Your proposition 8 concerns are very intriguing on a practical level, I would suggest the following:
California lost, by posting a lackluster defense.
This is a case of Constitutional law review, where legal precedent must be presented to the Court (in other words there will be little if any dispute of material facts that will be decided by a fact finder, simply a ruling on law), it is not as if California could or the other side could withhold legal precedent from the Court (even if it is adverse to their position), in fact the lawyers could be sanctioned for knowingly withholding case law that is on point. Further, the Court performs its own research, review, and analysis of the existing case law. In my opinion there are far to many safeguards for these types of abuses or throwing of a case.
There is a world of difference between "put up an acceptable defense" and "defended to the limit of their ability".
Opponents of the proposition pick a district court with a judge whose bias is known. The state puts up a defense, loses, and then does not appeal. There are, now, no safeguards blocking this sequence. Nobody can be sanctioned for it. And nobody aside from the disinterested state has standing to complain.
The protection of the court is useless if you cannot get your day in court.
Opponents of the proposition pick a district court with a judge whose bias is known. The state puts up a defense, loses, and then does not appeal. There are, now, no safeguards blocking this sequence. Nobody can be sanctioned for it.
Incorrect. California voters, if the issue is important to them, can remove the offending officials. And they don't even have to wait until the next regular election for the particular officers targetted, given California's recall provisions. (And, given that California directly elects executive officers like the Attorney-General separately, rather than them being appointees, it can do so in a reasonably fine-grained manner.)
And, the people that have run statewide proposition campaigns are, by demonstrated experience, fairly uniquely qualified to apply that sanction should it be necessary.
That is indirect, and is consistently ineffective.
For example, consider hypothetical state propositions limiting when elected officials can solicit donations, or providing for specific penalties to elected officials should they fail to do certain things (eg pass a budget on time). There are many such propositions that could be popular with voters, and would certainly be unpopular with any elected official.
For that class of proposition, the ability to vote in different elected officials does not actually give the public an effective tool to get the state to support the proposition.
Opponents of the proposition pick a district court with a judge whose bias is known.
First you can not "pick" a District Court Judge, cases are assigned to District Court Judges.
The state puts up a defense, loses, and then does not appeal. There are, now, no safeguards blocking this sequence.
The first ruling is the safeguard...Judges can not just rule according to their gut or "bias" they have to follow precedent - they can not ignore case law nor can the attorneys.
Besides, if you think the State is acting so unethically, in basically throwing the case (which again is not really possible in a Federal Court Civil Rights Case), then they will simply take the appeal to blok a private party from doing so, and just lose that case. Then what? Appeal to the SCOTUS? Well as it stands the SCOTUS does not have to take any case, in fact the majority of cases they appealed to them they do not to take, approximately 90% of every case they hear is some death penalty appeal. SCOTUS has a history of passing on very important issues, and could have passed on DOMA if they wanted.
The protection of the court is useless if you cannot get your day in court.
They had there day in Court and lost, they decided not to appeal, no one can force a party to appeal. It is not for private parties to assume they could have done better than the State and interject themselves in the State's place and appeal. That opens a floodgate of real issues. Who has standing when multiple parties want to take the case? What if one of those parties is actually adverse to the position?
You may not pick the judge, but you can pick the district. Also not every case filed will go all of the way through to a decision, so you can file multiple cases then actually litigate the one that wound up in front of the judge that you want. (There are safeguards against that. They are imperfect...)
Furthermore while in theory judges have to follow precedent and case law, in practice there are lots of cases where well-meaning and dedicated judges, presented with the same facts, precedent, and case law, will come to opposite conclusion. Were it otherwise, the Supreme Court would never have dissenting opinions.
Finally, courts do have the right to request that the arguments that they wish to hear about particular points of law be made in front of them. For example in proposition 8, the justices required that the standing argument be made, even though neither side wanted to advance it. In the Affordable Healthcare Act this went further. An attorney, Robert Long, wound up having to be appointed specifically to make the case to the Supreme Court for a point that neither side wished to argue. That point being that the law was a tax, and therefore under the Anti-Injunction Act no lawsuit could be brought about it until after someone had been injured by actually paying it.
That last point matters in this case. The state actively did not want to defend this case in front of the district court. The judge wanted it defended. That is how a different set of attorneys got involved in the first place.
IANAL, but I believe that to have 'standing' you must show that you have been affected or harmed by the law in question.
The petitioners were claiming that they should have standing without demonstrating that they had been affected or harmed by the law in question. To rule in favor of the petitioners would have been to throw out the entire principle of 'standing'.
In a hypothetical future case, where the petitioners did have evidence of harm, they would not be prohibited by today's ruling from making a successful petition despite the State's lack of interest in defending the law.
