California Chief Justice Interviewed

Patt Morrison interviewed retiring California Chief Justice Ronald M. George, and some of the interview was adapted into her column for the Los Angeles Times. Although I certainly disagreed with George's decision striking down Proposition 22 (which restated California's statute law defining marriage as a bride+groom union), thus neutering state marriage licensing, I appreciated his affirmation of Proposition 8, which added the bride+groom requirement to the state constitution. Also, reading up on his career in various sources, it sounds like he has had a highly accomplished and respected career (I wonder if marriage neutering advocates would say the same thing about a judge who upheld a law like Prop 22?). If you are interested in law and the courts, you should read the whole piece. Below the jump are some highlights relevant to this blog. On California’s ballot proposition process:

How does the will of the people through the ballot figure into California's system of law?

The process [is] almost like a fourth branch of government. [The court spends] a lot of time trying to interpret initiative measures. We have competing initiatives; we have some that run afoul of statutory provisions or constitutional provisions; it's difficult to ferret out in some instances what the voters intended because these are not a model of the best draftsmanship. We occasionally have to invalidate something put forth as the people's will because it comes into conflict with their own constitution, by which they placed limitations on their own ability to legislate.

On neutering marriage:

The trio of same-sex marriage matters that came to the court — from the outside it looks like the same subject, but the underlying issues are very different.

Exactly. It's the same subject but three distinct issues. Each involved limitations on governmental power: on executive power, on legislative power and on judicial power. Each of them provides a giant civics lesson.

[In] the first case, the court intervened to put a halt to the same-sex marriages authorized by the mayor of San Francisco. Our ruling was that it was not up to any one of the hundreds or thousands of executive officials in California to decide which laws are valid or invalid. If there is a doubt, go to court and file a lawsuit. Within hours, the mayor filed a lawsuit. The trial judge found the [anti-same-sex] marriage laws unconstitutional. The court of appeals reversed, we took up the case and by a 4-3 vote reversed the court of appeals and upheld the trial court.

The second was on the Legislature's passage of the bill that limited marriage to persons of the opposite sex and the parallel initiative that did the same thing.

And the third element, the court had to pass upon the validity of [ Proposition 8], the people's repeal of that part of the constitution which had been the basis for our ruling in the same-sex marriage case. We upheld the people's right by a 6-1 vote to amend their constitution to eliminate the right which we had recognized and which had been the basis for our decision.

Did anyone ask you to perform a same-sex marriage when it was briefly legal?

I was asked to perform one ceremony in the interim period and I declined, because I knew I would have to pass on the validity of Proposition 8. If it were to become legal once more, I would have no reluctance.

So he personally believes a brideless or groomless pairing could be marriage, enough so that he would perform the legal ceremony himself.