Justice Delayed is Justice Denied

[ras_elased]

So, with the Prop 8 Trial that I've been following the last few weeks, I've been thinking a lot about what rides on this trial, and where I stand on the issue of whether or not this trial is a good idea

Comments

[ras_elased]

I didn't mean to offend or imply that there aren't any other problems in the world. I know the world is far from perfect and will never be a utopian society free of injustices worth fighting for. Even women, who earned the right to vote almost a century ago, are not truly equal in their rights and privileges. I don't believe any minority is truly equal in practice, but marriage is, as far as I am familiar, the last basic civil liberty denied to a targeted subset of the population. And even once that hurdle is achieved, there will still be many smaller ones to surpass.

And I do feel these reasons for saying "Wait" are comparable, given that they were both instances of the members of a cause who favored moderate action (older suffragists who supported state-by-state actions and white clergymen who supported equality but through different channels) just like the people who support marriage equality through the channel of state-by-state legal action. It's true that this case may fail, but I support it because I favor bold action, and I feel that this case is a more direct path, which I also favor. I think the concerns about the Justices are valid, but I also feel that it's right to expect the Court to uphold justice, if for no other reason than precedent supports it.

I'm sorry if you feel my views don't mesh with yours for whatever reason, but luckily we're both entitled to our own views.

[wordsdiminish]

I wanted to point out something that my brother and I were discussing earlier this evening: the SCOTUS may be currently leaning conservative at the moment, but Kennedy is much more of a question mark on this topic -- IMHO -- than seems to be being widely discussed. In fact, it's likely that it might come down to him.

There's two things that people have to remember about Kennedy. One, he is a public policy conservative, but he is much more libertarian when it comes to social policy. And two, the fact that he penned the majority case opinion for Lawrence v. Texas is pretty credible evidence that his vote on Perry v. Schwarzenegger is by far a forgone conclusion.

[ras_elased]

I didn't know about the Lawrence case! I knew he also penned the majority opinion in Romer v. Evans. I actually discussed that in my commentary on Day 7 of the trial (way, WAY down at the bottom) so that's even more evidence that he's "up for grabs" so to speak. Thanks for the tip!