Sexing skinner: History and the politics of the right to marry

Columbia Law Review

Volumn 110, Issue 5, 2010, Pages 1348-1376

  Dubler, Ariela R ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 77954467741     PISSN: 00101958     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (151)

1. The sides of this debate were famously set out in an exchange between Paula Ettelbrick and Thomas Stoddard. See Paula L. Ettelbrick, Since When Is Marriage a Path to Liberation?, Out/Look: Nat'l Lesbian & Gay Q., Fall 1989, at 9, 14-17 (arguing gay marriage will force assimilation of gay identity and culture, and preclude validation of nonmarital relationships);
2. Thomas B. Stoddard, Why Gay People Should Seek the Right to Marry, Out/Look: Nat'l Lesbian & Gay Q., Fall 1989, at 9, 10-13 (offering practical, political, and philosophical arguments for supporting gay marriage).
3. See, e.g., William N. Eskridge, Jr., The Case for Same-Sex Marriage 66-74 (1996) (discussing "practical benefits of marriage");
4. Evan Wolfson, Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People's Right to Marry 3-18 (2004) (pointing to benefits of marriage across history and cultures);
5. Mary Bonauto, Ending Marriage Discrimination: A Work in Progress, 40 Suffolk U. L. Rev. 813, 825 (2007) (noting marriage is considered to be part of "living the good life").
6. See, e.g., Michael Warner, The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life 81-82 (1999) (arguing marriage grants legitimacy to particular relationships, thereby marginalizing other relationships);
7. Katherine M. Franke, Longing for Loving, 76 Fordham L. Rev. 2685, 2689 (2008) (noting marriage's "normative centrality" is standard by which all other relationships are understood and assigned value);
8. Nancy D. Polikoff, We Will Get What We Ask For: Why Legalizing Gay and Lesbian Marriage Will Not "Dismantle the Legal Structure of Gender in Every Marriage," 79 Va. L. Rev. 1535, 1535-41 (1993) (surveying scholarly work supporting same-sex marriage and concluding it fails to challenge marriage as hierarchical, gendered institution).
9. Katherine Franke captures these arguments succinctly in Katherine M. Franke, The Politics of Same-Sex Marriage Politics, 15 Colum. J. Gender & L. 236, 239-40 (2006).
10. S. 535 (1942). There are two other pre-Skinner Supreme Court cases that suggest a right to marry. See infra text accompanying notes 13-14 (discussing Maynard v. Hill, 125 U.S. 190 (1888))
11. and Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390 (1923).
12. Skinner, 316 U.S. at 541.
13. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 12 (1967)
14. (quoting Skinner, 316 U.S. at 541). As I discuss below, part of what is interesting about the Court using Skinner as the doctrinal basis for the due process holding in Loving is that Skinner was an equal protection case. See infra text accompanying notes 30-33.
15. Skinner, 316 U.S. at 537.
16. Id.
17. Id. at 541.
18. For accounts that focus on the influence of eugenics and totalitarianism, see, e.g., Victoria F. Nourse, In Reckless Hands: Skinner v. Oklahoma and the Near Triumph of American Eugenics 126-32 (2008) (addressing influence of Nazi policies on American thinking about eugenics);
19. Michael Willrich, The Two Percent Solution: Eugenic Jurisprudence and the Socialization of American Law, 1900-1930, 16 Law & Hist. Rev. 63, 98-99 (1998) (noting link between eugenics and racial extermination in Nazi Germany, racism in immigration restrictions, and sterilization discourse in United States);
20. Mary Ziegler, The Framing of a Right to Choose: Roe v. Wade and the Changing Debate on Abortion Law, 27 Law & Hist. Rev. 281, 286 (2009) (discussing fears that U.S. abortion movement paralleled eugenics in Nazi Germany);
21. Mary Ziegler, Reinventing Eugenics: Reproductive Choice and Law Reform After World War II, 14 Cardozo J.L. & Gender 319, 319-21 (2007) (describing shift in American eugenics rhetoric during World War II in effort to distinguish American laws from Nazi sterilization policies).
22. S. 558 (2003).
23. In this respect, this Essay extends the implications of my prior work in which I have attempted to complicate the relationships among Lawrence, marriage, and nonmarital intimacy. E.g., Ariela R. Dubler, From McLaughlin v. Florida to Lawrence v. Texas: Sexual Freedom and the Road to Marriage, 106 Colum. L. Rev. 1165, 1181 (2006) [hereinafter Dubler, From McLaughlin] (characterizing both McLaughlin and Lawrence as landmark cases for recognizing intimacy outside of marriage, rather than mere precursors to marriage rights);
24. Ariela R. Dubler, Immoral Purposes: Marriage and the Genus of Illicit Sex, 115 Yale L.J. 756 (2006) [hereinafter Dubler, Immoral Purposes] (situating Lawrence within history of federal attempts to define broad category of illicit sex).
