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Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Fool's Errand, Part 2.

In the second installment in his series of blogposts on "Judge Walker’s Wild Witchhunt", Ed Whelan describes the absurdity of "purporting to conduct a factual determination of the subjective intentions of the more than seven million California voters who supported Proposition 8."

Snippet:

Given how insane and unworkable Judge Walker’s factual inquiry into voter animus is, it should be no surprise that it’s contrary to established precedent.

[...]

[The] Sixth Circuit in 1997 re-affirmed that a court reviewing the constitutionality of a voter-adopted measure “may not even inquire into the electorate’s possible actual motivations for adopting a measure via initiative or referendum. Instead, the court must consider all hypothetical justifications which potentially support the enactment.”

Whelan is on a roll. Prepare to read his whole series, because although Whelan is not predicting the ultimate outcome, I think his analysis is pretty much what we can expect of 1) the pro-amendment litigators and 2) the majority on the US Supreme Court.

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Return to "Whelan: Judge on a Fool's Errand in Prop 8 Trial."

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