Dale Carpenter

Dale Carpenter is an American legal commentator and Julius E. Davis Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School. As a professor, Carpenter specializes in constitutional law, the First Amendment, sexual orientation and the law, and commercial law.

Carpenter is a frequent speaker on issues surrounding same-sex marriage. Outside of traditional legal academia, he also writes a regular column, "OutRight", for several gay publications across the United States. He is a regular contributer to the Independent Gay Forum as well as the weblog "The Volokh Conspiracy" and is regularly cited in the American media.

[edit] Biography

Carpenter received his B.A. in history, magna cum laude, from Yale University in 1989. He earned his Juris Doctor, with honors, from the University of Chicago Law School in 1992, where he served as editor-in-chief of the law review.

After law school, Carpenter was a law clerk to the Hon. Edith H. Jones of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He next began work as an attorney at Vinson & Elkins in Houston, Texas and Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Falk & Rabkin in San Francisco, California and is a member of the state bars of Texas and California. Carpenter was the president of the Log Cabin Republicans of Texas[1] in 1996-97.

Carpenter is a libertarian-leaning conservative. He is noted for his scholarship on same-sex rights in the United States. He co-authored an Amicus brief for Lawrence v. Texas (2003) on behalf of the Republican Unity Coalition, a gay-straight Republican organization.

Bad Arguments For and Against Gay Marriage, 7 Florida Coastal L. Rev. 181 (2005)
Four Arguments Against the Federal Marriage Amendment That Even an Opponent of Gay Marriage Should Accept, 2 St. Thomas L. Rev. 71 (2004)
The Unknown Past of Lawrence v. Texas, 102 Mich. L. Rev. 1464 (2004)
Is Lawrence Libertarian, 88 Minn. L. Rev. 1140 (2004)
The Antipaternalism Principle in the First Amendment, 37 Creighton L. Rev. 579 (2004)
Judicial Supremacy and Its Discontents, 20 Const. Comm. 405 (2003)
Freedom of Expressive Association and Antidiscrimination Law After Dale: A Tripartite Approach, 85 Minn. L. Rev. 1515 (2001)
A Conservative Defense of Romer v. Evans, 76 Ind. L. J. 403 (2001)
Same-Sex Sexual Harassment Under Title VII, 37 S. Tex. L. Rev. 699 (1996)