A.S. Haley: The Rout (not Rule) of Law

July 21, 2015

I am an attorney, licensed to practice law in California (and also to appear in a number of federal courts, including the United States Supreme Court). As such, I take an oath to uphold the Constitution, and I take the oath seriously.

The Justices of the Supreme Court take two oaths upon entering their lifetime offices, which you may read here. Suffice it to say that each Justice undertakes "to support and defend" our Constitution, and to "faithfully and impartially" perform the duties of their office. After the 5-4 "decision" last month in Obergefell v. Hodges, there is a legitimate question as to whether Justices Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan any longer respect their oaths.

Are those strong words? They are intended to be. Consider just this fact:

Well before the Obergefell case ever came to the Supreme Court, both Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Justice Elena Kagan officiated at same-sex marriage ceremonies. Yet neither of them saw fit to recuse themselves from deciding whether same-sex marriages must be imposed on all States under the Fourteenth Amendment. They simply ignored the request to do so, because it was filed not by a party to the case, but by amici curiae ("friends of the court", who may offer advice, but are not actual parties).

How does the Justices' insistence on participating in the decision reflect any impartiality in the matter whatsoever? Their minds were already closed on the subject.   the rest image

When all three branches of the national government show such contempt for the rule of law, one might expect anarchy to result, but instead (because of the powers already vested in them) we get Animal Farm. The resulting elitism of those within the Beltway turns our country's founding principle on its head.