Obergefell v. Hodges -- US Supreme Court 5-4 DECISION and its DISSENT led by Chief Justice Roberts

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5-4 Majority Decision

https://app.box.com/s/x9av97v4tdd9zhzk9fta7ozqnv940ub1

DISSENT by Chief Justice Roberts

https://app.box.com/s/mu457fuvz2ocibl4zd0hqkqxohs6rs0f

But this Court is not a legislature. … Under the Constitution, judges have power to say what the law is, not what it should be. The people who ratified the Constitution authorized courts to exercise “neither force nor will but merely judgment.” (The Federalist No. 78) …

Although the policy arguments for extending marriage to same-sex couples may be compelling, the legal arguments for requiring such an extension are not. The fundamental right to marry does not include a right to make a State change its definition of marriage. And a State’s decision to maintain the meaning of marriage that has persisted in every culture throughout human history can hardly be called irrational. …

… the democratic process … That ends today. Five lawyers have closed the debate and enacted their own vision of marriage as a matter of constitutional law. Stealing this issue from the people …

The majority’s decision is an act of will, not legal judgment. The right it announces has no basis in the Constitution or this Court’s precedent. …

As a result, the Court invalidates the marriage laws of more than half the States and orders the transformation of a social institution that has formed the basis of human society for millennia, for the Kalahari Bushmen and the Han Chinese, the Carthaginians and the Aztecs. Just who do we think we are? 

It can be tempting for judges to confuse our own preferences with the requirements of the law.  …the Constitution “is made for people of fundamentally differing views.” …

Understand well what this dissent is not about: It is not about whether, in my judgment, the institution of marriage should be changed to include same-sex couples. It is instead about whether, in our democratic five lawyers who happen to hold commissions authorizing them to resolve legal disputes according to law. …

The real question in these cases is what constitutes “marriage,” or—more precisely—who decides what constitutes “marriage”?

DISSENT by Justice Scalia

https://app.box.com/s/68jdkbtasljbufb559tu85dt5bzxcuj5

DISSENT by Justice Thomas

https://app.box.com/s/05mx91rf65c6mrnv5tyxn87wb2v94c2f

DISSENT by Justice Alito

https://app.box.com/s/h5c7tqixnw95llysl7pt72i2wgazhmj9