Opinion ID: 2011334
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: the constitutional issues: procedural and analytical prerequisites

Text: A. Whether Constitutional Issues Have Been Properly Raised Because of the way appellants presented their constitutional claims, there is a threshold question whether these claims are properly before this court. The amended complaint refers exclusively to statutory claims under the marriage law and under the Human Rights Act. In appellants' memorandum in support of their motion for summary judgment, however, they argued that the marriage statute should be read, if it can be, so as to avoid difficult and sensitive constitutional questions. Gay Rights Coalition of Georgetown University Law Center v. Georgetown University, 536 A.2d 1, 16 (D.C. 1987) (en banc) (lead opinion). In other words, appellants argued as a fallback that, even if the trial court rejected their plain language and legislative history arguments, the statute could not survive a limitation to opposite-sex marriages unless that interpretation satisfied the Constitution. Specifically, appellants urged the court to use the approach we employed in Gay Rights Coalition: construe the statute in a way that saves its constitutionalityan analysis that inherently requires deciding whether a statute that bars same-sex marriages could withstand due process and equal protection challenges. See id., 536 A.2d at 49 (Ferren, J., concurring in the result in part and dissenting in part) (desire to save statute from constitutional infirmity means constitutional analysis determines statutory analysis, in contrast with quite different ... doctrine favoring statutory over constitutional ground for decision when both are independently available). In its first opinion granting summary judgment for the District, the trial court ignored the constitutional issues plaintiff-appellants had presented. Appellants moved for reconsideration on constitutional grounds, presenting comprehensive arguments, supported by case law and other authorities, explaining why the marriage statute, if upheld, would violate appellants' right to due process and equal protection of the laws. In response, the District contended that, until the filing of their motion for reconsideration the plaintiffs consistently maintained that their case did not focus upon constitutional issues. The District accused appellants of an eleventh hour attempt to recast themselves as victims of unconstitutional action. The trial court, however, granted appellants' motion for reconsideration and expressly ruled uponand rejectedthe constitutional claims. The District has not questioned on appeal the propriety of our reaching these issues; and, in any event, given appellants' and the trial court's presentation and resolution, respectively, of the constitutional claims, we conclude they are appropriately before us. At this point in the constitutional analysis, I write only for myself until Part V., which Judge STEADMAN expressly joins. Neither Judge TERRY nor Judge STEADMAN, however, joins in Part VI. B. Standard of Review I turn to our standard of review. This case concerns cross-motions: the District moved to dismiss for failure to state a claim; plaintiff-appellants, presenting affidavits of compliance with all marriage statute application requirements and of rejection by the Clerk of the Superior Court, filed a motion for summary judgment. The trial court granted summary judgment for the District. See Bell v. Jones, 566 A.2d 1059, 1060 (D.C. 1989) (motion for judgment on pleadings requires treatment as motion for summary judgment when it relies on matters outside the pleadings); Clay v. Hanson, 536 A.2d 1097, 1100 n. 3 (D.C.1988) (when judge considers materials beyond pleadings, motion to dismiss for failure to state claim is converted into motion for summary judgment). A motion for summary judgment shall be granted `if the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits ... show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.' Kurth v. Dobricky, 487 A.2d 220, 224 (D.C. 1985) (quoting Super.Ct.Civ.R. 56(c)). Courts frequently have emphasized the importance of an adequate record in cases presenting complex constitutional issues, and accordingly they have stressed that, in such cases, summary judgment should be granted sparingly. See, e.g., Felix v. Young, 536 F.2d 1126, 1135 (6th Cir.1976) (The adequacy of the record is particularly important where the court is called on to decide questions of constitutional law without benefit of a trial.); Waldie v. Schlesinger, 166 U.S.App.D.C. 175, 177, 509 F.2d 508, 510 (1974) (a full development of the facts of these [equal protection] cases is essential to any meaningful assessment of appellant's claim); see generally 6 Part II JAMES WILLIAM MOORE, MOORE'S FEDERAL PRACTICE ¶ 56.1710 (1988); 10A CHARLES ALLEN WRIGHT, ARTHUR R. MILLER & MARY KAY KANE, FEDERAL PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE § 2732.2 (1983). The parties here do not dispute the basic, historical facts giving rise to the claim: appellants applied for a marriage license; if they had been an opposite-sex couple they would have qualified under the marriage statute; the clerk denied their application because they both are men. [17] No party, moreover, has asked for a trial. Thus, the only question the parties present is whether, on the undisputed facts of record, the District or the appellants should be entitled to a judgment as a matter of law, Super.Ct.Civ.R. 56(c) (1993) i.e., of constitutional law. If, as it turns out, neither side is entitled to summary judgment, we must