Any surprise that this is Judge Vaughn Walker's judicial philosophy?
Judge Vaughn Walker, the now-retired federal judge in San Francisco who nullified California's Proposition 8 in 2010, said if judges really are umpires, they must sometimes "move the strike zone" in order to champion social issues like same-sex marriage.
"Case by case, what judges do and must do is take account of the pitcher and the batter in the legal arena, watch the windup, the throw, the curve, and the delivery and then, where they believe appropriate, move the strike zone," Walker wrote on Aug. 28 in the University of Illinois Law Review.
... In his article, Walker said federal judges must "reflect the common understanding of the day" and that "clear and fixed legal rules" do not exist.
"There is no fixed 'strike zone,'" Walker wrote.
The former chief federal judge for the Northern District of California, Walker has drawn criticism for not disclosing his homosexuality until after he retired from the federal bench in 2011 -- not during the 2010 trial on same-sex marriage.
In the article, Walker said judges are well-suited to "reject or correct" laws that are based on "discredited understandings" or "dogmas born of myths and unsubstantiated beliefs." -- CNSNews.com
13 Comments
Just as it's against the rules for an umpire to move the strike zone, so is it illegal for a judge to make up the law as he goes along. Walker just admitted that he did just that.
This is what happens when we appoint a homosexual jto be judge, let alone try their owm case.
'unsubstantiated beliefs' I'm seeing this word pop up a lot in the SSM debate. Is this the new argument for the 'pro-equality 'side? Big words, with no evidence to back it up. Man-woman marriage has science, nature and history on it's side. What does SSM have on it's side? Me! me! me! and I want, I want , I want!
I like baseball analogies, but I think in this case it is more appropriate to talk about pitchers and catchers.
This is a liberal homosexualist code to say that I am an activist judge and the hell with the Constitution. The court is to be used to impose far left positions on the citizens.
If you do not vote it in then we will just have to impose it from the bench.
This is evidence of corruption.
Walker has conceded that the pro-SSM opinion he wrote is bogus.
The man has admitted that he relied on the abuse of judicial review.
In a just society, Walker would lose all government benefits and privileges related to his employment as a judge. This is about his abusive behavior and not his sexual preference.
Indeed, Walker was rightly criticized for his not recusing himself due to his having a relationship that fits the description that the SSM litigator and he himself relied upon to state the pro-SSM complaint. The man's trial was a farce. He has brought discredit upon the judicial role and now he admits he moved the strike zone.
The man is a disgrace as a judge.
This man is bull.
And he's moved the strike zone.
So play ball: windup, take aim,
and hit it in the bull's-eye.
Chairm,
As usual, you make a lot of unsupported proclamations. You also contradict yourself. In one sentence you say this is not about Judge Walker's sexual orientation, and in the very next, you say he should have recused himself because of his sexual orientation.
Brags (retired Judge) points out that the overthrow of our system of Law requires people like him to unlawfully expand their power, or perception of it. His analogy of court room procedure being a game is precisely how he and those like him, treat something most Americans regard as seriously sobering.
Bruce, deal with the facts.
Moving the strike zone means the judge's opinion, from the bench, is bogus, because it is not derived from the law but from the judge's bias. That is an abuse of judicial review. It is not rule of law. It is evidence of corruption.
You may not like that Walker made this admission.
Too bad. It was already evident in his written pro-SSM opinion, from the bench, and in his various moves to show favoritism for the pro-SSM side. But his admission seals the deal -- even if you want to claim moving the strike zone is a good thing to do.
This is about his abusive behavior on the bench and not his sexual orientation. Chew on that before typing another word from your keyboard, Bruce.
No, hang-on, really, and pause and chew. Figure it out. Deal with the facts. We'll wait.
.... okay.
Now, what were you saying about my contradicting myself?
The type of relationship was at issue. Not the sexual orientation of the participants in that type of relationship.
You might want to move the strike zone to define the relationship by sexual orientation. But there is no sexual orientation requirement in the bride-groom requirement of marriage law; nor in the CA marriage amendment. Not for ineligibility. Not for eligibility.
So don't even bother making that unsupportable proclamation here.
The marriage law is for the bride-groom type of relationship. It is not for non-marriage. Non-marriage is a category populated by many types of relationships; most are comprised of heterosexual persons. So you can't distinguish marriage and non-marriage on the basis of sexual orientation. You need to go to the core of the social institution rather than to your pro-gay bias.
Walker should have recused himself.
Whether or not his sexual orientation is relevant to his personal feelings about the type of relationship he is in, well, that is irrelevant to the law. The law is about marriage, not sexual orientation.
Even the pro-SSM line of attack on the marriage law is supposedly based on what marriage is as a type of relationship. So you can't dodge that.
You may wish to make sexual orientation relevant. If so, then, you only add to the reasons that Walker should have recused himself.
I did not add sexual orientation.
Perhaps you would. He did.
