Arrrrgh, I Still Don’t Know What I’m Talkin’ About

Shorter Captain Ed: You know what would be really neat? A constitutional amendment that would guarantee that judges would never make decisions I disagree with (you know, “mischief” involving marriage like Loving v. Virgnia.) I can’t see any problem with that! And the conservative base obviously disagrees more with “judicial activism” than with gay marriage, which is why they think a constitutional amendment that prevents legislatures from creating gay marriage if anything doesn’t go far enough.

And as I’ve mentioned before, his certainty about what judges should do is unburdened by any actual knowledge of the cases he’s discussing. He’s still erroneously telling his readers that the Supreme Court located abortion rights in the Fourth Amendment, and claiming that the Court has held “that teenagers can have abortions without parental consent.” (Sadly, No!)

A final point worth making, since this will come up even among people who have read the decisions they’re certain are wrong, is with respect to the claim that the Goodridge decision somehow thwarted the will of the people of Massachusetts. It’s not clear in what sense this is actually true. The state constitution has a provision to hold a referendum in such cases if the legislature objects; it failed. Legislators who supported the court fared better in state elections than those that didn’t. Goodridge is a classic case of conservatives assuming that if they disagree with a court’s decision it must be unpopular–the same incorrect assumption, of course, they make with Roe.