reverse the judgment for the District and remand the case for trial, even though no party has asked for one; each side's request for a summary remedy in its favor does not nullify the right to a trial if summary judgment is denied. See Super.Ct.Civ.R. 56(d) (elaborating procedure when summary judgment is not rendered upon the whole case or for all the relief asked and a trial is necessary); Estate of Wells v. Estate of Smith, 576 A.2d 707, 709 & 709 n. 1 (D.C.1990) (ordinarily upon reversal of summary judgment, appellate court remands for trial unless remand would be futile, e.g., if the only persons with knowledge of the [relevant] historical facts ... are deceased) (citations omitted). C. Relevance of the Distinction Between Adjudicative Facts and Legislative Facts The fact that this case is presented on appeal purely as a question of law, based on undisputed facts, is troublesome, if not deceptive, because there are two kinds of fact at issue: adjudicative facts and legislative facts. 1. In General Courts use the term adjudicative fact to describe the events which have happened between the parties. See State v. Erickson, 574 P.2d 1, 4 (Alaska 1978) (Adjudicative facts ... are those facts which explain who did what, when, where, how, and with what motive and intent.) (citation omitted); FED. R.EVID. 201 advisory committee's note (a) (1994) (Adjudicative facts are simply the facts of the particular case); see also Lewis v. United States, 408 A.2d 303, 311 n. 11 (D.C.1979) (calling adjudicative facts legal facts); DONALD L. HOROWITZ, THE COURTS AND SOCIAL POLICY 45 & n. 58, 275 (1977) (calling adjudicative facts historical facts). Legislative facts, in contrast, are patterns of social, economic, political, or scientific behavior or other data that a court inevitably uses to inform and shape the policy judgments it often has to make in deciding newly-presented questions of law. See Lewis, 408 A.2d at 311 n. 11; Erickson, 574 P.2d at 5; HOROWITZ, supra, at 45, 275; see generally JOHN MONAHAN & LAURENS WALKER. Social Authority: Obtaining, Evaluating, and Establishing Social Science in Law, 134 U.PA.L.REV. 477, 482-84 (1986). Courts, for example, may have to evaluate the impact of a proposed cross-racial adoption on a child's sense of identity, in order to decide the child's best interest, see In re R.M.G., 454 A.2d 776 (D.C.1982), or the court may have to ascertain the accuracy of a particular test for drugs, as it bears on guilt or innocence of a charged drug offense, see Jones v. United States, 548 A.2d 35 (D.C.1988). Such instances require the court to find social or scientific facts that transcend the individual case but determine, sometimes conclusively, how the case shall be decided. While deciding cases day-to-day, therefore, courts cannot help finding, and relying on, legislative facts; that process is inherent in the courts' answering questions of law and thus is not left exclusively to legislatures. See Erickson, 574 P.2d at 5-6; FED.R.EVID. 201 advisory committee's note (a). [18] As explained later, the question whether the state invidiously discriminates against homosexuals by withholding from same-sex couples the right to marry inevitably presents sub-questions about the nature and causes of homosexuality and, as a result, confronts this court with issues of legislative fact-finding. It is therefore necessary to explore in greater detail the judicial process of finding legislative facts. As discussed more fully below, courts traditionally answer questions of legislative fact, and thus questions of law, not only by referring to evidence of record but also by considering non-record sources such as scientific and social science studies found in law reviews and other journals. See generally Lewis, 408 A.2d at 311 n. 11; Erickson, 574 P.2d at 5; 2 MCCORMICK ON EVIDENCE § 331 (4th ed. 1992), at 398-402; HOROWITZ, supra, at 45, 275. The extent to which courts can properly use non-record sources in this way is a difficult and sometimes controversial subject, as we shall see. In any event, as a prelude to discussion of the constitutional issues in this case, I believe I not only must elaborate the distinctions between adjudicative and legislative facts, but also must evaluate and apply the respective processes required for each kind of fact-findingall in aid of deciding whether this case, factually, is ripe for summary judgment or requires a remand for trial. 2. Adjudicative and Legislative Facts Distinguished In this case, all the undisputed facts plaintiff-appellants have supported by affidavits, see supra note 17, and presented for summary judgment as a matter of law are adjudicative facts: appellants are both men; they are residents of the District; they are not disqualified by any of the enumerated prohibitions under the marriage statute; they applied for a marriage license from the District's Marriage License Bureau, presenting valid blood tests and the name of an authorized person willing to perform the marriage ceremony; the Clerk of the Superior Court denied them a marriage license solely on the ground that the District of Columbia Code does not authorize marriage between persons of the same sex; they would have been issued a marriage license if they were a heterosexual couple; and the denial of a marriage license potentially denies them an extraordinary number of tangible benefits, based upon marital status, enumerated in the District of Columbia Code. [19] The first question, then, is whether these adjudicative facts are enough to resolve, through summary judgment, a same-sex couple's constitutional challenge to the marriage statute. The