TexasCHLforum.com

baldeagle wrote: Please point to the place in the Constitution where the Supreme Court was granted the power to overturn laws that are the province of the states and the people.

I would suggest that you ask a question which assumes the answer. That is, whether of not any particular law is or is not "the province of the states and the people" assumes that the issues before the Court in the case at hand are in the province of the states and the people. The highest court in our land decided that those issues were, instead, in the province of our Constitution. Here one might again see a difference of opinion between the Tenth Amendment vs. the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Court has decided explicitly that discrimination by a state as to gay marriage is prohibited by the 14th and, implicitly, that the 10th is unavailable to validate such discrimination.

Jim

carlson1 wrote:Quick question. Is there anyone here who thinks that the SCOTUS overreached into States who had already made the decision by votes thus ignoring the "election process" and the will of the people in those States?

When the "will of the people," as expressed in "the election process," results in the enactment of an unconstitutional law, our system of government makes it incumbent upon the judiciary, and ultimately the Supreme Court of the United States, to step in and correct what has been done. A majority of the electorate, or even a majority of the population, is not the "supreme law of the land" -- our Constitution is. To believe that in fulfilling this mandate the Supreme Court is "overreaching" quite arguably suggests either a gross misunderstanding of our constitutional system, a deliberate intent to ignore it, or perhaps a facetious troll.

I trust it is understood here that I am talking about the power to do something, not the rightness or wrongness of what has been done by the one having that power. There can be no better demonstration of the exercise of this power than the case of District of Columbia v. Heller.

Jim