Folks, I highly recommend reading the Prop 8 request for staying Judge Walker's decision. It is written, for the most part, in everyday english. I also recommend all of the articles written by Playful Walrus on this topic. He has a keen sense of logic and reason which really shines against the legal perfunctory of Walker's decision.
NOM has also done a great job in condensing the important parts of the stay down to a quickly digestible outline...
Now, Walker is trying to insulate his opinion from judicial review by claiming Prop 8 proponents lack standing. No wonder. He knows this opinion is a stack of cards that will not stand up to serious scrutiny by higher courts.
Here's at least 8 ways – taken from the emergency motion filed by the Prop 8 lawyers today – Walker's opinion ignored facts that did not fit his thesis, acting more like an activist than a neutral referee:
There's no more here, read the rest at NOM.
Great digest by NOM. To think Jonathan Rauch, supposedly one of the best and brightest on the side of neutering marriage, called this ruling "carefully reasoned." This ruling actually manages to set a new low for jurisprudence below even Goodridge. Who could have imagined?
ReplyDeleteHere is a quote from Frank Rich on Prop 8:
ReplyDelete"Cooper, for all his talent and efforts, couldn’t find facts to support his argument that full civil marital rights for same-sex couples would harm the institution of marriage, children or anyone else. Cooper only managed to summon two “expert” witnesses. In the judge’s determination, one undermined his credibility by giving testimony contradicting his own opinions while the other provided “evidence” rendered worthless by its lack of scientific methodology or even fundamental peer-review vetting.
Boies and Olson produced nine expert witnesses with the relevant professional and academic expertise lacking in Cooper’s duo and compiled an encyclopedic record of empirical findings that demolished the arguments for denying gay families equal rights under the law. In the understatement of The Economist, that record “now seems a high hurdle” for the Supreme Court to overturn."
After reading the emergency motion there seems some serious sour grapes in it, but in the end it is highly rhetorical, so much so that it makes me wonder if the lawyers defending Prop 8 have given up.
Terry: ...but in the end it is highly rhetorical,...
ReplyDeleteHow is citing controlling legal precedent such as Baker (which Walker completely ignored) "rhetorical" as opposed to legal? Merely "rhetorical" would involve irrelevancies like witness counts and tricks like ad hominem attacks on witnesses with whom one disagrees.
Op-ed, what do the prop 8 lawyers have to say in response to the lack of Article III standing? I see that question spelled out on the Ninth Circuit Court appeal.
ReplyDeleteSome are of the opinion that this decision should not be appealed so as not to risk having traditional marriage thrown out completely by the Supreme Court.
Terry: ...what do the prop 8 lawyers have to say in response to the lack of Article III standing?
ReplyDeleteRead their
motion yourself. Ed Whelan also addresses this issue in painstaking detail. The issue of standing seems more one of wishful thinking than of legitimate law.
None of this, however, is relevant to the question you forgot to answer:
"How is citing controlling legal precedent such as Baker (which Walker completely ignored) 'rhetorical' as opposed to legal?"