I’m excited by the policy effect, but I’m knee-deep in editing and haven’t read the opinions yet, and anyway I’m not a legal scholar so you shouldn’t trust my opinion of law-logic. The decision to sidestep the Prop 8 question by deciding that those bringing the appeal had no grounds to appeal seems like a nice example of the kind of quick and elegant dodge the Supreme Court has been performing in the face of political questions since Marbury v. Madison, which yes established judicial review as a concept in American law, but also very carefully backed away from exercising that power against an angry and popular President Jefferson in one of the most influential games of “my big brother kills people for the CIA and you better be glad he isn’t here right now” in history.
Also pretty wild to hear that the court overturned DOMA on equal protection grounds, which IIRC aren’t used often, and if this signals new comfort with that clause for the court, then cool, maybe we can stop leaning on the ever-overburdened interstate commerce clause. And of course, there’s the VRA, which opinion I haven’t yet read, but the effect of which ruling makes this an odd week insofar as extensions and contractions of privilege and discrimination are concerned. Lots to process here, but…
But well. I read too many books, and I write too many words, and sometimes I get too caught up in arguments to feel the moment.
Friends of mine across the country are secure in their marriages, and in their right to marry, because of what happened today. As are millions of people I’ve never met.
This is good.
And I’m listening to Vienna Teng: