About a half century into the marriage, Justice Ginsburg held a reunion of her law clerks at the Supreme Court.
"In every good marriage," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said at the baccalaureate address, "it helps to be a little hard of hearing".
In Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 Supreme Court decision that overturned state bans on same-sex marriage, Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, reached back almost to the earliest written records of human societies.
The Times's Peter Baker reports that five of the justices expressed skepticism of the ban on benefits to gay couples: The question is whether or not the federal government under a federalism system has the authority to regulate marriage," Justice Kennedy said during oral arguments.
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She argued for same-sex marriage the whole campaign -- the first gubernatorial candidate to do so in the state that first gave us marriage justice.
"The principal purpose and the necessary effect of this law are to demean those persons who are in a lawful same-sex marriage," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the 5-4 decision.
This is the idea that states get to decide their own marriage laws: "The recognition of civil marriages", ruled Justice Kennedy, "is central to state domestic relations law applicable to its residents and citizens".
The challenges are big and I don't intend to decrease their importance in health, nutrition, education, sanitation, birth registration, child marriages, juvenile justice and many others areas.
