Official Prop 8 Hearing (Not Doctrinal) Discussion Thread

[Hamilton Porter]

...

[Buckeye]

Justice Thomas's comments during oral argument are all the discussion needed for this topic.

[CASteinman]

What is the point of this thread?

[Questing Beast]

Three dots, and cute little dots they are too....

[Hamilton Porter]

Maybe, I don't know, talk about the legal issues?

[KevinG]

What would Brigham do?

(tried this on another thread and it seemed to die quickly)

[Tacenda]

What would Brigham do?

(tried this on another thread and it seemed to die quickly)

Expand.........?

[RobertAC]

Justice Thomas's comments during oral argument are all the discussion needed for this topic.

ROTFL!!!! Yes, he could not keep his eager mouth shut, could he?

On a serious note, I suspect that a majority of the justices will find that the Appellants have no standing. A couple may make statements concerning the merits, but the statements will provide pursuasive authority, but not binding authority. I predict that there will be no finding that there is a Constitutional right to same sex marriage. However, the Ninth Circuit will be upheld, and gay marriage will come back to California.

A murkier area is predicting whether any of the dicta in the Ninth Circuit or Supreme Court decisions will be used to establish same sex marriage in other parts of the Circuit, such as Idaho, in future cases.

Edited April 1, 2013 by RobertAC

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

Cool thread bro.

[RobertAC]

Expand.........?

Expanded . . .

[Stone holm]

What would Brigham do?

(tried this on another thread and it seemed to die quickly)

My prediction. Justice Kennedy writes the opinions in both the Prop 8 case and the DOMA case. The Prop 8 case gets dismissed for lack of standing with at least one concurring opinion and one dissent. DOMA case strikes down DOMA in a plurality decision with Kennedy writing the opinion based on a Federalism argument that the Congress had no business mucking around in state marriage law and the four liberal leaning Justices file a concurring opinion as to the result only but basing their opinion on an equal protection argument and Scalia writes an acidic dissent. There is a possibility that one of the conservative Justices might join Kennedy's narrow opinion. The real scary possibility is that all of the conservatives join Kennedy's narrow opinion and inaugurate another Lochner type war between Congress and the White House versus the SCOTUS.