[WillL]

But isn't the real problem the institution of judicial review itself?

When first activist judge -- John Marshall -- fashioned the concept of judicial review from whole cloth, wasn't it inevitable that the judicial branch would eventually reach its current state: an unelected body of elitists reading their capricious notions of justice into our constitutions, both federal and state?

I believe Marbury v. Madison effectively stole the Constitution from the American people. Fast-forward to today, and we see widespread apathy toward the Constitution, simple because the average person views the Consitution as the property of elite lawyers and the judiciary, not of the American people.

I believe the constitutional amendment we truly require is one that will put an end to judicial review.

[Congressman Billybob]

There were six STATE court decisions prior to the writing of the Constitution that ruled that state laws in violation of state constitutions could and should be voided by the courts. One of those decisions, Caton v. Commonwealth was written by Judge George Wythe.

Who was George Wythe, I here you cry. He was none less than the first Professor of Law in the history of the United States. Among his students were Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, James Madison, Patrick Henry, you get the idea. In short, the Framers were well aware of this concept when they sat down to write the Constitution, and especially the phrase "supreme Law" as the Constitution calls itself in its text.

I could describe some of the other cases, but I won't bore you with details. Bottom line, there is no problem with judicial review, as long as the judges who use it feel bound at all times by the text of the Constitution, and so they did for 140 years, give or take a few.

The intent of this addition to the Marriage Amendment is to deal with the Justices and judges in Jefferson's words from the Kentucky Resolutions, "to bind them down with the chains of the Constitution." That's the plan.

John / Billybob