New York Law School professor Arthur Leonard, a well-known expert in gay rights law, has written a GREAT post about the history of same-sex marriage litigation strategy. According to Leonard, when gay rights litigators put together the list of states in which they had the greatest likelihood of winning gay marriage cases, the three states at the top of the list were Vermont, Massachusetts and New Jersey – the three states where we’ve (essentially) won so far. Cases filed in other states after the 2004 San Francisco marriage fervor – such as “copycat litigation” in Washington and New York – have not succeeded.

Leonard’s point: “[T]he wins have come in cases resulting from careful planning and strategy, not part of a rush to litigate in response to popular community pressure… And perhaps [] there is some lesson in that for all of us in thinking about future test case litigation for the LGBT community.”

The post is a great read.