| The San Francisco Chronicle's conservative commentator, Debra J. Saunders, published an editorial about Judge Walker's decision overturning Prop 8. Her article is a shocking display of a lack of understanding of the United States Constitution and the role of the independent Judicial branch in our system of government: So one judge overturned a measure approved by 52 percent of California voters in 2008 and upheld by the California Supreme Court in a 6-1 ruling. Some Californians will see this decision as the work of an elitist gay judge imposing his preordained political views on voters.
And then she goes on to describe why she's one of those "Some Californians." Debra Saunders must have been absent on the day her Civics class taught the most important case ever decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, so let's take a walk back in time. In 1803, the Supreme Court decided Marbury v. Madison. This case articulated the Judiciary's power of "judicial review," the power to decide the constitutionality of the actions of the other two branches of government (a law passed by the Legislative branch or an action by the Executive branch.) Ever since then, every citizen's rights have been protected by the Court's power of judicial review. A primary reason judicial review exists is to protect the rights of unpopular minorities against what Alexis de Tocqueville described as the "tyranny of the majority." In our system of government, the majority does not get to take away rights that are protected by the Constitution from a minority group, no matter how unpopular that group is. Using the power of judicial review, our Courts have decided several controversial issues and have forced the majority to accept ideas with which it vehemently disagrees. Ideas like school integration. In Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruled that laws that created segregated schools violated the Equal Protection rights of racial minorities. Like Proposition 8, those laws were passed with a majority of people supporting them. And like Proposition 8, those laws were unconstitutional because they violated the rights of the minority. Another idea popular among the majority was prohibiting interracial marriage. In the 1950's and 1960s, most people believed that non-white people should be prohibited from marrying white people. Several states (including California) passed laws making inter-racial marriages illegal. These laws were very popular and passed with a majority of the people's representatives. They were based on many of the same arguments on which Proposition 8 is based (fear of the slippery slope: absurd arguments like "if black people can marry white people, how long before people can marry dogs?") But the laws were unconstitutional because they violated the rights of the minority. And in Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional all laws that prohibited interracial marriage. Our history is rich with cases where the Courts have overturned the will of the majority and protected the rights of the minority. In Debra Saunder's ideal world, however, these cases would not exist. In Debra Saunder's world, Brown v. Board of Education would have been decided the other way, leaving the dreadful Plessy v. Ferguson decision to be the law of the land and permitting racial segregation. In Debra Saunder's world, Loving v. Virginia would have been decided the other way, and states would be free to prohibit inter-racial marriages. Is this really the world in which Debra Saunders wants to live? As a straight, white, and relatively affluent person, it's easy for Debra Saunders to say that she doesn't need the Courts to protect her rights. But that's exactly the point, isn't it? The Courts are there to protect the rights of those who are least liked by society, not to blindly enforce the will of the majority. |
