Next week the US Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in two cases dealing with same sex marriage, California’s Proposition 8 case Hollingsworth v. Perry on Tuesday and the DOMA case Windsor v. United States on Wednesday.

Nina Totenberg, one of the best reporters around whose coverage of legal matters on NPR is always worth listening to, has a wonderful profile of Edith Windsor and the circumstances that led to this case.

It is a touching story and it is always good to be reminded that behind these landmark cases that argue legal abstractions are real people whose lives are powerfully affected by those abstractions in very tangible ways.