1992—By a vote of 4 to 3, the Kentucky supreme court rules (in Commonwealth v. Wasson) that Kentucky’s statutory prohibition of homosexual sodomy, dating from 1860, violates a right of privacy and a guarantee of equal treatment implicit in Kentucky’s 1891 constitution. In the words of one of the dissenting justices:
“The issue here is not whether private homosexual conduct should be allowed or prohibited. The only question properly before this Court is whether the Constitution of Kentucky denies the legislative branch a right to prohibit such conduct. Nothing in the majority opinion demonstrates such a limitation on legislative prerogative.…
“Perhaps the greatest mischief to be found in the majority opinion is in its discovery of a constitutional right which lacks any textual support.… When judges free themselves of constitutional text, their values and notions of morality are given free rein and they, not the Constitution, become the supreme law.”
1993—President Clinton nominates This Day Hall-of-Famer Rosemary Barkett, chief justice of the Florida supreme court, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.