Isaac Laquedem

Isaac ghostwrites the opinion that Justice Kennedy should have written in the SSM case

I read the Supreme Court's five opinions in Obergefell v. Hodges, the same-sex marriage case with great interest, but without a lot of appreciation.  Justice Kennedy's opinion for the majority reaches what to me is the right result, but doesn't use much legal reasoning to get there.  His rhetoric is good, but his legal logic is conspicuous mainly by its absence.

Chief Justice Roberts's dissent is more analytical; he says in essence that he's happy for couples in same-sex relationships, but he doesn't see the right to marry someone of the same sex anywhere in the constitution. In his words, "Although the policy arguments for extending marriage to same-sex couples may be compelling, the legal arguments for such an extension are not."  The "fundamental right to marry," he says, does not compel a state to change its definition of marriage.  His voice of calm reason slips only on the last page of his dissent, when he says "Celebrate the availability of new benefits.  But do not celebrate the Constitution.  It had nothing to do with it."

The other justices in the minority are less temperate.  Justice Scalia points out that the court is not a paragon of diversity or representation:  "This court consists of only nine men and women," he says, four from New York, eight from one coast or the other, and only one from the midwest.  All of them, he notes, are graduates of Harvard or Yale.  There is not a genuine Westerner ("California," he says with a nod to Justice Kennedy, "does not count."), and not a single Protestant.  He winds up with a footnote saying that the Court has descended from its tradition of legal reasoning "to the aphorisms of a fortune cookie."

The dissents of Justices Thomas and Alito go downhill from there.  Justice Thomas has a good discussion of substantive due process (something of interest only to lawyers), correctly says that the constitution does not have a "dignity clause" - a clause guaranteeing Americans the right to personal dignity -- after which he bizarrely states that the government did not take away the dignity of slaves by allowing them to be enslaved.  (Actual slaves might disagree with him.) 

A bench full of eminent Harvard- and Yale-trained intellects should be able to write five opinions among them and cite some actual law. Justice Kennedy's opinion is heartwarming and inspirational but not very legal. He might more analytically have written something like this:

     1. The Full Faith and Credit provision requires each state to recognize the out-of-state marriages of same-sex couples whose marriages were lawful where contracted, regardless of whether the state itself issues licenses to same-sex couples.

     2. Because marriage is a fundamental right, the court will apply strict scrutiny (not rational relationship) to a state's restrictions on the right to marry that are based on race, religion, and gender.

     3. The individual state restrictions allow George to marry Martha, but do not allow Julie to marry Martha, thus imposing a distinction between George and Julie on whom they are allowed to marry by reason of their gender: George can marry people whom Julie can't, and Julie can marry people whom George can't, simply by reason of the different genders of George and Julie.

     4. The concept of marriage as an institution in which spouses of different genders united for life to raise children was pretty much shot to hell in the 1960s.  Justice Alito points out that 40% of American children are now born to unmarried parents.

     5. The states do, however, have a compelling interest in promoting children to be raised in two-parent households; that is, in households of married couples. (Here cite  the evidence brought up by opponents of SSM about children of two-parent families.)

     6. Therefore the states have a compelling interest in encouraging more people to be married, rather than fewer, for the better welfare of children. (Here cite statistics on same-sex couples bearing and adopting children.) However, the prohibitions on same-sex marriage apply to good parents as well as bad.

     7. Therefore (Justice Kennedy should have written) the states' restriction on same-sex marriage is not narrowly tailored to advance a compelling state interest, and is unconstitutional as being based on gender.

"Oh, I'm a good old rebel," but you're not

It amuses me that someone who proudly displays the Confederate battle flag under which Innes Randolph (the author of the quoted line) fought can, without experiencing any cognitive dissonance, exult when our national government drops bombs on rebels in other nations.

Robin Williams (1951-2014), the Great Pagliacci of our time

An old story runs like this.  The psychiatrist's patient tells him, "I am depressed, and my life seems harsh and colorless."  The doctor says, "There is a simple treatment.  The most famous clown in the world, the Great Pagliacci, is in town and is performing tonight.  Go see his performance, and he will cure you."  The patient stifles a sob, and says, "Doctor, that won't work.  I am the Great Pagliacci."