most useful way to answer this question is to focus, for purposes of illustration, on equal protection of the laws, for which the ultimate legal question in this case is whether the marriage statute discriminates, without sufficient justification, against members of a constitutionally protected class (allegedly, unrelated adult homosexual couples). Compare Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202, 223-24, 102 S.Ct. 2382, 2397-98, 72 L.Ed.2d 786 (1982) (children of illegal aliens comprise protected class) with Massachusetts Bd. of Retirement v. Murgia, 427 U.S. 307, 312, 96 S.Ct. 2562, 2566, 49 L.Ed.2d 520 (1976) (police officers over age 50 do not comprise protected class). This statement of the ultimate issue requires the court to frame questions of adjudicative fact in a particular way: Are the plaintiffs actually members of the allegedly protected class? (Yes; they are both homosexual men.) Have they been treated in a discriminatory manner? (Yes; they have been denied a marriage license that would have been issued to an adult heterosexual couple.) [20] The questions continue: Are members of the allegedly protected class (homosexual couples) entitled to greater constitutional protection against discriminatory treatment than members of other groups? Depending on the level of protection required, has the law unfairly discriminated against members of the allegedly protected class (homosexual couples)? These formulations are, fundamentally, questions of law, not questions of fact, since they focus on legal determinations: entitlement to greater protection, and on fairness or unfairness of discriminatory treatment. As I have indicated, however, the answers to these questions are determined, ultimately, not only by reference to the relevant adjudicative facts outlined above, but also by consideration of so-called legislative facts. More specifically, the legal question whether the state, in withholding the marriage statute from same-sex couples, violates their constitutional right to equal protection of the laws may turn to an appreciable extent on whether homosexuality is, to take the extremes, a genetically determined or a learned orientation. It is therefore critical to understand how such questions are, if at all, to be answered. This requires in-depth understanding of the court's legislative fact-finding process. Legislative factsfor example, the sub-category social factsoften are the critical facts used for answering major questions of constitutional law. See, e.g., Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 494, 74 S.Ct. 686, 691-92, 98 L.Ed. 873 (1954) (demonstrable social fact that racial segregation of public schools generates a feeling of inferiority as to [Negro children's] status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone); In re R.M.G., 454 A.2d at 787-88 (in significant number of instances persons responsible for adoption decisions will not be able to focus adequately on an adoptive child's sense of identity, and thus on the child's best interest, without considering race) (opinion of Ferren, J.); id., 454 A.2d at 802 (Newman, J., dissenting) (A degree of race-consciousness is permissible to the achievement of [child's best] interest, because certain potential future hardships to the child arise when the parents are of a different race.). Similarly, legislative facts can be outcome-determinative political or economic facts. See, e.g., Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 82 S.Ct. 691, 7 L.Ed.2d 663 (1962) (recognition, based on political facts, of political disincentives to legislative cure for malapportionment of legislative representation); SEC v. Capital Gains Research Bureau, Inc., 300 F.2d 745, 750-51 (2d Cir.1961) (judicial notice of economic facts tending to prove advice tendered by small advisory service could not influence stock market), rev'd, 375 U.S. 180, 84 S.Ct. 275, 11 L.Ed.2d 237 (1963) (judicial notice of economic facts tending to prove the contrary). Legislative facts also include scientific facts, providing answers, for example, to the question whether `DNA' profiling evidence is admissible to corroborate the identification of a defendant in a criminal case, United States v. Porter, 618 A.2d 629, 630 (D.C. 1992), or to the question whether drug-testing with the so-called EMIT system has general acceptance in the scientific community, see Jones, 548 A.2d at 39-47, or to the question whether cocaine could properly be characterized as a narcotic under a criminal statute, requiring inquiry into both pharma-cological properties and psychological impact, see Erickson, 574 P.2d at 4-10. The Supreme Court of Alaska has nicely summarized the uses courts make of legislative facts: Legislative facts come into play when the court is faced with the task of deciding the constitutionality of a statute, statutory interpretation or the extension or restriction of a common law rule upon grounds of policy. These policy decisions, as in the case at hand, often hinge on social, political, economic, or scientific facts, most of which no longer fall within the classification of irrefutable. Cases involving such decisions cannot be decided adequately without some view by the court of the policy considerations and background upon which the validity of a particular statute or rule is grounded. MCCORMICK ON EVIDENCE, § 334 (2d ed. 1972), alludes to the proposition that the topic of judicial notice, particularly as to legislative facts, does not conveniently fit within the structured confines of the law of evidence, but rather is more appropriately categorized in the more general area of judicial