This spring the US Supreme Court will make its decision in two well-known cases:

Hollingsworth v. Perry and United States v. Windsor. In both the Court must

resolve the nationwide dispute over the constitutionality of federal and state

laws which defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman. The Ninth

and the Second Circuits found (in Perry and Windsor respectively) that such laws

violate both Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Constitution. The

aim of this paper is to analyze the former Supreme Court’s decisions in this field in

order to propose the most probable rationale of the expected judgements. Taking

into account the Supreme Court’s milestone rulings in Griswold v. Connecticut

from 1965, Loving v. Virginia from 1967, Romer v. Evans from 1996 and Lawrence

and Garner v. Texas from 2003, it seems fairly possible that the Court will uphold

the constitutionality of same-sex marriage. Most likely, it will be done on the

ground of the Second Circuit decision in Windsor which is the best opportunity

to gather the sufficient five-member majority round this solution.