Oregon: if you have to ask, carpool

While at the Baldock rest area (the one on Interstate 5 a few miles south of Wilsonville) recently I saw, propped against a wall, a cardboard sign that read, "Pregnant, hungry, out of gas," next to a folded towel, a bowl, a small pack, and a few personal items, but no person.  Curious, I looked around, and saw a group of four people a hundred feet off, one of whom appeared to be pregnant.  A few minutes later, I noticed that one of the four, a well-nourished male, was now sitting on the towel next to the pack, but with a different sign that read only "Out of gas."

This piqued my curiosity.  Perhaps the four are students of marketing, engaging in some research by testing different approaches and signs to see what provokes the greatest generosity from passing travelers.  Or maybe they independently descended on the rest area and worked out a timeshare.  The most likely explanation, I decided, is that they arranged a carpool, heeding Metro's precepts by reducing their vehicle-miles-traveled and panhandling sustainably.

The media nickname for the newborn British princeling?

I can't be the only one who's mentally tagging the newborn son of Prince William of Wales and the Duchess of Cambridge (known only as Kate Middleton on this side of the pond) not with his official, sonorous name of "George Alexander Louis," but simply as "Boy George."   The world of entertainment stole a royal nickname when a singer named Stacy Ann Ferguson appropriated "Fergie" from Sarah, Duchess of York (the former Sarah Ferguson), so it's only fitting for the House of Windsor to grab a name from show business.

Amanda Fritz joins in asking Isaac's question about Sonia Manhas

The Oregonian reports this afternoon that Portland City Commissioner Amanda Fritz has asked the same question I posed this morning: who at Multnomah County gave the order for Sonia Manhas to be fired?  As written by Brad Schmidt:  "Fritz declined to comment on Cogen's decision to reject calls from the Board of County Commissioners for his resignation.  But Fritz did say the county should explain why Manhas was forced to resign Wednesday and who in the county pushed for it."

Who indeed pushed for Ms. Manhas to leave the county, making some say that the county has a double standard, one for women and one, much more lax, for men?  I believe that with one exception, everyone above Ms. Manhas in the county hierarchy -- every one of the suspects -- is female: her supervisor, the county attorney, the deputy county attorney, and the four commissioners.  Mr. Cogen himself is the lone exception, leading to the Homeric conclusion that unless Mr. Cogen himself ordered her to lose her job, Ms. Manhas became the victim of a double standard applied not by the male establishment, but by other women.

Washington smokes out marijuana users

When Washington voters last month legalized the recreational use of marijuana, I can't have been the only one struck by the delightful irony that they did so seven years after they voted to make many public places, and some private homes, smoke-free. 

Who knew? Tokyo's oldest man was only 81

Japanese authorities believed Sogen Kato, 111, to be Tokyo's oldest man.  When they went to his family home to check on him, they saw his daughter and son-in-law (a couple in their 80s) and their two fiftyish children.  Mr. Kato himself had no comment; what was left of him was lying on his bed, where he had apparently died some 30 years ago.  "Grandpa," one of his grandchildren said, "was a very scary man."

Amtrak lets the chips fall where they may, but not on children without an adult present

I don't understand the nanny state.  Amtrak's Coast Starlight route has a lounge car, called the Pacific Parlour Car, for passengers who book sleeper service.  It hosts a wine tasting in the afternoon, and according to the information on the train, children aren't permitted in the lounge car during the wine tasting.  On a recent trip, Amtrak's personnel (uniformly friendly) welcomed the Laquedemitasse to the wine tasting, and plied him with extra cheese and non-alcoholic apple cider, despite the rules.  On the other hand, he wasn't allowed to buy potato chips at the snack bar without parental supervision.

Parisians adopt a Portland attitude toward the bicycle

Do you recall Portland's experiment with placing yellow bicycles around town, available for anyone to ride free from place to place?  They didn't last very long.

The New York Times reports that an entrepreneur tried a similar idea in Paris, placing rental bicycles around town, available for one euro (about $1.40) per half-hour, in exchange for being permitted to erect billboards and rent them out.  The Parisians aren't treating their bicycles much better than we treated ours.  Vandals have bent and broken some.  Others get fished out of the Seine, and a few have been found on ships bound for North Africa.  Our old yellow bicycles led more humdrum lives, but they were also a lot less expensive than the Parisian versions.