At least that is how it seems to my amateur and cursory review of today's decision.
Comments
Your proposition 8 concerns are very intriguing on a practical level, I would suggest the following:
This is a case of Constitutional law review, where legal precedent must be presented to the Court (in other words there will be little if any dispute of material facts that will be decided by a fact finder, simply a ruling on law), it is not as if California could or the other side could withhold legal precedent from the Court (even if it is adverse to their position), in fact the lawyers could be sanctioned for knowingly withholding case law that is on point. Further, the Court performs its own research, review, and analysis of the existing case law. In my opinion there are far to many safeguards for these types of abuses or throwing of a case.
There is a world of difference between "put up an acceptable defense" and "defended to the limit of their ability".
Opponents of the proposition pick a district court with a judge whose bias is known. The state puts up a defense, loses, and then does not appeal. There are, now, no safeguards blocking this sequence. Nobody can be sanctioned for it. And nobody aside from the disinterested state has standing to complain.
The protection of the court is useless if you cannot get your day in court.
Incorrect. California voters, if the issue is important to them, can remove the offending officials. And they don't even have to wait until the next regular election for the particular officers targetted, given California's recall provisions. (And, given that California directly elects executive officers like the Attorney-General separately, rather than them being appointees, it can do so in a reasonably fine-grained manner.)
And, the people that have run statewide proposition campaigns are, by demonstrated experience, fairly uniquely qualified to apply that sanction should it be necessary.
That is indirect, and is consistently ineffective.
For example, consider hypothetical state propositions limiting when elected officials can solicit donations, or providing for specific penalties to elected officials should they fail to do certain things (eg pass a budget on time). There are many such propositions that could be popular with voters, and would certainly be unpopular with any elected official.
For that class of proposition, the ability to vote in different elected officials does not actually give the public an effective tool to get the state to support the proposition.
And that is moving the goalposts (particularly as to the "indirect" portion), and unsupported (as to the "consistently ineffective".)
The rather special case you assert as an example, whatever merits it might have, clearly doesn't show that it is "consistently" anything.
First you can not "pick" a District Court Judge, cases are assigned to District Court Judges.
The first ruling is the safeguard...Judges can not just rule according to their gut or "bias" they have to follow precedent - they can not ignore case law nor can the attorneys.
Besides, if you think the State is acting so unethically, in basically throwing the case (which again is not really possible in a Federal Court Civil Rights Case), then they will simply take the appeal to blok a private party from doing so, and just lose that case. Then what? Appeal to the SCOTUS? Well as it stands the SCOTUS does not have to take any case, in fact the majority of cases they appealed to them they do not to take, approximately 90% of every case they hear is some death penalty appeal. SCOTUS has a history of passing on very important issues, and could have passed on DOMA if they wanted.
They had there day in Court and lost, they decided not to appeal, no one can force a party to appeal. It is not for private parties to assume they could have done better than the State and interject themselves in the State's place and appeal. That opens a floodgate of real issues. Who has standing when multiple parties want to take the case? What if one of those parties is actually adverse to the position?
You may not pick the judge, but you can pick the district. Also not every case filed will go all of the way through to a decision, so you can file multiple cases then actually litigate the one that wound up in front of the judge that you want. (There are safeguards against that. They are imperfect...)
Furthermore while in theory judges have to follow precedent and case law, in practice there are lots of cases where well-meaning and dedicated judges, presented with the same facts, precedent, and case law, will come to opposite conclusion. Were it otherwise, the Supreme Court would never have dissenting opinions.
Finally, courts do have the right to request that the arguments that they wish to hear about particular points of law be made in front of them. For example in proposition 8, the justices required that the standing argument be made, even though neither side wanted to advance it. In the Affordable Healthcare Act this went further. An attorney, Robert Long, wound up having to be appointed specifically to make the case to the Supreme Court for a point that neither side wished to argue. That point being that the law was a tax, and therefore under the Anti-Injunction Act no lawsuit could be brought about it until after someone had been injured by actually paying it.
That last point matters in this case. The state actively did not want to defend this case in front of the district court. The judge wanted it defended. That is how a different set of attorneys got involved in the first place.
IANAL, but I believe that to have 'standing' you must show that you have been affected or harmed by the law in question.
The petitioners were claiming that they should have standing without demonstrating that they had been affected or harmed by the law in question. To rule in favor of the petitioners would have been to throw out the entire principle of 'standing'.
In a hypothetical future case, where the petitioners did have evidence of harm, they would not be prohibited by today's ruling from making a successful petition despite the State's lack of interest in defending the law.
At least that is how it seems to my amateur and cursory review of today's decision.