Judge Walker Takes Highly Dubious Steps in California

In a blogpost at Bench Memos, Ed Whelan reminds that the marriage issue has become about more than marriage itself.

[Updated to fix the links. Thanks to comment by Fitz.]

Reasonable people of goodwill hold a broad range of positions on whether and how the government ought to accommodate same-sex relationships. Under the federal Constitution, those are matters for American citizens to work out through the democratic processes. Olson and Boies have every right as citizens to attempt to persuade their fellow citizens to adopt the policy that Olson and Boies favor. But the lawsuit they are pressing asks the judiciary to usurp the constitutional processes of representative government and to disguise their policy preference as a newly invented constitutional right.

He describes the context for the latest litigious twist in the brief history of the California Marriage Amendment:

Unfortunately, [Federal] Judge Vaughn Walker (a Bush 41 appointee who is, not incidentally, chief judge of the Northern District) has already given ample signs that he is eager not merely to strike down Proposition 8 but also to orchestrate a show trial of Proposition 8’s sponsors. To that end, he has taken three highly dubious steps.

Read his blogpost for his summary of Judge Walker's maneuvers.

Whelan has also written a column for National Review Online in which he describes the arbitrary exercise of power that is being played out to make this case a "show trial".

See: "Judge Walker’s New Year’s Eve surprise on California’s Proposition 8."

Snippet:

Specifically, Walker is rushing to override longstanding prohibitions on televised coverage of federal trials so that he can authorize televised coverage of the Proposition 8 trial. Televised coverage would generate much greater publicity for ringmaster Walker’s circus. And, whether Walker desires the effect or is somehow blind to it, televised coverage would surely also heighten the prospect that witnesses and attorneys supporting Proposition 8 would face harassment, intimidation, and abuse.

In his eagerness to stack the deck against Proposition 8 and its defenders, Walker has resorted to procedural shenanigans and outright illegality.

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Related columns and blogposts:

Matthew J. Franck on the demonstrable falsehoods and preposterous straw-man arguments of the SSM litigators.

"Wrong on the law, and on civilization," by Nelson Lund.

Letter to the Editor by Charles J. Cooper.