when offered to justify laws that burden a group toward whom there has been a cultural shift from widespread societal disapproval in the past to substantial public tolerance today. In such circumstances, tradition may serve as a convenient justification for people who are actually motivated by now-repudiated attitudes toward the burdened group. For bans on same-sex marriage, this Article contends, courts should invalidate such laws unless, after careful scrutiny, courts are satisfied that the laws are motivated by legitimate, non-tradition-based interests.

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