ABSTRACT
According to Justice Anthony Kennedy, author of the majority opinion, the case of John Lawrence and Tyrone Garner, arrested for having sex together in the privacy of Lawrence’s home, involved “transcendent dimensions” of personal liberty. Ruth Harlow, legal director of Lambda Legal, the largest litigation group of its kind, characterized Lawrence as “a historic, transformative decision.” Most strikingly, both sides in America’s much-hyped “culture war” saw Lawrence as clearing the path to same-sex marriage. As Justice Kennedy put it in his opinion in the Lawrence case, “The doctrine of stare decisis is essential to the respect accorded to the judgments of the Court and to the stability of the law.” In Lawrence, the need to bring historical perspective to bear was especially relevant because the 1986 Bowers decision had been so heavily laden with references to history. From a certain angle, one could reasonably argue that the Lawrence case hardly makes a difference at all.
