[SmithL]

Click the link for periodic updates as the hearing progresses: http://www.mercurynews.com/samesexmarriage/ci_18263567

[SmithL]

From Yesterday's Mercury News:

Battle over Proposition 8 judge's same-sex relationship heads to court

For years, former San Francisco Chief Judge Vaughn Walker has maintained a same-sex relationship with a doctor, attending court functions with him and hardly treating it as a secret within the Bay Area legal community.

But despite his high-profile career as a federal judge, Walker kept his private life private to the general public, at least until he was thrust into handling the historic legal challenge to Proposition 8, California's voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage. And now Walker's personal life and relationship are front and center at another pivotal stage in the Proposition 8 legal saga.

In a hearing Monday morning, new Chief Judge James Ware will consider a bid by Proposition 8's sponsors to set aside Walker's August 2010 ruling striking down the state's gay marriage ban. The measure's lawyers argue that Walker was presumed biased at the time he invalidated the law because of his long-term same-sex relationship, and that he should have stepped aside when he was randomly assigned the case.

The argument is widely considered a long shot by legal experts, but it has injected more venom into the debate over Proposition 8's legality.

Denying that they are simply targeting Walker because he is gay, Proposition 8 backers insist the judge had a strong interest in the outcome of the case because invalidating the law could someday allow him to marry his partner. "Such a personal interest in his own marriage would place Chief Judge Walker in precisely the same shoes as the two couples who brought the case," they wrote in court papers.

http://www.mercurynews.com/samesexmarriage/ci_18259914

[longtermmemmory]

lawyers have a very difficult time challenging a judge’s impartiality because judges DO retaliate and judges DO protect their own.

[Logical me]

When Judge Walker bias carries over to his bench he is not fit to be a judge. We have to purge these communists bench making policy crap from the bench.

[SmithL]

10:28 a.m.: Judge pounding away on fact there is no evidence Walker is seeking the right to marry

Judge Ware is now wading into the standard for disqualifying a judge for bias, based on how a potential conflict appears to the "reasonable" person. Would a reasonable person believe a black judge would be biased in a civil rights case? Ware asked Charles Cooper, Prop. 8's lawyer.

[SmithL]

12:04 p.m.: Judge says he will rule within the next day or two

Charles Cooper, is now giving a short rebuttal argument. He is now urging Ware to consider the fact that if Walker had disclosed his same-sex relationship when he was assigned the Prop. 8 case, he would also have had to reveal whether he had an interest in getting married at some point. As a result, it would have exposed whether he had an inherent bias in handling the trial.

[DJ MacWoW]

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Info on Prop 8 hearing

[fwdude]

Not holding my breath, but wouldn’t it be great if this big circus of a “trial” got flushed because of Walkers bias? What would the pervertphiles do then?