The Powerful Opinions of Instant Experts
By John McCormack asserts that Ed Whelan provides a “takedown” of the Iowa Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage ruling. Wow, could it be that a conservative has actually engaged in analysis of a judicial opinion rather than making bare assertions that any judicial opinion that reaches a political outcome the commentator finds uncongenial is ipso facto undemocratic?
Whelan starts out by claiming that the unanimous decision by the (electorally accountable for re-appointment) Court with a Republican-appointed Chief Judge is “lawless.” Such a charge, one would assume, could only result from a detailed analysis derived from the great expertise in Iowa equal protection law Whelan undoubtedly possesses. So here is Whelan’s detailed analysis of two brief excerpts from the court’s ruling, presented in its entirety:
If you were not attuned to the deceptive rhetoric of living-constitutionalist judges, you would sensibly imagine that that proposition would mean that the court would defer to the standard of the current generation reflected in the statute that Iowa adopted in 1998. But no…
[…]
What gobbledygook.
Well, I’m convinced! The quality of this “takedown” tells you all you need to know about whether the decision can plausibly be described as “lawless”…
…fellow expert in Iowa equal protection law Tom Maguire also somehow just…knows that this unanimous opinion was about “result, not process,” and in classic conservative junior-high-civics-class (except that they missed the day in which the teacher pointed out that in the American system legislative enactments are subject to judicial review) manner says that “I just wish that we could have a bit more respect for the democratic process and settle this in legislatures rather than employing this Democratic process of legislating through the courts.” The claim that opposition to judicial decisions regarding same-sex marriage are primarily about procedure rather than substances hasn’t gotten any more convincing than the last time he made it.