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The Vermont Supreme Court's 1999 ruling in Baker v. State was a watershed decision, holding that same-sex couples in Vermont were entitled to the same benefits and protections as opposite-sex married couples. While Baker is extremely important as a matter of substantive law, and as a contribution to the national discussion of the issues surrounding marriage of same sex-couples, it also provides an excellent lens through which to consider principles of state constitutional law and the New Judicial Federalism. This Article demonstrates how Baker is illustrative of major themes in state constitutional law, including the use of state constitutional history and textual analysis, distinctions between federal equal protection approaches and independent state constitutional equality doctrines, and plaintiffs' choice of state forum and state constitutional claims. The Article also shows how Baker highlights the application of a new, developing state constitutional rights jurisprudence.

The crucial questions surrounding the first state constitutions concerned suffrage, officeholding requirements, legislative structure, and the relationship of legislative to executive power. These questions were debated vigorously, and a vision of the proper structure of government based on unicameralism, a weak executive, and no checks and balances was advocated in nearly all the states by radical democrats. Their most conspicuous victory was in Pennsylvania in 1776, where a unicameral legislature was established and powers were separated but no checks were provided for legislative encroachments upon the other branches' responsibilities. Constitutional framers in other states rejected Pennsylvania's example, delayed their constitutional drafting processes, and succeeded in adopting a more balanced government with checks, such as upper houses and gubernatorial vetoes. Still, legislative supremacy prevailed under all the new state constitutions, making possible the legislative policies of the founding decade on debtor-creditor relations, paper money, and taxation that were of such great concern to the framers of the United States Constitution.