Highlights from Justice Scalia's dissent:
Scalia's opening line: "I join (CJ Roberts's dissenting opinion) in full. I write separately to call attention to this Court's threat to American democracy."
1. "Today's decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court.... 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."
2. "Until the courts put a stop to it, public debate over same-sex marriage displayed American democracy at its best."
3. As stated by J. Kennedy 2 years ago, "Regulation of domestic relations is anarea that has long been regarded as a virtually exclusive province of the States."
4. When the 14th Amendment was ratified, every state limited marriage to one man and one woman, and no one doubted the constitutionality of doing so. That resolves these cases... it is unquestionable that the People who ratified that provision did not understand it to prohibit a practice that remained both universal and uncontroversial in the years after ratification." (TRJF'S NOTE: This seems to me to also make it unquestionable that Scalia either does not agree with Loving, believing that the states should have the right to ban interracial marriage, OR that Scalia can not articulate a coherent framework of Constitutional interpretation.)
5. What this does is assure that "liberty," as used in the Constitution, means "liberty as defined by the majority of the SCOTUS", not "liberty as defined by the people."
6. "A system of government that makes the People subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy."
7. It is ridiculously prideful of the majority to "have discovered in the Fourteenth Amendment a 'fundamental right' overlooked by every person alive at the time of ratification, and almost everyone else in the time since."
8. "Of course the opinion's showy profundities are often profoundly incoherent. 'The nature of marriage is that, through its enduring bond, two persons together can find other freedoms, such as expression, intimacy, and spirituality.' (Really? Who ever thought that intimacy and spirituality [whatever that means] were freedoms? And if intimacy is, one would think Freedom of Intimacy is abridged rather than expanded by marriage. Ask the nearest hippie. Expression, sure enough, is a freedom, but anyone in a long-lasting marriage will attest that that happy state constricts, rather than expands, what one can prudently say.)"
9. "Hubris is sometimes defined as o'erweening pride; and pride, we know, goeth before a fall."
Scalia's opening line: "I join (CJ Roberts's dissenting opinion) in full. I write separately to call attention to this Court's threat to American democracy."
1. "Today's decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court.... 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."
2. "Until the courts put a stop to it, public debate over same-sex marriage displayed American democracy at its best."
3. As stated by J. Kennedy 2 years ago, "Regulation of domestic relations is anarea that has long been regarded as a virtually exclusive province of the States."
4. When the 14th Amendment was ratified, every state limited marriage to one man and one woman, and no one doubted the constitutionality of doing so. That resolves these cases... it is unquestionable that the People who ratified that provision did not understand it to prohibit a practice that remained both universal and uncontroversial in the years after ratification." (TRJF'S NOTE: This seems to me to also make it unquestionable that Scalia either does not agree with Loving, believing that the states should have the right to ban interracial marriage, OR that Scalia can not articulate a coherent framework of Constitutional interpretation.)
5. What this does is assure that "liberty," as used in the Constitution, means "liberty as defined by the majority of the SCOTUS", not "liberty as defined by the people."
6. "A system of government that makes the People subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy."
7. It is ridiculously prideful of the majority to "have discovered in the Fourteenth Amendment a 'fundamental right' overlooked by every person alive at the time of ratification, and almost everyone else in the time since."
8. "Of course the opinion's showy profundities are often profoundly incoherent. 'The nature of marriage is that, through its enduring bond, two persons together can find other freedoms, such as expression, intimacy, and spirituality.' (Really? Who ever thought that intimacy and spirituality [whatever that means] were freedoms? And if intimacy is, one would think Freedom of Intimacy is abridged rather than expanded by marriage. Ask the nearest hippie. Expression, sure enough, is a freedom, but anyone in a long-lasting marriage will attest that that happy state constricts, rather than expands, what one can prudently say.)"
9. "Hubris is sometimes defined as o'erweening pride; and pride, we know, goeth before a fall."
How will we know, when the morning comes, we are still human? - 2D
Don't worry, my friend. If this be the end, then so shall it be.
Don't worry, my friend. If this be the end, then so shall it be.
