When the federal challenge to Proposition 8 was announced, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher partner Theodore Olson and Boies, Schiller & Flexner’s David Boies became media darlings, an irresistible odd-couple story. That attention continued on the first day of trial last week: Olson and Boies conducted dramatic direct examinations of their plaintiffs in a courtroom packed with reporters. The next day, they entertained a cooing Rachel Maddow.

But as the evidence moved into dryer territory, Olson, Boies and their chief adversary, Cooper & Kirk’s Charles Cooper, receded into the background as a different set of lawyers platooned into action. The performance of these other attorneys could play just as large a role in the outcome of the case, because evidence from expert academics — while not delivered with tears — will be crucial in Northern District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker’s factual and legal analysis.

Cooper gave opening statements for the Yes on 8 defendants, but he has uttered few words in San Francisco since. Instead, the bespectacled managing partner of Cooper & Kirk, David Thompson, carried the load on three important cross-examinations. A member of the firm since its founding, Thompson has been part of Cooper’s crew in its many conservative legal battles around the country.

Thompson’s disdain for Harvard professor Nancy Cott — and hers for him — was obvious in the courtroom. Cott testified about the history of marriage in the United States and she and Thompson tussled over whether she personally favored gay marriage. (She said she’d formed her opinions on the basis of her research). At one point, Thompson asked Cott if she knew what covenant marriage was.

Read the rest of Dan Levine’s The Recorder article here.