The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum

He also made sure he always had a liberal on his staff so that he wouldn't be listening to an echo chamber.

I agree with his dissent on same-sex marriage only in the sense that marriage itself, a very personal and human thing, should have remained a State matter that was always open and fluid to the vote of the people and not out of our hands within federal legislature.

(Just a generic reply to the thread).

On of the things that really bothered me about Scalia was his lack of ethics. Other justices would recuse themselves from cases where there were potential conflicts of interests.  Scalia refused to do this, even though his wife was heavily involved in campaigning about stuff that he ruled on.

Plus there's the fact that he was enjoying a trip paid for and at the home of someone who benefited from his ruling.

Would you also say the same thing for other civil rights issues? For example, should whether blacks and whites can marry also have been left to the states?

 
Interracial and same sex marriage are both issues that reached the SC precisely because of the people of the states. States serve as pockets of ... innovation...to advance new legislation the federal government is not yet ready to consider...NYT And when same sex marriage and interracial marriage became matters of state policy it then changed national policy. Local government empowers the people. Local government and politics is where our voice is at.

Another thing to remember is that by legalizing same sex marriage on the state level, it becomes part of the constitution of the state. While the U.S. constitution is the supreme law, it's  just a general guideline that states must adhere to in their own lawmaking process. That has always been the spirit of our country's government. We allow the people freedom to regulate themselves so long as their choices comply with a *basic* framework of liberties. It was the state constitutions that first abolished slavery, not the US constitution.

Consider also that opponents of FMA cited the federalism argument, claiming that it was not the role of the federal government to regulate marriage. FMA, if you remember, was the Federal Marriage Amendment which sought to ban same-sex marriage on a national level regardless of state votes that had legalized it, which was a clear violation of state rights.

It was the landmark ruling in the state Supreme Court of Hawaii in favor of gay marriage that changed the way states began interpreting their own constitutions concerning same sex marriage. Then DOMA was signed and it became *federal law* that marriage was between a man and a woman only, which overturned progress and led to the banning of same sex marriage in Hawaii. The Supreme Court then declared that the state has primary authority and states were again able to include same sex marriage in their constitutions.

As one person said about same sex marriage: our constitution hasn't changed, our country has changed. And our country can only change when we allow the people to change-- and the U.S. constitutions serves to provide us with that freedom.


So, to answer your question on my philosophy about state authority versus federal authority: yes.

Well, that's interesting.

US politics being what it is, the President probably has a big chubby over the opportunity now in his hands.

A friend thinks that Scalia was murdered. I doubt that. He died, is all.
The High Court always needs its monstrous conservative, as it always needs its monstrous liberal - & its milky, woozy, soppy moderate. What the others are hardly matters. A HC in stalemate is just what the Country ordered; w/o a stifling stalemate, there is Civil War in the offing. Now & then, a ruling like Roe V Wade can come down, yes, but not too often. For the most part, Business & the upper 1/3 must be kept happy - or else!

Well, no, with a stalemate the rulings of lower courts will stand.

And as someone whose marriage is recognized by the federal government because of a relatively recent Supreme Court ruling, I think almost all of the court's rulings are relevant - they've decided the president, made corporations people and kept obamacare in place, among other rulings since RvW.

Yes, like Roe V Wade, that was a landmark ruling. But, if the HC made such rulings weekly - well, think - people would be even more sick of hearing from it than they are now. No, no - the HC must use its great power very sparingly, especially since it neither commands forces nor has holds purse strings. For the most part, the SC must be quiescent - must allow the rulings of the lower courts to stand, which is what it usually does do.