Judge Jacobs strikes down DOMA section 3

Second Circuit chief judge Dennis Jacobs, long a favorite of the Federalist Society (and of mine), has been the target of vituperative attacks by lefty law pundits like Andrew Cohen and Jonathan Turley for pointing out that much supposed “public-interest” litigation is a self-important attempt to second-guess the elected branches, and that high-level law schools as a group have little understanding of or sympathy with the American military. Today, in what’s being hailed as a landmark decision, Judge Jacobs wrote an opinion striking down as unconstitutional Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act in the Edie Windsor case. Cue the waves of cognitive dissonance on both Left and Right….

P.S. From Judge Jacobs’s decision in Windsor v. U.S. (h/t Chrys Kefalas):

But law (federal or state) is not concerned with holy matrimony. Government deals with marriage as a civil status …. A state may enforce and dissolve a couple’s marriage, but it cannot sanctify or bless it. For that, the pair must go next door [to the Church].

More: David Lat, Dale Carpenter. And this 2010 Cato post by David Boaz reminds us that when it comes to gay rights’ being advanced by judges who have been execrated by the Left, one can trace something of a pattern.

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