@engineer,
engineer wrote:I heard one review of the opinion saying that by making it a ruling on facts that it has a much higher chance of withstanding appeal.
I heard that too on
NPR this morning:
Quote:
Northwestern University law professor Andrew Koppelman says U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker increased the odds of surviving appeal by basing his decision on his finding of fact — something appeals courts usually defer to — rather than his interpretation of the law.
In his lengthy ruling, Walker said the voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage violated the constitutional rights of due process and equal protection, and prevented California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis.
"He did not say that as a matter of law, gay people are a protected class under the 14th amendment," Koppelman said. "He said that as a matter of fact, the justifications for this law that were offered by its defenders rested on factually false premises. And it's very hard for a court on appeal to say he was wrong about that."
That's true in normal circumstances, but I'm not sure it's true in
this circumstance. In normal circumstances, an appellate court will defer to the trial court's factual determinations unless they are clearly erroneous. This, however, is a case where the court was creating a legislative record for a citizen's initiative -- something that is, as far as I can see, unprecedented. In this situation, I'm not sure why the judge's factual determinations should be given any deference whatsoever.
It's telling what Prof. Koppelman said to NPR about the judge's ruling: "He said that as a matter of fact, the justifications for this law that were offered by its defenders rested on factually false premises." That, I think, is far beyond the competence of the court. California, for better or worse, has decided that it wants citizen initiatives. As far as I know, there is no requirement in the California constitution that citizen initiatives must be based on factually sound premises. For the court to strike down an initiative because it isn't factually sound, therefore, strikes me as a judicial usurpation of the legislative function (in this case, the legislative function as exercised by the citizenry through the initiative process).
The citizens of California are entitled to pass whatever initiative they want, whether it's a good idea or a bad idea. It's not up to the courts to strike down an initiative because it thinks that the citizens must have been nuts to pass something that the court disagrees with. If the court is to invalidate a citizen initiative, it must do so on
legal grounds, not
factual ones.
Now, as I've mentioned before, I haven't read the entire opinion. Maybe some of my doubts and reservations will be resolved when I do. But my initial reaction remains that this is a deeply flawed decision.