25. S. 190, 205 (1888).
26. Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 399 (1923).
27. For a discussion of Skinner's transition from an equal protection case to a due process case, see infra Part II.A.
28. See generally Daniel J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (1985) (providing history of eugenics);
29. Paul A. Lombardo, Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell 7-57 (2008)
30. (examining history of eugenics in period before Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927));
31. Nourse, supra note 10, at 21-23 (chronicling defenses of eugenics in 1930s).
32. Skinner v. Oklahoma ex rel. Williamson, 316 U.S. 535, 536 (1942).
33. Id.
34. Id. at 537 (quoting Oklahoma's Habitual Criminal Sterilization Act).
35. Skinner v. State ex rel. Williamson, 115 P.2d 123, 125 (Okla. 1941).
36. Id.
37. Id. at 127-29.
38. Id. at 126.
39. Id. at 129 (Osborn, J., dissenting).
40. Id.
41. S. 200 (1927).
42. Id. at 205.
43. Id.
44. Id. at 207.
45. Skinner v. Oklahoma ex rel. Williamson, 316 U.S. 535, 537 (1942).
46. Id. at 539.
47. Id. at 540 (quoting Patsone v. Pennsylvania, 232 U.S. 138, 144 (1914)).
48. Id. at 541.
49. Id.
50. Id.
51. Id. at 544 (Stone, C.J., concurring).
52. Id. at 545 ("[D]ue process would seem to require it to take appropriate steps to safeguard the liberty of the individual by affording him, before he is condemned to an irreparable injury in his person, some opportunity to show that he is without such inheritable tendencies."); id. at 546 (Jackson, J., concurring).
53. See, e.g., Lombardo, supra note 16, at 226-33 (describing number of developments, including Nazi use of sterilization, that changed public perception of practice between Supreme Court's decisions in Buck and Skinner); Nourse, supra note 10, at 146-47 (noting by 1942 eugenics was strongly linked to racial prejudice and power of Nazi Aryanism).
54. See generally Michael J. Klarman, Rethinking the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Revolutions, 82 Va. L. Rev. 1, 54-56 (1996) (noting ideological abhorrence of Nazi practices affected civil liberties developments in mid-twentieth-century America);
55. Richard Primus, A Brooding Omnipresence: Totalitarianism in Postwar Constitutional Thought, 106 Yale L.J. 423, 437-50 (1996) (discussing line of Supreme Court cases articulating principles distinguishing American thought from totalitarianism).
56. See Matthew Connelly, Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population 8 (2008) ("The very word eugenics . . . immediately summons to mind the horror of the Holocaust.").
57. Skinner, 316 U.S. at 541.
58. Id.
59. Brief of Petitioner at 24-25, Skinner, 316 U.S. 535 (No. 782) [hereinafter Brief of Petitioner].
60. Id. at 25.
61. Id.
62. Id.
63. Id.
64. Id. at 31.
65. Id. at 31-32.
66. Id. at 32 (citing Frank C. Richmond, Sterilization in Wisconsin, 25 Am. Inst. Crim. L. & Criminology 586 (1934)).
67. Frank C. Richmond, Sterilization in Wisconsin, 25 Am. Inst. Crim. L. & Criminology 586, 593 (1934).
68. Id.
69. See Linda Gordon, The Moral Property of Women: A History of Birth Control Politics in America 115-18 (2002) (providing biography of Robinson as birth control advocate).
70. Richmond, supra note 50, at 593 (quoting William J. Robinson, Practical Prevenception or the Technique of Birth Control 63-64 (1929)).
71. Brief of Petitioner, supra note 42, at 32.
72. J.H. Landman, Human Sterilization: The History of the Sexual Sterilization Movement 268 (1932).
73. J.H. Landman, The Human Sterilization Movement, 24 Am. Inst. Crim. L. & Criminology 400, 405 (1934) [hereinafter Landman, Human Sterilization Movement];
74. see Brief of Petitioner, supra note 42, at 32 (citing Landman, Human Sterilization Movement, supra).
