NEW YORK — The bipartisan legal team leading the fight for same-sex marriage has a book deal.

Democrat David Boies and Republican Theodore B. Olson have signed with Viking for “A Just Cause: Law, Love, and the Case for Marriage Equality.” Viking told The Associated Press that the book is scheduled for mid-2014.

“Our collective journey tells of a crucial and historical civil rights movement that brings us closer to the ideals on which our country was founded,” Boies, 71, said in a statement issued by Viking.

Olson, 72, said he and Boies between them have “nearly 100 years in the law.”

“We have never handled a more important, dramatic and emotionally compelling challenge,” he said in a statement.

Boies and Olson have formed an unlikely partnership to represent the challengers to Proposition 8, approved by California voters in 2008. The ballot initiative overturned a state Supreme Court decision allowing gay marriage. Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in the California case on March 26.

Boies and Olson were on opposite sides for one of the court’s most historic cases, when Boies represented Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore and Olson represented Republican George W. Bush in a dispute over the Florida vote count in 2000. The court ruled 5-4 in Bush’s favor.

Viking, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA), promised the Boies-Olson book will be a “dramatic, intimate, and informed account of this historic issue.”

Tags: Books and Authors, California, David Boies, Marriage, Marriage Equality, Proposition 8, Theodore Olson, U.S. Supreme Court

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