Maine legalizes same-​​​​sex marriage By legislative action, no less. Without a court telling them they had to do it. That makes Maine the second state to enact same-​​​​sex marriage without a judicial order to do so, and the first state to enact same-​​​​sex marriage without a judicial order to at least create a parallel licensing system (as the Vermont Supreme Court did back before that state created its civil union system). Also, the first state to legisla­tively dispose of a prior legislative ban (Me. Rev. Stat. Ann. tit. 19-​​​​A § 701 (2009)). My last law school exam ever starts in 10 minutes. Woo hoo!

Complaint here. [pdf] Various plain­tiffs married to or formerly married to and now widowed by persons of the same sex under Massachusetts law after Goodridge filed suit in the United States District Court for District of Massachusetts yesterday (case no. 1:2009cv10309) directly chal­lenging the consti­tu­tion­ality of § 3 of the Federal Defense of Marriage Act, Pub L. No. 105–199, 110 Stat. 2419 (1996) (codified at 1 U.S.C. § 7) under implied equal protection afforded by the 5th Amendment’s Due Process Clause. (For those who aren’t aware, the “Equal Protection Clause” under which equal protection chal­lenges are most often raised is part of [ . . . ]

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Dear The Internets, Please be advised that, although the Large Hadron Collider will be powered up on Wednesday, no high-​​​​energy colli­sions are scheduled until November. It really upsets me to see people, including the news media reporting tomorrow’s initial power-​​​​up as “the most complex scien­tific exper­iment ever under­taken” (from the first link) when in fact it is not. The claims that the LHC will destroy the world are pure lunacy. But please, all you crazies out there, if you’re going to get all het up about the end of the world, it is very important that you get your dates straight. [ . . . ]

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I was in court all day today and so I did not find out that the Supreme Court had ruled in Boumediene v. Bush today. [Note: PDF link.] The Court explicitly held that MCA § 7 (the jurisdiction-​​​​stripping amendment) was within Congress’ power to enact as a matter of Article III (but not within Congress’ power to enact as a matter of the Suspension Clause). I’ve said all along that this question, which the Court calls “a threshold matter” was more signif­icant in the long run and from a separation-​​​​of-​​​​powers stand­point than any ruling on the much more popular and eagerly reported habeas issue. I [ . . . ]

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