In baseball, towering home runs are often called “no doubters.” Today’s opinion in Obergefell delivered that kind of victory to those advocating constitutional marriage equality.  In no uncertain terms, with pointed rhetoric about dignity, and with no apology for the constitution’s tradition of evolving understandings, the Court said squarely and unmistakably that the fundamental right to marry long recognized as part of the due process clause also protects same-sex couples. There were narrower ways the opinion could have been written, but the majority did not choose that path. Or perhaps I should say: Justice Kennedy did not choose that path.

It is both predictable and remarkable that Justice Kennedy wrote the opinion. Utterly predictable because he also wrote the three major gay rights decisions preceding this one—Romer in 1996  (striking down a ban on protecting LGB people from discrimination), Lawrence in 2003 (striking down the Texas ruling on sex between same-sex partners), and Windsor in 2013 (striking down DOMA). Remarkable, though, because when has one justice on the Court so thoroughly owned a major constitutional area like this one? It is hard to think of a good analogy.

Justice Kennedy’s previous three opinions have been enigmatic in important ways because they chose the path of silence or obscurity on key issues. Romer said nothing about how it could be squared with Bowers, the decision upholding a criminal ban on sodomy that was still good law at the time. Lawrence did not tell us whether the right found there was fundamental, nor what standard of review it was applying. Windsor cryptically said its rationale applied only to DOMA, even as most of the arguments embraced there portended the end of state bans on same-sex marriage.

In Obergefell, though, we see Justice Kennedy unbound. He unmistakably embraces the right of same-sex couples as fundamental.  He takes on the precedent most in tension with that conclusion, Washington v. Glucksberg, which suggests that fundamental rights under the Due Process Clause must be firmly grounded in history. He limits the scope of Glucksberg, which concerned physician-assisted suicide, by noting that the approach is simply irreconcilable with important cases in the area. He is, in other words, far more willing than he has been to firmly place the holding in the Court’s conventional doctrinal structure and, in doing so, to speak decisively and conclusively.

There remain some points of continuity with the past decisions. As in past cases, he brings the equal protection clause into the analysis and asserts its synergistic relation to liberty. He also places his heaviest emphasis on the intangible, rather than the tangible benefits of marriage. That is, he spends far more time on the ideas of respect and dignity for same sex couples and their children than he he does on financial or other legal benefits.

Notably, each of the four dissenters wrote separately. This choice speaks, I think, to the strongly held views and to the recognition that this case will be a landmark pored over by generations of lawyers and law students. Most interesting to me was the Chief Justice’s dissent. Perhaps with history in mind, he began by explicitly noting the “undeniable appeal” of marriage equality and closed by inviting supporters of such equality to “by all means celebrate today’s decision.”   His point was that the celebration should not be about the Constitution, which, he says, “has nothing to do with it.”  In between these friendly gestures, though, he brought out the Big Guns in constitutional law and accused the majority of repeating the errors of two cases firmly ensconced in what some call the “anti-canon”:  Dred Scott (relying on the due process clause to protect slavery) and Lochner (relying on the due process clause to protect economic rights). The other dissenters followed this theme. The historic nature of the ruling and the extended debate among the justices about the limits of the judicial role ensure that Obergefell will be at the heart of continuing debates about judicial activism. Given, though, that the Chief Justice was only yesterday roundly condemned as activist by those who opposed his ruling in the latest Obamacare case, we ought to remember too that activism is often in the eyes of the beholder.