High Courts & Misdemeanors
Lochnerizing Courts & the Abolition of Marriage
by Robert P. George
Judges are not legislators. The legitimacy of their decisions, particularly those decisions that displace the judgments of the people’s elected representatives, depends entirely on the truth of the claim that the law authorizes the court to settle the matter. When this claim is false, a judicial edict is not redeemed by its good intentions and even its good consequences (if the consequences of the edict in fact turn out to be good).
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Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University (web.princeton.edu/sites/jmadison). His books include In Defense of Natural Law (Oxford University Press) and Conscience and Its Enemies (ISI Books). He has served as chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
more on marriage from the online archives
28.1—January/February 2015
on State Impositions & Church Acquiescence by Stephen Baskerville
21.1—January/February 2008
John Chrysostom’s Discovery of the Blessings & Mysteries of Marriage by Mike Aquilina
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more from the online archives
26.1—Jan/Feb 2013
on Abortion as a Matter of National Welfare by W. Ross Blackburn
21.1—January/February 2008
John Chrysostom’s Discovery of the Blessings & Mysteries of Marriage by Mike Aquilina
