It sounds so easy when you put it like that, doesn't it? If it's invalid, we ignore it. Mary says it's valid. Betty says it's invalid. Who's right? Shouldn't we all be able to look at it and instantly know its meaning, if it's that simple? For that matter, if it's so clear and obvious, why are there still people disagreeing with you about the meaning of the Constitution? Why is it that you seem to have a handle on its objective meaning, but I don't? Why do so many fail to do what you imply ought to be easy to do?
What if you could be convinced that the 11th Circuit court is wrong? Would you still be arguing that he's obligated to follow a ruling that you know for a fact is unconstitutional? Would you likewise argue that one is obligated to obey an act of Congress that you know is unconstitutional?
We all, in a democratic republic, have a moral obligation to work within the system for peaceful change. I dispute right off the bat this contention that there is any way of knowing "for a fact" that something is Constitutional or not, other than in the sorts of law-school hypotheticals where the law is literally antonymous to the Constitution - the sorts of hypothetical cases that don't actually exist in reality, IOW - but setting that aside, Judge Moore has a legal means of recourse available to him. He may appeal to the Supreme Court for relief, and if that fails, he may appeal to the public at large to amend the Constitution to reflect his interpretation, such that it will be clearer that his preferred interpretation is the correct interpretation.
Failing that, he has three options. One, obey the law as it exists, rather than as he prefers it to be. Two, face whatever penalties exist for failing to obey the law. Three, leave. Those are his choices, and mine, and yours. My personal preference would be for Judge Moore to embrace legal reality as it is, rather than acting in accordance with how he thinks it ought to be - I don't like seeing anyone punished for simply being wrong - but that is his decision, and I frankly don't have too much sympathy for a man who has traversed the ground from being simply wrong to being willfully wrong.
Either way, he has no right, legal or moral, to exempt himself from a law that binds everyone else by mutual agreement. We all enjoy the freedoms guaranteed to us by God, the Constitution, and each other, but incumbent upon that is the obligation to respect the institutions that we have created in service to those freedoms. And if Judge Moore finds that he is unable to freely and fully honor those obligations as a public servant, then he neither deserves nor will have his position for much longer.
Imagine the discord that would result from having no standard of reference at all. Law removes sources of disagreement. The disagreement you see now is merely residual.
Completely disagree. We have now exactly the same disputes as existed before the law - the law merely provides a means of peacefully resolving those disputes. Now I invoke the law when I find you in possession of my ox, rather than simply bashing your skull in as I might have done in a simpler time. ;)
You're continuing to read more into my statements than there actually is. I didn't say that the task of determining what the law says is easy or that its meaning is obvious. I said that its meaning is fixed. Can you at least agree on that much, that the law has a fixed meaning, even if that meaning is not immediately clear?
I dispute right off the bat this contention that there is any way of knowing "for a fact" that something is Constitutional or not, other than in the sorts of law-school hypotheticals where the law is literally antonymous to the Constitution - the sorts of hypothetical cases that don't actually exist in reality, IOW
Let me see if I understand what you're saying. You're saying that, at least in "law-school" theory, there can be a case where a law or court ruling is obviously unconstitutional, but that it'll never happen in reality? So in other words, there's a certain range of possibilities within which rulings can legitimately fall, and if they fall outside of that range, then we can say it's "obviously" unconstitutional. And furthermore, you're saying that in reality it'll never fall outside of that range. Well then in that case what's the whole deal with judicial review in the first place? Why not just allow representative bodies to pass whatever laws they like, since they would never pass anything that's "obviously" unconstitutional, since everyone can see that it's unconstitutional.
The alternative view, which I take, is that it is indeed possible to "know for a fact" what the law says, even if it's not immediately obvious in a particular case.
We have now exactly the same disputes as existed before the law - the law merely provides a means of peacefully resolving those disputes. Now I invoke the law when I find you in possession of my ox, rather than simply bashing your skull in as I might have done in a simpler time.
Except now I know that it's against law for me to be in possession of your ox in the first place, whereas before it was a purely subjective matter. Without the law, who's to say that it was even "your" ox to begin with? So yes, the law has prevented a dispute from arising, even if it doesn't prevent all disputes. The ones that remain are, as I said, residual.
Of course, if you're a lawyer, or even if you have an interest in following legal disputes, it's going to appear to you that law is all about conflict, because that's the aspect you've focused on. But by focusing on it, you're taking for granted the extent to which law prevents disputes from arising. It's the absense of disputes which proves its success, and of course absence is the hardest thing to see.