Posted on 01/06/2016 5:28:23 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Defying history, the law, and common sense, Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore has issued an order prohibiting Alabama probate judges from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Those judges now face a choice between disobeying the law of the land and disobeying their boss. Moore issued his law not as chief justice, but in his administrative role as head of the Alabama court system.
This is not Justice Moore's first Hail Mary in the lost cause against gay marriage -- and he's not alone. All over the country, activists and law professors are wasting paper on fatuous proclamations that Obergefell v. Hodges is not really the law of the land, or is illegitimate because it's so horrible, or is somehow, some way not as binding as the Supreme Court said it was.
Roy Moore is just the only one who's a state supreme court justice.
As with Moore's past efforts to delay the inevitable, today's order was a melange of the sensible and the risible.
On the sensible side, Justice Moore does have some law on his side -- in fact, three extremely narrow, technical threads on which he hangs his order.
First, technically speaking, Obergefell only bound the five states that were a party to it. Since Alabama was not one of those states, technically its law is caught in limbo. Second, the Alabama Supreme Court upheld its same-sex marriage ban on March 3, 2015.
And third, injunctions stemming from two federal cases challenging the ban are, as Moore opined last February, only binding on the executive branch, not the judicial branch -- which includes probate judges. This appears to have been an oversight, the result of a pleading error by one of the parties. But rather than extend them in a common-sense way, Moore chose to restrict them
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
The British are trying to be expert in United States Law again. Their prejudice are showing quite well.
“Those judges now face a choice between disobeying the law of the land and disobeying their boss.”
Responsibility devolves on Moore, not the judges. Nice to see someone regard fighting gay marriage as a top priority.
Hey, just like the second amendment is under fire, the state, locals, etc., can make obtaining a homo license so burdensome (like guns/ammo in Chicago, California, etc.), they might actually move to another state. Tax the crap outta them (no pun intended), fill out forms till the sun don’t shine (that special place), if they want to press a business to service them, make em fill out forms forever, and wait for authorization, and on, and on. Sorta like the ATF. Six months later, they can marry, maybe, if there aren’t any delays.
RE: Those judges now face a choice between disobeying the law of the land and disobeying their boss
What Law of the land? The US Legislature never passed a law legalizing gay marriage. Neither did the American people vote on it via a referendum.
Judge Moore is one tough ol’ boot.
Good for him!
Law of the land my foot. The Supreme Court didn’t follow the law of the land in its ruling on gay “marriage”. This judge is at least trying to do that.
Still trying to identify the “specific law of the land” that the Supreme Fools are referencing?
Would my love for my dog be “marriage” under tax law?
Please show me this "law".
The “law of the land”??? What a joke! We had a law here in GA, and it sure didn’t allow for same-sex weddings!
Article 3,section 2 US Constitution:
“In ALL CASES where a STATE is a Party to the Action, the supreme Court SHALL have ORIGINAL Jurisdiction.
The word “Shall” means it is Required, Mandatory, Not Optional....
Last time I looked this was an “Appellate Decision” It CAN NOT POSSIBLY to the States, only the Parties Involved.
That is not what it says. It says between states and citizens of another state.
Amendment 10 of the Bill of Rights reserves all power not granted to the Federal Government by the Constitution to the states.
The Constitution does not grant to the United States the power to decide what marriage is. It just isn’t there. For that matter, neither is abortion.
If homo marriage is okay, there is justification against marrying your brother, your grandfather or your son(s).
Exactly right!
So much wrong with this article.
First, the supreme law of the land is the Constitution, not the opinions of judges.
Secondly, Moore didn’t order anybody to do anything. It was simply an advisory letter to the probate judges.
And last, but not least, though some folks are getting excited over this letter, I can’t share their enthusiasm. He’s arguing a legal technicality, not that SCOTUS is in Obergrfell in violation of the laws of nature and nature’s God, or outside their lawful constitutional jurisdiction, and therefore not to be obeyed.
He cedes that the Supreme Court is the “controlling” power.
Under his rubric, judges in Alabama will be bound to commit these abominations and pretend to “marry” “gays” if the SCOTUS tells them to.
So, personally, I don’t see this as some great victory.
Abraham Lincoln:
“... The candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government, upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties, in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having, to that extent, practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.” (First Inaugural Address)
Thomas Jefferson:
“You seem . . . to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.” (Letter to William Jarvis, Sept. 28, 1820)
“Nothing in the Constitution has given them [the federal judges] a right to decide for the Executive, more than to the Executive to decide for them. . . . The opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves, in their own sphere of action, but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch.” (Letter to Abigail Adams, September 11, 1804)
“The original error [was in] establishing a judiciary independent of the nation, and which, from the citadel of the law, can turn its guns on those they were meant to defend, and control and fashion their proceedings to its own will.” (Letter to John Wayles Eppes, 1807)
“Our Constitution . . . intending to establish three departments, co-ordinate and independent that they might check and balance one another, it has given—according to this opinion to one of them alone the right to prescribe rules for the government of others; and to that one, too, which is unelected by and independent of the nation. . . . The Constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.” (Letter to Judge Spencer Roane, Sept. 6, 1819)
“The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. They are construing our constitution from a co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone. This will lay all things at their feet, and they are too well versed in English law to forget the maxim, “boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem” [good judges have ample jurisdiction]. . . . A judiciary independent of a king or executive alone, is a good thing; but independence of the will of the nation is a solecism, at least in a republican government.” (Letter to Thomas Ritchie, Dec. 25, 1820)
“The germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal Judiciary; an irresponsible body (for impeachment is scarcely a scare-crow) working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped.” (Letter to Charles Hammond, August 18, 1821)
“The great object of my fear is the Federal Judiciary. That body, like gravity, ever acting with noiseless foot and unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step and holding what it gains, is engulfing insidiously the special governments into the jaws of that which feeds them.” (Letter to Judge Spencer Roane, 1821)
“At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life if secured against all liability to account.” (Letter to A. Coray, October 31, 1823)
“One single object... [will merit] the endless gratitude of the society: that of restraining the judges from usurping legislation.” (Letter to Edward Livingston, March 25, 1825)
“What Law of the land?”
It looks like now, with some posters, it is if you happen to agree with it.
It’s our patriotic duty to defy degeneracy and Communist tyranny, the leftist agenda.
LOL! Sodomites talking about “common sense” when one of their own 53-year-old men thinks he’s a 6-year-old little “girl.” OMG, you can’t make this stuff up!
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