New England has been at the center of the debate over granting marriage rights and responsibilities to same-sex couples.
Vermont became the first state in the nation to grant those rights in 2000 when it adopted civil unions. Four years later, Massachusetts became the first state to give gay and lesbian couples full marriage rights.
And last year, Connecticut’s Supreme Court determined that civil unions didn’t go far enough and ordered marriage, instead.
As part of annual Law Day observances, on April 30, 2009, Dartmouth College invited a lawyer and three Supreme Court justices who have participated in these decisions to talk about rulings from their respective courts.
The panelists are: Beth Robinson, a Middlebury lawyer who argued the Vermont case; retired Vermont Supreme Court Justice James Morse; Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Justice Robert Cordy; and Connecticut Supreme Court Justice Joette Katz.