The infallibility of Massachusetts’ highest court

The infallibility of Massachusetts’ highest court

Harry Forbes noted some additional information about Mass. Attorney-General Martha Coakley’s recent public comments that, even if passed, a constitutional amendment to protect marriage would unconstitutional. He found an Associated Press story that filled in some blanks that the Boston Globe story left unfilled. Here’s what he quoted from the story with his emphasis added in bold:

Coakley said that even though the Supreme Judicial Court ruled last July that the proposed amendment could be placed on the ballot if approved by the Legislature, at least two justices also questioned whether the amendment is constitutional.

She quoted a joint court opinion by Justices John Greaney and Roderick Ireland saying the 2003 SJC decision that legalized same-sex marriage “may be irreversible because of its holding that no rational basis exist, or can be advanced, to support the definition of marriage” as only between a man and a woman. The opinion also noted that the amendment would discriminate against same-sex couples by removing rights they already had been granted.

In other words, no matter what the people say or how the constitution is amended there can be no basis for denying that marriage can exist between two men or two women because the Supreme Judicial Court justices say so. This is not law by consent of the governed, but law as handed down from above by an oligarchy.

Sola constitutionalia and judicial infallibility

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