Who do they think they are?

Published 9:51 pm Thursday, July 23, 2015

By means of the democratic process 32 states and the federal government enacted laws that prohibited or restricted same-sex marriage.

In Obergefell v. Hodges five justices of the Supreme Court tossed aside those laws and the democratic process that produced them. On its face the Constitution does not contain the right to same-sex marriage. Justice Kennedy, writing for the five justices in the majority, tacitly conceded that the drafters never intended such a right. Nevertheless, armed with “new insight” five justices said the 14th Amendment mandated same-sex marriage.

“New insight” is not legal analysis but another name for the moral and public policy opinions of a majority of the court at any given moment.

In the words of Justice Scalia, without “even a thin veneer of law” the five justices ran roughshod over the referendum votes of millions of Americans and the enactments of duly-elected legislatures. If the court can rule by Delphic oracle on same-sex marriage it can rule by Delphic oracle on any issue it chooses.

The court’s hubris prompted Chief Justice Roberts to ask, “Who do we (the justices of the Supreme Court) think we are?”

The answer to Justice Roberts’ rhetorical question is that five of the justices evidently think themselves to be gods of the law who sit astride the court as if it were Mount Olympus and hand down oracles to us mere mortals. So much the worse for “We the People” who did “ordain and establish the Constitution of the United States of America.”  

David J. Blevins

Whitfield County