Mass Supreme Court finds restraint

Opinion Journal:

Nearly three years ago, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts read between the lines of the state constitution to discover a right to same-sex marriage previously undetected across the decades. The court then gave the legislature six months to rewrite state law to accommodate its diktat.

On Wednesday, however, the same court suddenly rediscovered the humility so lacking in its previous foray into the marriage debate. Before the court was a case brought by the governor together with citizens who had presented an initiative to amend the state constitution and so define marriage as a pact between a man and a woman. The petitioners had gathered more than 150,000 signatures. According to the state constitution, the legislature must now vote twice on the measure in successive legislative sessions before the amendment can be put on the ballot for a vote by the electorate.

...
They some how managed to get it wrong in both cases. There was no authority for them to order legislation, yet the constitution did require the legislators to vote on the petition and ordering them to do so would have been merely enforcing the constitution. In both cases they put their prejudices ahead of the law and the constitution.

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