Unhinging Same-Sex Marriage from the Constitutional Canon: The Search for a Principled Doctrinal Framework

When eighty-four-year-old Edie Windsor challenged the Defense of Marriage Act's constitutionality, she may not have predicted the case's historic importance. The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), enacted in 1996, amended the federal Dictionary Act to define "marriage" and "spouse" to exclude same-sex marriages in over 1,000 statutes and regulations.