In her AP story, Lisa Leff focuses on the trial record and describes it as a "knockout"; but even legal eagles who favor gay marriage, aren't so sure. Check out Eugene Volokh's comments vindicating Cooper's decision that with a judge that biased and a trial that really wasn't necessary, scrambling for more witnesses would have been a mistake:
"Despite the lopsided trial record, most legal experts agree the defense team's reasoning is not far-fetched. They say the three-judge panel could discount the exhaustive trial evidence that Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker laid out in his August decision. In its place, the panel could substitute studies that were barely discussed in Walker's court or, more likely, its own interpretation of relevant case law.
'I can't say whether the case was litigated well or badly,' said Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law school professor whose popular legal-affairs blog was inundated with comments from observers critical of the defense's trial performance. 'If the question is whether they should have introduced more witnesses at trial, I'm skeptical it would have done any good. It certainly wasn't necessary, and I'm not sure it would have been at all helpful.'"
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