But it is their obligation to declare if a law is constitutional or not... and they did.
"If ALL legislative powers have been vested in Congress, how many legislative powers does that leave for the Supreme Court? None, zip, nada, zilch. The Supreme Court has not one ounce of legitimate authority to write law, to overturn law, or to amend law. None. "
Judicial Review is not in the Constitution.
"Approval ratings go up and down for various reasons... An example is the high post 911 support for GWB even though he could be said to be responsible for the event." --- Box A Rox '9/11 Truther'
Melania is a bimbo... she is there to look at, not to listen to. --- Box A Rox and his 'War on Women'
"If ALL legislative powers have been vested in Congress, how many legislative powers does that leave for the Supreme Court? None, zip, nada, zilch. The Supreme Court has not one ounce of legitimate authority to write law, to overturn law, or to amend law. None. "
Judicial Review is not in the Constitution.
the court is the 'suits around the table' who decide the conscience of the people...aka holy spirit....
A frozen lake with a micro house is waiting for up in northern Alaska/Canada for you to get away from all this.
"Approval ratings go up and down for various reasons... An example is the high post 911 support for GWB even though he could be said to be responsible for the event." --- Box A Rox '9/11 Truther'
Melania is a bimbo... she is there to look at, not to listen to. --- Box A Rox and his 'War on Women'
A frozen lake with a micro house is waiting for up in northern Alaska/Canada for you to get away from all this.
I'm just trying to expose the bizarre thinking Box and others have about the government and it's intrusiveness that is not much different from religion....
it's an exercise in conversation and thinking outside the indoctrination box....no one has to participate, but if we are unwilling to 'chew' all parts of the issue, even those not so readily available to our senses then why bother?
I've seen Alaska/Canada on the internet and I've seen government officials talk on the TV, which is more real?
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
"If ALL legislative powers have been vested in Congress, how many legislative powers does that leave for the Supreme Court? None, zip, nada, zilch. The Supreme Court has not one ounce of legitimate authority to write law, to overturn law, or to amend law. None. " Judicial Review is not in the Constitution.
The Judicial branch (ultimately the Supreme Court) determines if a law is 'constitutional'. Any court may declare a law relevant to a case before it unconstitutional, but the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of constitutional interpretation.
This is NOT Bucky's "legislative powers", the supreme court didn't "WRITE LAW" or "OVERTURN LAW", or "AMEND LAW"... THEY DID RULE THAT THE LAW TO BAN SAME SEX MARRIAGE WAS UNCONSTITUTIONAL. Which IS their function as empowered by the US Constitution.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
Strange how so many Conservatives have a problem with the US Constitution when it disagrees with their agenda. They wave the US Constitution in your face as if it were the word of god, yet totally ignore the Constitution when they find it inconvenient.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
Strange how so many Conservatives have a problem with the US Constitution when it disagrees with their agenda. They wave the US Constitution in your face as if it were the word of god, yet totally ignore the Constitution when they find it inconvenient.
as do liberals when they fear freedom and their neighbors 'differences'.....
liberals and conservatives want 'control' over their neighbors....using the government system of course
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
this has NOTHING to do with political parties....that would just create yet ANOTHER division in this country.
but everything to do with who and what branch of government creates & legislates laws.
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
To William Charles Jarvis. Monticello, September 28, 1820.
I thank you, Sir, for the copy of your Republican which you have been so kind as to send me, and I should have acknowledged it sooner but that I am just returned home after a long absence. I have not vet had time to read it seriously, but in looking over it cursorily I see much in it to approve, and shall be glad if it shall lead our youth to the practice of thinking on such subjects and for themselves. That it will have this tendency may be expected, and for that reason I feel an urgency to note what I deem an error in it, the more requiring notice as your opinion is strengthened by that of many others. You seem, in pages 84 and 148, to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.Their maxim is “boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem,” and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves. If the legislature fails to pass laws for a census, for paying the judges and other officers of government, for establishing a militia, for naturalization as prescribed by the Constitution, or if they fail to meet in congress, the judges cannot issue their mandamus to them ; if the President fails to supply the place of a judge, to appoint other civil or military officers, to issue requisite commissions, the judges cannot force him. They can issue their mandamus or distringas to no executive or legislative officer to enforce the fulfilment of their official duties, any more than the President or legislature may issue orders to the judges or their officers. Betrayed by English example, and unaware, as it should seem, of the control of our Constitution in this particular, they have at times overstepped their limit by undertaking to command executive officers in the discharge of their executive duties ; but the Constitution, in keeping three departments distinct and independent, restrains the authority of the judges to judiciary organs, as it does the executive and legislative to executive and legislative organs. The judges certainly have more frequent occasion to act on constitutional questions, because the laws of meum and tuum and of criminal action, forming the great mass of the system of law, constitute their particular department. When the legislative or executive functionaries act unconstitutionally, they are responsible to the people in their elective capacity. The exemption of the judges from that is quite dangerous enough. I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves ; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power. Pardon me, Sir, for this difference of opinion. My personal interest in such questions is entirely extinct, but not my wishes for the longest possible continuance of our government on its pure principles ; if the three powers maintain their mutual independence on each other it may last long, but not so if either can assume the authorities of the other. I ask your candid re-consideration of this subject, and am sufficiently sure you will form a candid conclusion. Accept the assurance of my great respect.
