For anyone still interested in the federalism/gay marriage issue, this article from Volokher Jacob Levy is a must-read. Money quote:

[The FMA] does not merely limit and constrain state laws. It dictates a rule about how state laws and state constitutions will be construed and interpreted by the state’s own courts. That is an unprecedented intrusion into the autonomy of the states’ legal systems. Instead of limiting state law with federal law, from the outside, it would distort state law from within.

Great. For those of you just joining our legal system (as I assume FMA supporters are), there are a few simple rules:

1. The U.S. Constitution and federal law are supreme to state laws.

2. State courts don’t tell federal courts how to interpret federal law.

3. Federal courts do tell state courts how to interpret federal law.

4. State courts do tell federal courts how to interpret state law.

5. Federal courts don’t tell state courts how to interpret state law.

Never has anything in the U.S. Constitution, federal laws, or the decisions of federal courts dictated to state courts how to apply state constitutions and laws. In the words of the estimable Tim Dreier, “This is just stupid. Just plain dumb. I can’t even express in words how utterly distasteful and wrong this idea is.”

By the way, in my opinion, every marriage should be a gay marriage. Who wants to be miserable?

UPDATE. I now know how to spell “distasteful.” No more snickering remarks.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 18th, 2004 at 12:49 by danimal and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.