This April 28, 2015, artist rendering shows Tennessee Associate Solicitor General Joseph Walen arguing before the Supreme Court hearing on same-sex marriage in Washington.
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“We can (next session) expect more vitriolic dissenting opinions form Justices Scalia, Alito and Thomas”, says Carlson.
“No longer may this liberty be denied,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority in the historic decision.
“The fact that you might think from Justice Roberts’ history and from the president that appointed him, he might be skeptical of Obamacare“. The President’s healthcare law remains unpopular among many Americans.
“This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves”.
His conservative colleagues viewed this as an overreach.
In such circumstances it is their majority opinion that counts, and their opinion that determines the interpretation of the US Constitution.
So how will the Court decide such cases?
“At long last, marriage equality in the United States”, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee reportedly told a cheering crowd Friday, after the Court handed down its decision.
Well yes, but isn’t that the whole point of the Supreme Court? The answer in recent years: either Roberts’ or Kennedy’s. People forget that our courts had the same kinds of starts and stops, that our Parliament was far from unanimous on the issue, and that anti-gay opponents were just as vociferous. Harris had refused to defend a voter-approved ban on gay marriage, which the court overturned two years ago. Kennedy also was part of conservative majorities in landmark cases in favor of gun rights and striking down campaign finance restrictions.
He did so again in the case about judges and campaign contributions.
He wrote that, in announcing their decision to uphold tax subsidies for health care enrollees, the other Justices did so “with no sense of shame”. America can proudly say that discrimination does not just violate our values – it violates our Constitution.
Severino was struck by Roberts’ language.
But this week’s decisions left some accusing the court of siding with public opinion – and not the Constitution. First of all, the Supreme Court justices are supposed to be above politics when they make their rulings.
“It seems fair to say that the court tilted in a more liberal direction this term”, said veteran Supreme Court lawyer Carter Phillips.
Slamming his fellow justices in a rambling dissent, he labelled the ruling a “judicial Putsch”, adding:
“The opinion is couched in a style that is as pretentious as its content is egotistic.
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