No, I do not believe that I am debating Thomas Jefferson. I am quite certain that he believed that legislatures have the power to define marriage and I am quite certain that he would never have wanted to bind eternity to a static definition of any of our relationships. He would have opposed the Court's recent gay marriage decision because he did not believe, as many people believe, that courts should have the power to redefine marriage. Like him, I believe that legislatures should define these important relationships and that legislatures should determine when to change these definitions.
I also tend to agree with Jefferson about the role of the courts in interpreting the Constitution. As I said before, I do not believe that the Constitution provides the judiciary with greater power than other branches to interpret the Constitution. In the link that I gave you in my last post, Jefferson put it this way:
"The question whether the judges are invested with exclusive authority to decide on the constitutionality of a law has been heretofore a subject of consideration with me in the exercise of official duties. Certainly there is not a word in the Constitution which has given that power to them more than to the Executive or Legislative branches." - Thomas Jefferson
So all in all, even with the courts doing judicial review (and you didn't really answer who better should do it or why) they are still a poor third in terms of the power they wield.
Who should do judicial review? I think that everyone agrees that, by definition, courts should exercise judicial powers. That is why we call it the judicial branch. The disagreement concerns the proper scope of judicial powers.
There are many people who have bought into Marshall's argument that naturally the judicial branch should have the final say about "what the law is." As you can see from the quotes on that link that I gave you, Jefferson did not buy into that argument. And, I do not buy into that argument.
Unfortunately, most people have bought into Marshall's argument and that is why schoolchildren and adults are taught that the Supreme Court has the powers that it regularly exercises. Jefferson did not believe and I do not believe that the Supreme Court possesses the Constitutional power to decide that women have a constitutional right to abortion or that two men have a constitutional right to marry. Unfortunately, most people now accept the holding in Marbury and accept that it is part of the Court's job to find (create) such constitutional rights.
As I said in my last post, I believe that all three branches of the federal government have an obligation to determine the constitutionality of their conduct. I acknowledge, however, that the Supreme Court (beginning with the Marbury decision) has succeeded in convincing most people that the Court should have the final word because, well, just because. See, it is a court. They wear robes and who can deny that they are much better than everyone else at deciding things.
Jefferson did not let his anger about the Supreme Court's usurpation of power in Marbury wreck his life and I have not let my anger about it wreck my life. We just disagree with Marshall's opinion. Some people are very happy that unelected judges can create rights for people who cannot get legislatures to agree with them.
It is like everything else. I am unhappy with what the Court has been doing and other people are happy about it. But, life goes on. I take the bad with the good and I have to admit that I have been very lucky.
You've gone off the rails here my friend. If concepts are meaningless, laws are meaningless.
The word Matrimony means "Mother Ceremony". Mater means mother, just as Pater (as in Patriot) means Father.
How do two faggots make a "mother ceremony"?
If you are okay with bastardizing the meaning of words and bastardizing the meaning of concepts, then I am hard pressed to figure out how you are interested in "conserving" anything.
I do not think Thomas Jefferson would have been okay with "marriage" being redefined as same sex. He proposed a law to castrate homosexuals, you know.
"The question whether the judges are invested with exclusive authority to decide on the constitutionality of a law has been heretofore a subject of consideration with me in the exercise of official duties. Certainly there is not a word in the Constitution which has given that power to them more than to the Executive or Legislative branches." - Thomas Jefferson
I think you and Jefferson are both wrong about this. Obviously Lincoln decided constitutional issues the way he wanted and he told the court to go F*** themselves. So did Andrew Jackson. Congress could do it too if they really wanted too. The court gets away with it at the pleasure of the other two branches.
As I said in my last post, I believe that all three branches of the federal government have an obligation to determine the constitutionality of their conduct.
And they do so when they wish. Most of the time they just don't want to do so.
Eisenhower thought the court was wrong about integration, but he didn't over ride them, even though he could. Instead, out of respect for the process, he backed them up with the national guard.
As I said in my last post, I believe that all three branches of the federal government have an obligation to determine the constitutionality of their conduct.
The beneficiaries, no doubt. The very people who would be happy marching all dissenters into camps. The people who have no concept of inherent rights and who support slavery when it suits their own ends.
Since 1796 the executive and the legislative branches have ceded the power of judicial review to the judiciary.
Hylton v. United States, 3 U.S. 171 (1796), is an early United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that a yearly tax on carriages did not violate the Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 and Article I, Clause 9 requirements for the apportioning of direct taxes. The Court concluded that the carriage tax was a form of indirect tax known as an excise (not requiring apportionment), instead of a direct tax requiring apportionment among the states by population. The Court noted that a tax on land was an example of a direct tax contemplated by the Constitution.
The case is also significant for being the first one heard by the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of an act of Congress. In choosing to uphold the tax, the Court exercised judicial review, although it refrained from overturning the statute. While many say that Marbury v. Madison was the first case in which the Supreme Court exercised judicial review, this is not true. Marbury v. Madison was simply the first case in which the Supreme Court ruled an act of Congress unconstitutional.—Wikipeda