O’Connor was appointed by Reagan as the first female supreme court justice but ended up as the moderate swing vote on abortion and related social issues. Her decision to enter the fray is a strong signal the campaign against the judges is gaining ground. Read more.

Sherlock Holmes once famously said, “Watson, I call to your attention the curious fact of the dog barking in the night.” “But Holmes, there was no dog barking in the night.” “That is the curious fact.”

It is a curious fact that Judge Walker did not discuss any of the previous cases that deal with the constitutional questions before him. Chuck Cooper puts it this way, in his Emergency Motion seeking a stay of Judge Walker’s judgement invalidating Prop 8:  “Given that the district court did not cite a single case that had addressed these issues, one might think the court was deciding issues of first impression on a blank slate. Nothing could be further from the truth. . . .”

Read more.

Judges, Marriage and Self-Government

In referring to our form of government, Alexander Hamilton once said, “Here sir, the people govern”.  But given the actions of some of the more arrogant members of our judiciary, there seems to be room for doubt.

In 2000, the people of California approved a statewide referendum defining marriage in that state as the union of one man and one woman, but in 2008 their state supreme court threw out that law (by a four to three vote of the court). So in November, 2008 voters approved a state constitutional amendment to overturn their supreme court’s decision and again take control of the definition of marriage in their state, just as voters in over thirty states have done.

It has been a mass expression of sovereign will on a single subject unlike few (if any) others in our nation’s history – and one at which activists judges continue to thumb their noses.

A few weeks ago, federal district Judge Vaughan Walker gave us the latest example of contempt for popular sovereignty by overturning California’s state constitutional amendment.  It’s only the latest round of what has been an ongoing battle with activist judges.

The problem is that we have too few real judges in our country, and far too many would-be judicial oligarchs who see themselves as the “supreme” branch of our government, rather than just one of three.  It’s the product of a philosophy that sees our constitutional structure as an eighteenth century anachronism, rather than the law of the land.

Jefferson once noted, the Constitution “is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please.”  And so they have.

Read more.

- Maggie

Our view:  Judge Walker was ruling on rights that potentially affect him potentially personally, financially. The litigants were entitled to know, and he ought to have let them know.

More importantly, if the press is going to widely portray Judge Walker as a Reagan conservative, it is certainly relevant to evaluating his ruling that he is also a gay man living in San Francisco. People will make different judgments about its relevance.  But the American people are entitled to know the facts.

Read the letter to the LA Times from SF Bar President Arturo Gonzalez.