But the problemto which I referred is that the type of relationship he is in is sex-segregative. It is male-only. That is so whether or not Walker would call himself a homosexual or would claim membership in the gay identity group. The lack of a bride would make such a type of relationship ineligible for marital status.
But if you insist that the chief feature of this type of relationship is homosexual orientation, then, you will kindly point to the part in the CA marriage amendment that makes two heterosexual women eligible to marry but two homosexual men ineligible to marry.
You can't find that part? No kidding. So sexual orientation is not the impediment to marry that Walker and you and the pro-SSM litigants made it out to be, afterall. The way to get to that as the impediment is to move the strike zone.
So move it. Good for you. Now, the pro-SSM complaint is that sexual orientation is not a just basis for lawmaking on marriage. Yet somehow homosexual orientation is the just basis for imposing SSM in the law.
See your contradiction? You are against contradictions, right?
Anyway, the type of relationship is at issue. Marriage is an integrative type of relationship: it integrates the sexes, man and woman. And, according to your moved strike zone, marriage also integrates by sexual attraction -- male attraction and female attraction.
But SSM? Segregative by sex and by sexual attraction. The moved strike zone means that Walker just showed favoritism for a type of relationship that is segregative on the very basis upon which the pro-SSM litigants brought their complaint.
Another contradiction.
If sexual orientation is to be treated as the moral and legal equivalent of race, then, you still have a problem. As does Walker.
There is one human race and its nature is two-sexed. Marriage is integrative of the sexes. Since neither man nor woman is a subspecies of humankind, marriage is comprised of all human races (there being just the one) and of both sexes (man and woman). But perhaps you imagine that sexual orientation is like a subspecies of humankind or that there is one sexual orientation? Please explain.
Walker has abused his role as judge. You need to deal with that forthrightly. Some SSMers will admit that he overplayed the hand he was dealt and that he is a lousy poker player. His bluff has been called. He has admitted he cheated at the table.
So he is not a neutral umpire. He is biased. He moved the strike zone, he said, AFTER the ball was delivered through the real strike zone.
Who does he think he is, Lucy of the Peanuts Gang, moving the football just as good ole Charlie Brown delivers his kick?
Come on. The man is a disgrace as a judge.
For the sake of super-duper clarity, and for Bruce's endeavor to improve his reading comprehension skills, the problem is Walker's abuse of the judicial role, not his sexual orientation.
And, so that Bruce can learn that his pro-gay bigotry is not the basis for lawmaking, even if Walker chose to move the strike zone, he moved it so that the type of relationship he was in would be considered eligible for marriage. So if he thought that homosexual attraction was the chief feature of that type of relationship, his moving the strike zone clearly showed bias. On that basis he needed to recuse himself.
My point is that non-marriage is ineligible. Sexual orientation does not distinguish marriage from non-marriage. Indeed, sexual orientation is not in the marriage law. And, in fact, whatever the sexual orientation of the participants, the bride-groom requirement means that the all-male type of relationship is ineligible. Call that sex discrimination, if you wish, but you cannot call that sexual orientation discrimination. Not when an all-male heterosexual relationship is ineligible.
Marriage is a type of relationship. It has key features. These are found in the marriage law. And, sure, it is a sexual type of relationship that is both deeply intimate and private and also profoundly significant to society and, as such, is public. The sexual basis? Not sexual orientation. But integration of the sexes combined with provision for responsible procreation. That is the marriage idea. That is the type of relationship against which the pro-SSM litigants complained and against which Walker cheated in his pro-SSM opinion.
When the bias is blatant, there is no defense of it. But SSMers like to pretend that pro-gay bigotry is benign and is the proper legal basis for imposing SSM into the law that places obligations on all of society. If gay identity is the basis for lawmaking on SSM, then, that directly contradicts the pro-SSM complaint that gay identity is not a legitimate basis for lawmaking on marriage.
They want it all ways and that means contradicting themselves up and down and all around.
And so, predictably, Bruce shows up to accuse me of contradiction because SSMers rely on the tactic of attacking others for what they themselves are so very guilty of all on their ownios.
Good stuff., deeply grounded as usual Chaim.
Often hard to get it all in one reading.
Thank you, Good News.
The attack on the social institution of marriage is very easy on the attackers because they set the bar very low for themselves and very high for the defenders of marriage.
The old, heads-I-win-and-tails-you-lose tactic, ay? [said in the voice of Maxwell Smart].
The SSM campaign corrupts everything it touches. Here Walker admits that his approach to judicial review is to abuse his role as "umpire". And he did so in many, many, many ways during his part in the litigation on the CA marriage amendment. He continued afterward regarding the release of videos and his own admissions regarding the type of relationship in which he is in but did not divulge during the trial proceedings.
He is a disgrace as a judge. Now, sure, he might have been much more neutral and, well, judicial, on other cases but on this one? He threw it all away for the sake of what? False equivalencies and an asserted supremacy of his favored gay identity group over all other considerations, including the neutrality of the "umpire".