My article, Constitutional Safety Valve: The Privileges or Immunities Clause and Status Regimes in a Federalist System (previously mentioned here and commented on here), is finally out in the current issue of the Alabama Law Review. (Pre-publication version here.) This article represents the end point of a fairly long process that began with a seminar paper in law school. In 1996, I was impressed with the tenor of the debate in Congress over the Defense of Marriage Act; there were several statements to the effect that failing to wall off the status of legally married same-sex couples would lead to the downfall of society. It reminded me strongly of the rhetoric in Dred Scott that recognition of Scott’s citizenship would have calamitous effects. As I dug into it, I found even stronger parallels in antebellum debates in Congress over travelling black Northern citizens in Southern states, and the extension of slavery to the territories. Congress seemed, then as now, appeared alarmed at the prospect of a state-recognized social status to destabilize the societies of states that didn’t recognize that status, merely by virtue of individuals with that status travelling.

The antebellum debates were ultimately resolved by the Fourteenth Amendment, and in particular the Privileges or Immunities Clause. So I wrote a paper about how the Privileges or Immunities Clause had a forgotten purpose that would mediate an entrenched conflict between states over an inconsistently codified sociolegal status. Of course, that argument will have the most contemporary relevance if such a conflict in fact develops. But it’s not at all clear that we are heading that way. There’s another model of sociolegal change when it comes to anxiety over travellers bearing destabilizing statuses: divorce.