Lecture: The Supreme Court and the Wedding Cake that Wasn't

Who would have thought that a wedding cake would become so controversial? Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, decided on June 4, 2018, appeared to raise one of the most consequential questions of constitutional law: how should the Supreme Court choose between competing core values? Yet, as we now know, the Court declined to resolve the clash between religious freedom and the antidiscrimination principle. This lecture will explore some of the issues raised by the wedding cake case and will suggest some ideas about why the Court chose not to decide them. Judy Brown is Professor of Law Emerita at Northeastern Law School, where she was a member of the faculty for thirty years. During that time, she taught and wrote extensively about the Constitution. Since her retirement she has offered several courses on the constitution in the Osher programs at Dartmouth and at the University of Arizona.