A Lesson in Constitutional Law: California Supreme Court and the Chicago Tribune

The Chicago Tribune's enlightened journalist, Dennis Byrne, here said that the California Supreme Court is "tyrannical" for applying the most basic tenet of Constitutional law (which is the foundation of every single law in our nation and each of our states), the Supremacy Clause.

The Supremacy Clause says that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land: The United States Constitution for all of the states, and each state constitution for the laws within their borders. This means that the principles put forth in each state constitution, not the laws passed by the legislature nor the will of the people, however much populists may dislike it, trumps all other points of origination of law.


Mr. Byrne, who clearly skipped the opportunity to take a Constitutional Law class in college, or, for that matter, even a half-decent Intro to Political Science course, proclaims this misinformed outrage:

"The majority declared that people had no say in the matter. It said that, in its supreme wisdom, it could overrule a constitutionally created process for the people of California to directly exercise their will. The court proclaims its view is so fundamentally correct that it cannot be "abrogated by the legislature or by the electorate through the statutory initiative process." In other words, the people of this state are not supreme."

No, they're not. The people never, ever have been. If you want them to be, try to make a constitutional amendment, I dare you. People who actually know this stuff will slap you upside the head and explain to you what a fundamental reversal of our government and protection of civil liberties it would entail.

"Let's think about that for a minute. The court is saying that some rights are so fundamental that they cannot be voted away by a majority, or even a supermajority, of the citizens or their representatives."

Yes, that's EXACTLY what they're saying. How can you take offense to that? I was taught about the ubiquitous concept that the only real danger in a democracy is the "tyranny of the majority," that a numerically powerful but nefarious group of people in some moment in history would impose their prejudice (or worse) on other human beings who are less numerous (Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, Polpot's Cambodia, Sudan since the late '80s, Serbia).

The Bill of Rights, the 13th, 14th, 15th and 19th Amendments, the Voting Rights Act, and the Civil Rights Act, Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, are all based on the principle that some rights are so FUNDAMENTAL (Jefferson and the writers of every other state Constitution used the word "unalienable") that they can't be abrogated just because some people don't want to share the rights they enjoy with people they don't like.