![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
joedecker: the CA Supreme Court will hear all three petitions filed in response to Prop 8, but will not stay enforcement of the amendment.So, not the best possible scenario, but not the worst either. The Court's order, given today, is here; no opinion is given as to why the request for stay of enforcement was denied. Conveniently, the Court has provided us with an omnibus of filings related to Prop 8 in their "high profile cases" section. Each of the three cases has a section called "Letters requesting denial of petition and request for stay"; I have not had time to read through them, though I will do so later and summarize the argument as I'm able. (It's been a busy couple of weeks over here.)
Glancing over the letters, I noticed two interesting things. First, though most of those letters are calling for a denial of certiorari and a denial of the stay, the Pacific Justice Center calls for a denial of writ on Tyler v. California and City and County of San Francisco v. Horton -- but only a denial of stay in Strauss v. Horton. (The Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence wrote one letter about all three cases. From a 30-second glance, it appears that the American Center for Law and Justice sent three separate but materially similar letters, one for each case.) The PJC's argument for denying the stay in Strauss v. Horton is a status-quo argument -- "same-sex marriage was only allowed for a couple of months, the status quo for most of the history of California has been no same-sex marriage" -- but I am curious why they did not call for a denial of certiorari as well.
Second, check out who the letter-writers are under Strauss v. Horton. Most of them are law firms or policy institutes. But one of them is under the name of a nonprofit organisation which, apparently, consists of just one woman who styles herself "Heiress Of The Almighty Eternal Creator" [sic] and purports to also be filing on behalf of said Almighty Eternal Creator (!), and one of them is under the name of just one guy. (Yes, their addresses are on the PDFs. I am going to be very, very upset if I hear about people TPing their houses or something, just FYI.)
Welcome to America, folks. Follow the rules of civil and appellate procedure, make sure you provide proof of service to the appropriate parties and meet the filing deadlines, and you, too, can have anything from lucid, reasoned argumentation to ranting whackjobbery and wild claims about your divine nature entered into the court record as an amicus curiae letter. It's your right to do so and it's the court's responsibility to handle it.
Point being, though -- if you want to have your say before the Court, those are some mighty nice templates to follow. You'll probably want to check out the petitions in support of the petitioner, as well, to make sure you're serving the right folks. Their addresses, and the formal language you'll need to establish that you served the petitioners and respondents correctly, are at the back of each letter.
So what are you waiting for? Let's see some amicus curiae letters! I don't care if you're in California or not -- judging by the number at the top of the fax they sent in, the American Center for Law and Justice is in Virginia, and all three lawyers signing their letters state that they're not admitted to the California bar.
Today's order, by the way, also orders the following:
- Secretary of State Bowen requested to be dismissed as a respondent; the Court granted the request.
- "Proposition 8 Official Proponents et al" moved to intervene in all three cases; the motion was granted.
- "Campaign for California Families" moved to intervene in all three cases; the motion was denied.
- A number of state agencies and offices (including the Attorney General), as respondents, are ordered to show cause why the petitioners' requests should not be granted. (This is standard; these state agencies are the ones being sued. Can they say "Um, actually, we think they should be granted"? That's what I want to know.)
- Anyone who wants to file an amicus curiae ("friend of the court") brief has until January 19th. Again, get cracking!
- Location:San Francisco, CA
- Mood:
busy
Profile
- maradydd
- Meredith L. Patterson
- thesmartpolitenerd.com
Page Summary
- michiexile : Ehm .... interpreter? [+1]
- midgardsorm : (no subject) [+3]
- mycroftxxx : (no subject) [+1]
- baxil : (no subject) [+1]
- joedecker : (no subject) [+2]
- (Anonymous) : morality of science [+0]
Comments
Specific things that leave me completely lost here are:
* amicus curiae brief
* certioari
* Difference between denial of writ, denial of stay and denial of certioari
* Moving to intervene
It would be very helpful for us outsiders following along.
certiorari- that's where the court says it'll hear the case. There's more specifics to it, but that's the short version.
denial of writ/certiorari/stay- denial of writ and denial of certiorari is the same thing, as far as I know. it's called the 'writ of certiorari'. the denial of certiorari is essentially asking the court to NOT intervene. A 'stay' is a legal requirement to stop a behavior. In this case, if the Cali Supreme Court issued a stay regarding Prop 8, it would not go into effect. The proponents of Prop 8 wanted a denial of stay. The California Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, but denied the stay, meaning that gay couples cannot get married until the court has heard arguments and decided one way or the other.
Moving to intervene-I'm not as clear on this one, but I'm pretty sure that this is where organizations ask if they can be responsible or not for the court case. In the case of Campaign for California Families, they were asking that they can be one of the responsible parties in the court case (correct me if I'm wrong).
Very interesting. Now correct me if I am wrong, but in filing an amicus curiae, you are basically submitting a treatise or opinion to them for consideration, and your obligation typically ends there?