75. Landman, Human Sterilization Movement, supra note 56, at 405.
76. Id. at 407.
77. Id.
78. Id.
79. See generally, Gordon, supra note 52 at 171-278 (reviewing history of birth control movement from World War I to World War II).
80. See generally Laura Davidow Hirshbein, The Glandular Solution: Sex, Masculinity, and Aging in the 1920s, 9 J. Hist. Sexuality 277 (2000) (exploring theories presented in 1920s to explain surgical rejuvenation).
81. See Robert M. Oslund, Vasectomy and Rejuvenescence, 60 Sci. 419, 420 (1924) (summarizing results of various vasectomy experiments).
82. See generally Chandak Sengoopta, Otto Weininger: Sex, Science, and Self in Imperial Vienna 190 n.57 (2000) (describing Steinach's cross-gender transplantation technique through castration and transplantation of sex glands);
83. Harry Benjamin, Eugen Steinach, 1861-1944: A Life of Research, 61 Sci. Monthly 427, 434-35 (1945) (describing Steinach's vasoligation rejuvenation technique).
84. Sex Hormone Treatments Replacing Youth Operation, 37 Sci. News Letter 301, 301 (1940).
85. See Leon F. Whitney, Eugenical Sterilization, 27 Am. J. Nursing 741, 743 (1927) (contrasting vasectomies performed to "preventf ] the birth of useless children" with Steinach procedure to "rejuvenate elderly men").
86. See Oslund, supra note 63, at 421 (concluding vasectomies cannot be viewed as "method of causing rejuvenescence").
87. Benjamin, supra note 63, at 438.
88. E.g., Eugen Steinach, Sex and Life (1940);
89. see also Whitney, supra note 65, at 743 ("Steinach operation ... is used to rejuvenate elderly men.").
90. William J. Robinson, Practical Prevenception or the Technique of Birth Control 62 (1929).
91. E.S. Gosney & Paul Popenoe, Sterilization for Human Betterment: A Summary of Results of 6,000 Operations in California, 1909-29, at 25 (1929).
92. Id. at 21-22.
93. See Raymond W. Murray, Eugenic Legislation and the Lawyer, 8 Notre Dame L. Rev. 327, 334 n.18 (1932) (noting "close connection between sterilization and Birth Control legislation").
94. Editorial, 12 Birth Control Rev. 69, 73 (1928).
95. See Connelly, supra note 39, at 50-76 (discussing development of relationship between birth control movement and eugenics); Gordon, supra note 52, at 194-203 (describing links between birth control movement, and Sanger in particular, with eugenicists).
96. Editorial, supra note 73, at 73.
97. Id. at 74.
98. See Havelock Ellis, Sterilization: A Symposium, 12 Birth Control Rev. 69, 90 (1928) ("When adopted as a contraceptive by men who ... do not desire more children and wish to make intercourse absolutely safe, it is extremely satisfactory.").
99. See Recent Decisions, Physicians and Surgeons-Voluntary Sterilization-Public Policy, 34 Mich. L. Rev. 137, 137-38 (1936) (examining public policy consequences of increase in voluntary sterilizations).
100. Gosney & Popenoe, supra note 70, at 98.
101. The Court did cite to some of the social science literature cited by Skinner's attorneys, albeit in the section of the opinion dismissing certain arguments as outside the reach of its opinion. See Skinner v. Oklahoma ex rel. Williamson, 316 U.S. 535, 538 nn.1-2 (citing to Popenoe, Landman, and other literature on sterilization and eugenics).
102. Id. at 541.
103. Id.
104. Gosney & Popenoe, supra note 70, at 25-26.
105. Id. at 27.
106. Indeed, this was the state interest offered by Connecticut in defending its ban on contraception when challenged in Griswold v. Connecticut. The State argued "that preventing the use of birth-control devices by married persons helps prevent the indulgence by some in such extra-marital relations." Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 498 (Goldberg, J., concurring);
107. see id. at 505 (White, J., concurring) ("[T]he statute is said to serve the State's policy against all forms of promiscuous or illicit sexual relationships, be they premarital or extramarital, concededly a permissible and legitimate legislative goal."). On Griswold, see infra text accompanying notes 104-107.
108. Richmond, supra note 50, at 593.
109. Gosney & Popenoe, supra note 70, at xvi.
110. Skinner v. Oklahoma ex rel. Williamson, 316 U.S. 535, 541 (1942).
111. Letter from A.L. McCulloch to Justice William O. Douglas (June 2, 1942) (William O. Douglas Papers, Library of Congress, Box 76).
