You’re mixing things up. I can sympathize with the situation you are describing but I have to point out your logic is off.
The MA courts have their role and the MA legislature has its role; the MA executive still another role and the state constitutional provisions you cite state unequivocally that neither of the branches shall infringe on the other.
But the MA Court was not infringing on the MA Legislature’s role in legislating. It was ruling on the law’s state constitutionality. That is in within its role to do.
The MA Legislature can legislate that donkeys are to be given human right protections. The MA Courts can rule such a law as unconstitutional within the state.
However, there is nothing stopping the People Of Massachusetts from amending their state constitution in the same spirit that Ted Cruz is proposing to amend the US Constitution. Such an amendment would basically assert that the state courts are to butt out of the state constitutional amendment to define marriage.
Generally this is how it has worked in the past where an amendment to the US Constitution is echoed in state constitutions.
Cruz’ amendment would undo the travesty of Proposition 8 in California where federal courts struck down a state constitutional amendment! That was vicious unfounded overreach and it was done by a homosexual judge. The People of California had gone through great pains to amend their state constitution and then a homosexual federal judge rules it unconstitutional under the US Constitution.
“But the MA Court was not infringing on the MA Legislatures role in legislating. It was ruling on the laws state constitutionality. That is in within its role to do.”
I’m not mixing anything up. I am stating my opinion that the action of the Massachusetts court was a violation of the Massachusetts Constitution, which gives power over matters of marriage to the legislature, just as the US Supreme Court overstepped its power in wrongly striking down DOMA.
The illogic of your position can be readily demonstrated even with reference only to your comment. If the people of Massachusetts amend the constitution as you suggest to say that all matters of marriage are to be decided by the legislature and further they add that the Court shall not perform the role of the legislature, and therefore the court should “butt out” of marriage issues (all of which the Massachusetts Constitution already says, by the way), and then the court still strikes down the same act of the legislature, would that be “within its role to do”?
Its role, in fact, is a creature of the Massachusetts Cosntitution. What powers that Constitution does not grant it, it does not have.
As an aside, with no Marbury vs. Madison in Massachusetts, what makes you so certain that the Massachusetts Constituion gives the court the power to strike down acts of the legislature? The Massachusetts Constitution has a provision providing that the Court can give advisory opinion to other branches of government, but whether this gives them the power to strike down other branches acts is not clear at all, although as you could expect, it is not something that the Court itself sees as debatable.
http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1308&context=asml
Or are you just assuming that all courts, under all constitutions have the final say on the constitutionality of the acts of the other branches?