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Same-sex marriage analysis skips the law

By Mark Obbie

Tom Curry, MSNBC.com's national affairs writer, contributes to a weekly series called "Briefing Book: Issues '08" in the site's politics section with this piece on the courts and same-sex marriage. I'm not a big fan of the briefing-book format -- no named sources, no he-said/she-said debate of the experts -- but it's a pretty straight (pun!) account of where the two major-party presidential candidates stand on the issue, and what role the courts have played at the state and federal level thus far. My main beef with it (beyond the fact that when I looked at it, the article badly needed a copy-edit): In his effort to explain the law to a lay audience, Curry goes overboard in avoiding messy, technical descriptions of exactly what constitutional provisions the courts have interpreted when holding that same-sex marriage is or isn't constitutionally protected. Readers simply must buy the notion that a court found "the constitution" protects it or doesn't, and that "the constitution" conflicts with a statute or it doesn't. I don't blame citizens for distrusting courts as arbitrary, all-powerful actors in public affairs, considering that even when news organizations make the laudable decision to wrestle with legal/political issues, they often dumb down the legal substance so far that constitutional interpretations sound like mere policy preferences. (Via How Appealing)

Full post as published by Lawbeat on July 08, 2008 (boomark / email).