112. Id.
113. Id.
114. Id.
115. Id.
116. Id.
117. The tone of her letter somewhat undermines her critique of the case. At the end of her note, for instance, she writes "[y]our ruling sounds like Hitler. You must be a Nazi-a german." Id.
118. Skinner v. Oklahoma ex rel. Williamson, 316 U.S. 535, 538 (1942).
119. E.g., Walters v. City of St. Louis, 347 U.S. 231, 237 (1954);
120. MacDougall v. Green, 335 U.S. 281, 289 (1948)
121. overruled by Moore v. Ogilvie, 394 U.S. 814 (1969);
122. Snowden v. Hughes, 321 U.S. 1, 18 (1944).
123. S. 497 (1961).
124. Id. at 508.
125. Id. at 539 (Harlan, J., dissenting).
126. Id. at 543.
127. Id. at 545 (quoting Skinner v. Oklahoma ex rel. Williamson, 316 U.S. 535, 541 (1942)).
128. Id. at 548, 552.
129. S. 479 (1965).
130. Id. at 485.
131. Id. at 486.
132. See id. at 498 (Goldberg, J., concurring) (dismissing Connecticut's stated interest in regulating contraception as a way to discourage extra-marital relations given availability of contraception for disease prevention).
133. S. 1 (1967).
134. Id. at 12.
135. Id. After citing to Skinner, the Court added, "[s]ee also Maynard v. Hill." Id.
136. See Dubler, Immoral Purposes, supra note 12, at 775-76 (discussing Supreme Court jurisprudence reflecting concept of "marriage exclusivity").
137. S. 558 (2003).
138. Id. at 567.
139. Indeed, Lawrence seems to suggest that the relationship before the Court is licit not in spite of its nonmarital status, but because of its nonmarital status. See Dubler, Immoral Purposes, supra note 12, at 809-10 (noting discussion in Lawrence contrasting relationship at issue with various forms of illicit sexual relations). To be sure, other cases contributed to shifts in the constitutional status of nonmarital intimacy before Lawrence- most notably, Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972), which extended Griswold's protections to unmarried couples. As I have argued elsewhere, however, Eisenstadt's use of the Equal Protection Clause, as opposed to the Due Process Clause, to address the rights of unmarried people limited the ways in which-symbolically and doctrinally-it could shift the basic status of nonmarriage in our constitutional order. Dubler, From McLaughlin, supra note 12, at 1182-84.
140. See, e.g., Morrison v. Sadler, 821 N.E.2d 15, 24 (Ind. Ct. App. 2005) ("The State . . . may legitimately create the institution of opposite-sex marriage, and all the benefits accruing to it, in order to encourage male-female couples to procreate within the legitimacy and stability of a state-sanctioned relationship . . . .");
141. Hernandez v. Robles, 855 N.E.2d 1, 7 (N.Y. 2006) (arguing marriage contributes to stability and permanence in relationships, thereby benefiting children).
142. See Dubler, From McLaughlin, supra note 12, at 1186-87 (interpreting Lawrence as beginning of extension of constitutional protection to range of sexual practices outside marriage).
143. For one argument about why it has been read this way, see id. at 1181-85. For a critique of Lawrence's approach in this respect, see Katherine M. Franke, The Domesticated Liberty of Lawrence v. Texas, 104 Colum. L. Rev. 1399, 1414-16 (2004) (arguing liberty principle upon which Lawrence rests is limited to privacy of bedroom and, ultimately, domesticated, contrary to robust liberal conception of freedom).
144. Lawrence, 539 U.S. at 604 (Scalia, J., dissenting).
145. Goodridge v. Dep't of Pub. Health, 798 N.E.2d 941, 948 (Mass. 2003)
146. (quoting Lawrence, 539 U.S. at 571).
147. Skinner v. Oklahoma ex rel. Williamson, 316 U.S. 535, 541 (1942).
148. Complaint for Declaratory, Injunctive, or Other Relief at 1, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, No. CV09-2292VRW (N.D. Cal. May 22, 2009) (quoting Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 12 (1967))
149. (quoting Skinner, 316 U.S. at 541).
150. See, e.g., What Brown v. Board of Education Should Have Said (Jack M. Balkin ed., 2001) (presenting alternative opinions that could have been issued in Brown, and analyzing how these alternatives may have generated different readings of the Constitution);
151. What Roe v. Wade Should Have Said (Jack M. Balkin ed., 2005) (offering alternative opinions that could have been issued in Roe, and surmising how these alternative opinions may have changed history of abortion litigation).