They are not the supreme law of the land.
"Approval ratings go up and down for various reasons... An example is the high post 911 support for GWB even though he could be said to be responsible for the event." --- Box A Rox '9/11 Truther'
Melania is a bimbo... she is there to look at, not to listen to. --- Box A Rox and his 'War on Women'
EXACTLY....the court can make it's 'decision' but there are 3 branches involved in making it happen.
The law is nullified and may not be enforced against anyone, but it is not "repealed" in the sense that a legislature repeals laws it has made earlier. The unconstitutional law will remain on the books until the appropriate legislature makes an actual repeal to clear the books of the now useless law.
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
The Supreme Court’s first rulings on same-sex marriage produced historic gains for gay rights Wednesday: full federal recognition of legally married gay couples and an opening for such unions to resume in the nation’s most-populous state.
The divided court stopped short of a more sweeping ruling that the fundamental right to marry must be extended to gay couples no matter where they live.
But in striking down a key part of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the court declared that gay couples married in states where it is legal must receive the same federal health, tax, Social Security and other benefits that heterosexual couples receive.
In turning away a case involving California’s prohibition of same-sex marriage, known as Proposition 8, the justices left in place a lower court’s decision that the ban is unconstitutional. Gov. Jerry Brown (D) said he would order same-sex marriages to resume as quickly as possible.
The ruling means that same-sex marriage is now sanctioned in 13 states and the District of Columbia — a list representing more than a third of the population of the United States.
Victories for same-sex marriage View Photos The Supreme Court struck down a key part of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman for the purpose of federal law. The court declined to rule on California’s Proposition 8, which defined marriage as between one man and one woman, clearing the way for the unions in that state. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy joined the court’s four liberals in declaring unconstitutional DOMA’s prohibition on federal recognition of legally married couples — enacted when such unions were only theoretical.
“DOMA writes inequality into the entire United States Code,” wrote Kennedy, who was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
Withholding federal recognition of same-sex married couples places them “in an unstable position of being in a second-tier marriage,” Kennedy wrote. “The differentiation demeans the couple, whose moral and sexual choices the Constitution protects . . . and whose relationship the State has sought to dignify.”
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented.
The decisions on the final day of the term set off a loud celebration in front of the court’s marble plaza and elsewhere in the country.
Edith Windsor, a New Yorker who brought the suit against DOMA after she had to pay an estate tax following the death of her wife, Thea Spyer, said she burst into tears upon hearing the court’s decision.
“If I had to survive Thea, what a glorious way to do it, and she would be so pleased,” Windsor said at a news conference.
President Obama, whose administration said it would not defend Section 3 of DOMA, because it believed the provision was unconstitutional, called Windsor and the challengers of Prop. 8 to congratulate them.
In a statement written on Air Force One en route to Africa, Obama said,“This ruling is a victory for couples who have long fought for equal treatment under the law; for children whose parents’ marriages will now be recognized, rightly, as legitimate; for families that, at long last, will get the respect and protection they deserve; and for friends and supporters who have wanted nothing more than to see their loved ones treated fairly and have worked hard to persuade their nation to change for the better.”
House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said the House Republican leadership defended DOMA “because the constitutionality of a law should be judged by the court, not by the president unilaterally.”
He said he was “obviously disappointed” by the decision, adding, “It is my hope that states will define marriage as the union between one man and one woman.”
Kennedy, who will turn 77 this summer, has authored the court’s foremost defenses of gay rights. Exactly 10 years ago Wednesday, he announced the court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down sodomy laws that targeted homosexuals.
His decision Wednesday striking down a central part of DOMA cited the principles of state autonomy, equal protection and liberty.
“The state’s power in defining the marital relation is of central relevance in this case,” not just because of federalism, Kennedy said, but because giving homosexuals the right to marry “conferred upon them a dignity and status of immense import.”
He said the history of the act showed that it was written to convey moral disapproval of homosexuality and “a stigma upon all who enter into same-sex marriages made lawful by the unquestioned authority of the states.”
In the end, Kennedy said, “DOMA is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the liberty of the person protected by the Fifth Amendment.”
Kennedy wrote that the opinion was applicable only in those states where same-sex marriage is legal.
In a withering dissent, Scalia said it took “real cheek” for the majority opinion to suggest such a limitation — because the rest of the ruling, he said, laid out a road map for how to challenge state bans on gay marriage.
“What has preceded that assurance is a lecture on how superior the majority’s moral judgment in favor of same-sex marriage is to the Congress’s hateful moral judgment against it,” Scalia wrote. “I promise you this: The only thing that will ‘confine’ the court’s holding is its sense of what it can get away with.”
He said that decisions about same-sex marriage should be decided in the political arena but that the majority took that away “to buy its stolen moment in the spotlight.”
