I thought that the Supreme Court's mandate was to decide whether a law violates the Constitution and little more.
This is... I don't even know where to begin on how fundamentally wrong this is.
The Supreme Court is established by Article III of the Constitution. It's the end of the line for any legal question that falls under the jurisdiction outlined by Article III, which consists of far, far, far more than "whether a law violates the Constitution and little more".
As for this opinion, the Court explains very clearly the Constitutional issue: DOMA violates the Fifth Amendment. DOMA also has federalism issues, and so in theory a Tenth Amendment problem, but that's not actually necessary in order to strike it down.
How does the fifth apply? Nobody involved were changed with a crime, nor did they strictly speaking lose any rights, as they could at any time marry a person of the opposite gender (and hetero-sexual people can't marry anybody of the same sex either).
I would have assumed that the 14th amendment would have applied.
The Fifth Amendment includes a guarantee that "No person shall... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law".
"Due process of law" is the key here; the government cannot simply say "well, we don't like this person, so we're just going to decree arbitrarily that he doesn't get the same rights as other people".
What it actually means will vary depending on what the government is trying to do; in a criminal case, for example, due process includes all the procedures and safeguards to make sure you get a fair trial before you can be thrown in prison.
Of course, DOMA is more or less literally the federal government saying "we don't like these people, so we're just going to decree arbitrarily that they don't get the same rights as other people".
The Fifth Amendment is the relevant one here because the first batch of amendments -- the Bill of Rights -- are traditionally interpreted as only restraining what the federal government can do; they do not, it is generally believed, constrain the states. The Fourteenth Amendment added equal-protection and due-process requirements for the states, so when a state does something that treats people unequally the Fourteenth Amendment is what the resulting lawsuit usually turns on.
Comments
I thought that the Supreme Court's mandate was to decide whether a law violates the Constitution and little more.
This is... I don't even know where to begin on how fundamentally wrong this is.
The Supreme Court is established by Article III of the Constitution. It's the end of the line for any legal question that falls under the jurisdiction outlined by Article III, which consists of far, far, far more than "whether a law violates the Constitution and little more".
As for this opinion, the Court explains very clearly the Constitutional issue: DOMA violates the Fifth Amendment. DOMA also has federalism issues, and so in theory a Tenth Amendment problem, but that's not actually necessary in order to strike it down.
How does the fifth apply? Nobody involved were changed with a crime, nor did they strictly speaking lose any rights, as they could at any time marry a person of the opposite gender (and hetero-sexual people can't marry anybody of the same sex either).
I would have assumed that the 14th amendment would have applied.
The Fifth Amendment includes a guarantee that "No person shall... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law".
"Due process of law" is the key here; the government cannot simply say "well, we don't like this person, so we're just going to decree arbitrarily that he doesn't get the same rights as other people".
What it actually means will vary depending on what the government is trying to do; in a criminal case, for example, due process includes all the procedures and safeguards to make sure you get a fair trial before you can be thrown in prison.
Of course, DOMA is more or less literally the federal government saying "we don't like these people, so we're just going to decree arbitrarily that they don't get the same rights as other people".
The Fifth Amendment is the relevant one here because the first batch of amendments -- the Bill of Rights -- are traditionally interpreted as only restraining what the federal government can do; they do not, it is generally believed, constrain the states. The Fourteenth Amendment added equal-protection and due-process requirements for the states, so when a state does something that treats people unequally the Fourteenth Amendment is what the resulting lawsuit usually turns on.
Ok, thanks for the clarification.