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The article presents a reprint of the article "California Climate Change and the Constitution." by Erwin Chemerinsky and colleagues, which appeared in the July/August 2008 issue of "The Environmental Forum." The paper offers information on the extent to which potential federal constitutional pitfalls surround U.S. state's action, with regards to California's campaign against global warming.

The article discusses the steps taken by several states in U.S. to address the problem of global warming. Climatic change not only affects the developed countries but the underdeveloped countries as well that requires immediate solutions. While the U.S. has not passed meaningful legislative bills to handle the problem, several states in the country are taking steps to minimize or eradicate greenhouse effects. California, under the leadership of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, pioneered in passing significant laws to address the problem including the California Global Warming Solutions Act (AB32). It is stated that this requires the California Air Resources Board to set limits to reduce the state's emissions to 1990 level by the year 2020.

This article asks what the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion in United States v. Windsor stands for. It first shows that the opinion leans in the direction of marriage equality but ultimately resists any dispositive “equality” or “federalism” interpretation. The article next examines why the opinion seems intended to preserve for itself a Delphic obscurity. The article reads Windsor as an exemplar of what judicial opinions may look like in transition periods, when a Bickelian Court seeks to invite, not end, a national conversation, and to nudge it in a certain direction. In such times, federalism reasoning and rhetoric—like declining to announce the level of scrutiny and appearing to misapply the justiciability doctrines—may be used as a way station toward a particular later resolution.