Posted by
TheChair on Thursday, November 20, 2008 10:56:00 AM
The big news is the California Supreme Court has granted the various petitions to hear and decide the constitutionality of Proposition 8.
Read the one-page order for yourself. The Court could had a couple of other options before it, including deciding the cases instantaneously on the current briefs (very unusual, especially on complex & high profile issues), and dismissing the petitions to let litigation trickle back up from Superior Court. That would have taken 2-3 years to get back to the state Supreme Court. But the Court expedited things. It called for further briefing by Prop. 8 proponents, to be followed by opposition reply briefs, and then by new amicus curiae briefs and replies to them. All this is to be done by January 21st. Very fast. Oral argument soon after, probably March. We can expect a final decision by spring.
Check out
Ed Whelan's commentary over at Bench Memos on National Review Online. I like his take on the three issues, although he concludes, as do I, that prognostication is impossible.