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Page Number: 74

6 

OBERGEFELL v. HODGES 

SCALIA, J., dissenting 

of America.  Take, for example, this Court, which consists
of  only  nine  men  and  women,  all  of  them  successful  law-
yers18  who  studied  at  Harvard  or  Yale  Law  School.  Four 
of  the  nine  are  natives  of  New  York  City.    Eight  of  them 
grew  up  in  east-  and  west-coast  States.    Only  one  hails 
from  the  vast  expanse  in-between.  Not  a  single  South-
westerner  or  even,  to  tell  the  truth,  a  genuine  Westerner
(California  does  not  count).  Not  a  single  evangelical
Christian  (a  group  that  comprises  about  one  quarter  of 
Americans19),  or  even  a  Protestant  of  any  denomination. 
The  strikingly  unrepresentative  character  of  the  body 
voting  on  today’s  social  upheaval  would  be  irrelevant  if 
they  were  functioning  as  judges,  answering  the  legal 
question whether the American people had ever ratified a
constitutional  provision  that  was  understood  to  proscribe
the  traditional  definition  of  marriage.  But  of  course  the 
Justices  in  today’s  majority  are  not  voting  on  that  basis; 
they say they are not.  And to allow the policy question of
same-sex  marriage  to  be  considered  and  resolved  by  a 
select,  patrician,  highly  unrepresentative  panel  of  nine  is 
to  violate  a  principle  even  more  fundamental  than  no 
taxation  without  representation:  no  social  transformation 
without representation. 

II 
But  what  really  astounds  is  the  hubris  reflected  in
today’s  judicial  Putsch.    The  five  Justices  who  compose
today’s  majority  are  entirely  comfortable  concluding  that 

—————— 

18 The  predominant  attitude  of  tall-building  lawyers  with  respect  to 
the questions presented in these cases is suggested by the fact that the
American  Bar  Association  deemed  it  in  accord  with  the  wishes  of  its 
members  to  file  a  brief  in  support  of  the  petitioners.  See  Brief  for 
American  Bar  Association  as  Amicus  Curiae  in  Nos.  14–571  and  14– 
574, pp. 1–5.

19 See  Pew  Research  Center,  America’s  Changing  Religious  Land-

scape 4 (May 12, 2015).