Scalia also said the court’s ruling will raise practical problems: “Imagine a pair of women who marry in Albany and then move to Alabama, which does not ‘recognize as valid any marriage of parties of the same sex.’ . . . When the couple files their next federal tax return, may it be a joint one?”
Such a case does cause a problem for the Obama administration, which is now grappling with difficult questions about how to deliver federal benefits for same-sex couples living in states that do not have legal gay marriage.
Gay activists are pressuring Obama to use his executive authority to ensure that the full range of benefits, such as the right to file federal income taxes jointly or be exempt from the marriage estate tax, be granted to married same-sex couples no matter where they live.
DOMA was passed with bipartisan majorities of Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton — who put out a statement Thursday praising its demise.
Roberts wrote separately to say the majority had no evidence that Congress’s motivation was to “codify malice. . . . I would not tar the political branches with the brush of bigotry.”
Roberts also wanted to emphasize that neither of the court’s opinions Wednesday addressed the question of whether there is a broader right to marriage.
“We may in the future have to resolve challenges to state marriage definitions affecting same-sex couples,” Roberts wrote. “That issue, however, is not before us.”
In the Proposition 8 case, the court ruled 5 to 4 that those who appealed a decision throwing out California’s constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage did not have legal standing to proceed. Thus, the Supreme Court did not rule on the merits of the case.
Only California officials may challenge a federal judge’s decision that Prop. 8 was unconstitutional, Roberts wrote for the majority, and they decided against it. The challenge at the Supreme Court was brought by those who favored Prop. 8, an initiative approved by the state’s voters.
“We have never before upheld the standing of a private party to defend the constitutionality of a state statute when state officials have chosen not to,” Roberts wrote. “We decline to do so here.”
The four dissenters — Kennedy, Thomas, Alito and Sotomayor — were justices who would probably disagree on the merits of the case but thought the court should hear them.
They said the ballot initiative process is worthless if state officials can simply refuse to enforce what the people have voted for.
Prop. 8 was passed by California voters in 2008 after the state’s top court ruled 5 to 4 that such unions must be allowed. About 18,000 couples were married after the decision and before Prop. 8 was approved, and those marriages remain valid.
U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker ruled broadly in 2010 that the initiative was unconstitutional. A decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit was more narrow, also overturning Prop. 8 but in a way that limited the impact to California.
The U.S. Supreme Court threw out that 9th Circuit decision, saying the appeal was not properly before it, and allowed Walker’s ruling to stand.
On Wednesday, it was almost difficult to remember how controversial it was when Theodore Olson and David Boies, adversaries at the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore, teamed up to challenge the California constitutional amendment.
Even staunch supporters of same-sex marriage thought that bringing a lawsuit to the Supreme Court that argued for a constitutional right to marriage for gays would risk a setback that could take years to overcome.
But Jeff Zarrillo, who was part of one of the two gay couples named as plaintiffs in the case, said the legal challenge “changed the conversation. It altered the game. It created a groundswell of momentum and passion that brought us here to the Supreme Court today.”
The cases decided Wednesday were U.S. v. Windsor and Hollingsworth v. Perry.
OMG....now married rich gay couples have the same protection on estate taxes as married rich heterosexual couple.......
again, why do we need a license to get married....$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Why stop there? If we follow Boxy's logic that states are totally subservient to the federal government , incest laws should be struck down as 'unconstitutional'....Why even bother to have state courts?
If you even want to go deeper, you can easily make the argument that separate restrooms for men and women 'unconstitutional'
Don't they all violate the 14th?
"Approval ratings go up and down for various reasons... An example is the high post 911 support for GWB even though he could be said to be responsible for the event." --- Box A Rox '9/11 Truther'
Melania is a bimbo... she is there to look at, not to listen to. --- Box A Rox and his 'War on Women'
Why stop there? If we follow Boxy's logic that states are totally subservient to the federal government , incest laws should be struck down as 'unconstitutional'....Why even bother to have state courts? If you even want to go deeper, you can easily make the argument that separate restrooms for men and women 'unconstitutional' Don't they all violate the 14th?
I guess Bucky feels that Incest and separate rest rooms are unconstitutional. I'm glad that the Supreme Court has more sense than Bucky.
Does he really believe that any state or local law enacted is automatically constitutional? Just because a state legislature enacts a law, doesn't make it in keeping with the US Constitution.
Check out " Loving v. Virginia, (1967) Where the State of Virginia said that a mixed race couple cannot marry... DO ya think that might have been constitutional too Bucky???
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
the constitution is keep laws from being freedom limiting.....how's that working out with all these new laws that are more like an unholy hybrid of A Clockwork Orange-Patriot Act.....
bully laws sex predator laws terrorist laws
the list is getting endless.....oh but let us all give thanks to the 60's gen and Timothy Leary for pushing that kind of thought and then the Xgens for eating the sh!t like candy....
how about some Adderall and handful of antidepressants handed out by the school nurse? now that's just F'EN progressive isn't it?
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
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