Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

It took me a while, but I managed to make a PowerPoint flowchart of the Massachusetts homosexual-marriage case, Goodridge v. Department of Public Health (2003). As you can see, the seven justices of the Supreme Judicial Court ended up in three different places in the flowchart. One justice (Greaney) thought the strict-scrutiny standard applied and was not met. The other six thought the rational-basis standard applied. Of those in the latter camp, three (Spina, Sosman, and Cordy) thought the standard met and three (Marshall, Ireland, and Cowin) thought it unmet. I'm lecturing on the case in my Philosophy of Law course. I wish my law-school professors had made flowcharts, but they didn't seem interested in helping their students learn. Some of them enjoyed being cryptic.