It might be interesting for someone to make some arguments to the court that the current (legal) definitions of gender are inadequate to encompass the biological diversity of our species (chromosomal abnormalities for example (relatively common) and hermaphroditism (rare,)) that hetero-, bi- and homosexuality likely have genetic components in many cases, and thus that defining marriage as "one man & one woman" is essentially a murky, ill-defined conceptual process at best that is currently rooted in overly simplistic traditions which do not fit neatly into the modern biological reality.
Hmmm....
Through a variety of channels the news media is putting a spin on it that Prop. 8 was pushed through "by black voters" who turned out for Obama. I find that kind of hard to swallow. I would be willing to bet that the senior citizen / religious right voting block was what really made the difference.
My understanding is that that even the mormon residents in CA showed up to vote in favor of Prop. 8, (their leadership even told them to.) Pretty disgusting, but not surprising that religious intolerance at the root of it.
That's right, humans descended from monkeys via bears.
(Here via a long chain of links from my LJ friends list. Thanks for staying on top of the Prop. 8 fallout.)
In thinking about what I might be able to add, I'm thinking about expanding the part of the argument in Tyler that brushes past the nuclear option, suggest that that option is forced if 8 is valid because if is consistent with 8 and EP, then actually walk through how revisiony that would be in detail. If the court for one moment gets to the NO, let's make sure we've paved the from there to overturning 8.
Sent via phone, apologies for any word salad.
Very quickly, NO=Nuclear Option==my silly nickname for the legal theory that says, in part, that the effect of Proposition 8 being upheld must be the "withholding of the designation of marriage from all Californians." The brief I'm putting together uses this as an intermediate step towards overturning Prop.8 on other grounds. It's not necessarily a very *good* legal theory, by the way.
Tyler is "Tyler et al v. California et al", one of the six lawsuits the Court has elected to hear in the cases that set out to overturn Proposition 8.
Since the Court agreed to hear all six cases, many folks wanting to weigh in on these matters felt they needed to file "friend of the court letters" six times, one for each case. The main thing to note in my post is that the Court appears to have said "don't bother, file it in respect to one case and we'll consider it in all six", something which may save me a good deal of photocopying and mailing.
IMO, the concept is simple. Regardless of any particular biological issues, Nature has no morality. You have to actually define a solid stopping point, which is not provided via science or nature. Thus in order to preserve a modicum of morality, we must define the line in the sand somewhere, somehow, and sometime. Why not now?
Just because I believe that there is a line that shouldn't be crossed doesn't mean that I'm denying some fundamental right, nor discriminating. Is it discrimination to deny a convicted murderer the freedom to wander around the streets, or any convicted criminal for that matter? It's no different. The line has been drawn, certain actions are considered a crime legally and morally. Thereby, isn't it the express privilege of the voters to state that this is a line that we don't want crossed? I'm not saying that same sex couples are criminals, it's just a convenient example. Laws are, by definition, expressions of enforceable morality, or the enforcement of acceptable actions for the public. Without laws, accepted and voted into practice by the majority, we would not have the freedom we have today.
Imagine if our founders had denied God and used science and nature as the guide to writing the constitution. Laws allow enforcement of social values that, as evidenced by serial killers and corporate executives, some of us simply don't have naturally. ALL laws are the embodiment of some morality that nature, in it's supposedly infinite power, doesn't supply.
We all have the freedom to choose. We can follow the non-scientific morality of the law, or we can go to prison for our crimes, or be divorced from our spouse, or whatever other legal ramifications are attached to our actions. I don't care if somebody is gay, I will interact with them based on who they are, not what sexual orientation they prefer. I simply believe that marriage should be reserved for a man and a woman. It's not making gay relationships illegal, any more than requiring a marriage license makes living with your boyfriend or girlfriend or having an affair illegal. It's just a line in the sand. IMO it's a line that is important to draw, lest we loose all notion of morality forever. Scientific understanding of the human body, and the brain, and many other natural occurrences regarding humanity, has not altered the fact that it is illegal to commit murder. Just so, science cannot be allowed to pervert the historical and societal underpinnings by sanctioning the marriage of same sex couples.
IMO the judicial system is a means of enforcing majority accepted behaviors, not the cold amoral ideals of science. Therefore, having gotten a majority vote, Proposition 8 is simply saying that we won't accept the minority foisting upon us there will.
Please keep in mind, this is only my opinion. I respect that everyone has feelings towards this issue, and these are mine.
I'm not arguing with anyone here, I am glad that I haven't read any of the typical knee jerk religious bashing, with the exception of one person who made a passing comment about religious intolerance, that is prominent on boards of any kind discussing this topic. I'm simply stating an opinion.
I would also like to encourage any and all of you to do what your heart tells you is right. Mine tells me that marriage, as is evidenced by the entirety of the history of the human race, and animals in general, is for a man and a woman.
If you've made it this far, thank you for allowing me to express my view.