Today the California Supreme Court rejected requests by same-sex marriage advocates to strike down Proposition 8, the ballot measure that democratically superseded an earlier decision by the California Supreme Court that redefined marriage to include same-sex unions in that state. In May of 2008, the California Supreme Court interpreted the California Constitution to require that same-sex couples be allowed to obtain civil marriage licenses in California. Under a domestic partnership scheme, California law already provided same-sex couples almost all the state law benefits associated with civil marriage, but the California …
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Those who remember the Warren Court recall imaginative renderings of the constitution to expand criminal’s rights coupled with outright judicial hostility to police. The result was a national crime wave only recently curbed by new police techniques and more favorable rulings from the Supreme Court. Now that Barack Obama has identified Earl Warren as a model judge, we could face a judicial flashback to the 1970s. Unfortunately, we have a preview of what that might look like from a recent Sixth Circuit case involving a drug arrest in Michigan. The …
Robert Bork at Heritage / Photo by Andrew Blasko Former judge Robert Bork delivered the first lecture in Heritage’s Joseph Story Distinguished Lecture series that is a part of a larger 10-year initiative started by the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies to bring back judicial restraint and the rule of law. The title of Bork’s lecture was aptly named, “A Republic — If You Can Keep It.” It was taken from a quote by Benjamin Franklin when asked what the Founding Fathers were giving to the American people when …
Same sex marriage opponent David Benkof knows that the California Supreme Court decision finding domestic partnership’s discriminatory against homosexuals is just the beginning, not the end, of judicial activism. He reports in the Philadelphia Inquirer: A representative of the largest Michigan gay-rights group, known as the Triangle Foundation, and openly gay Washington State Sen. Ed Murray both told me that any person who continues to conduct himself as if what he thinks is God’s definition of marriage is correct, instead of the gay community’s definition, should be fined, fired and …
