Opinion ID: 839711
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: marriage amendment

Text: The marriage amendment, Const. 1963, art. 1, § 25, provides: To secure and preserve the benefits of marriage for our society and for future generations of children, the union of one man and one woman in marriage shall be the only agreement recognized as a marriage or similar union for any purpose. The primary objective in interpreting a constitutional provision is to determine the original meaning of the provision to the ratifiers, we the people, at the time of ratification. Justice Cooley has described this rule of common understanding in this way: For as the Constitution does not derive its force from the convention which framed, but from the people who ratified it, the intent to be arrived at is that of the people, and it is not to be supposed that they have looked for any dark or abstruse meaning in the words employed, but rather that they have accepted them in the sense most obvious to the common understanding, and ratified the instrument in the belief that that was the sense designed to be conveyed. [Cooley, Constitutional Limitations (1st ed.), p. 66.] Thus, the primary objective of constitutional interpretation, not dissimilar to any other exercise in judicial interpretation, is to faithfully give meaning to the intent of those who enacted the law. This Court typically discerns the common understanding of constitutional text by applying each term's plain meaning at the time of ratification. Wayne Co. v. Hathcock, 471 Mich. 445, 468-469, 684 N.W.2d 765 (2004).