reasoning. A distinction must be made between evidence of the particular facts of a case, which can be accepted only through prescribed methods calculated to assure credibility, and those [legislative] facts which are of greater policy significance in that they describe aspects of our larger environment and form the basis upon which adjudicative facts are evaluated. It is a slippery distinction at best; but it is one that has been drawn by [Professor Kenneth Culp] Davis, incorporated into the federal rules, and at least implicitly recognized in nearly every situation where a court has been called upon to address a question of policy in evaluating the rationality or reason behind a statute or rule. Erickson, 574 P.2d at 5-6 (footnotes omitted) (emphasis added). The Federal Rules of Evidence also stress the distinction between adjudicative and legislative facts. The Advisory Committee Note points out that FED.R.EVID. 201 is limited to judicial notice of adjudicative facts, and that no federal rule of evidence deals with judicial notice of legislative facts. FED. R.EVID. 201 advisory committee's note (a). Far from disparaging court involvement in legislative fact-finding, however, the Advisory Committee simply notes that only adjudicative facts can meet the high degree of indisputability [that] is the essential prerequisite to formally taking judicial notice. The Committee then quotes from Professor Davis, see supra note 18, and others, who encourage judges to make their own findings of legislative fact, not only from the trial record but also from sources outside the record as needed, to inform their judicial reasoningeven though admittedly such facts, when found, will not be indisputable. Under this view, legislative fact-finding is akin to legal research, except that the judge is free to consult non-legal sources as well (sometimes found in law reviews featuring interdisciplinary articles). Seen in this way, a judge who studies journals of social science, for example, in aid of constitutional rulings is, perhaps, better characterized as engaging in the process of answering questions of law than of taking judicial notice of legislative facts. See 2 MCCORMICK, supra, § 331. It may appear that, through legislative fact-finding, the trial or appellate judge is on a personal frolic, divorced too much from the parties' presentations, but that is an incorrect perception, and it would be wrong to say the traditional approach to legislative fact-finding is inappropriate or altogether unsatisfactory. The real concern is not whether judges should engage in legislative fact-finding; they inevitably do. No one can persuasively argue that the courts have no business deciding, for example, whether a particular drug fits the statutory definition of a narcotic, see Erickson, 574 P.2d at 18-23, or whether race affects a child's sense of identity, for purposes of determining whether a cross-racial adoption will be in the child's best interest, see In re R.M.G., 454 A.2d at 791-94. Courts rarely can avoid such issues. The concern, rather, is that certain kinds of legislative facts may be too difficult to ascertain, or simply may be too controversial, for a courtrather than the legislature itselfto decide. I will return to this difficulty or controversy theme later; the point here is to make clear that there is quite a difference between saying a court should not engage in any legislative fact-finding and saying a court should stay away from particular legislative fact-finding. The former would be ill-advised and often impossible; the latter, on occasion, may be prudent. 3. Judicial Process of Legislative Fact-Finding Overt legislative fact-finding is traceable to Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412, 419-20, 28 S.Ct. 324, 325-26, 52 L.Ed. 551 (1908), where the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of an Oregon law limiting women's factory work to ten hours a day after relying on amicus attorney Louis D. Brandeis's brief, which had presented 90 reports of committees, bureaus of statistics, commissioners of hygiene, and inspectors of factories detailing how long working hours, under the circumstances, were dangerous to women. Justice Holmes later summarized the principle: A judge sitting with a jury is not competent to decide issues of fact; but matters of fact that are merely premises to a rule of law he may decide. Prentis v. Atlantic Coast Line Co., 211 U.S. 210, 227, 29 S.Ct. 67, 70, 53 L.Ed. 150 (1908). [21] Accordingly, whereas adjudicative facts are found exclusively on the basis of trial testimony by so-called fact witnesses and of properly verified documentary evidence, legislative facts are often found differently. The process set up to establish the one is not necessarily adequate to ascertain the other. HOROWITZ, supra, at 45. Legislative facts commonly are found after hearing testimony, by qualified experts, but that testimony is usually buttressed by judicial attention not only to other court decisions but also to scientific or social science literature, including books, treatises, law reviews, and other journals containing useful information not of record. [22] Legislative facts also sometimes are found exclusively in non-record sources, [23] such as a party's Brandeis brief and the judge's own research, without help from expert testimony. See e.g., Brown, 347 U.S. at 489-94, 74 S.Ct. at 688-91; McLean v. Arkansas, 211 U.S. 539, 549-50, 29 S.Ct. 206, 208-09, 53 L.Ed. 315 (1909); Muller, 208 U.S. at 419-20, 28 S.Ct. at 325-26; Ribnik v. McBride, 277 U.S. 350, 363-72, 48 S.Ct. 545, 548-52, 72 L.Ed. 913 (1928) (Stone, J., dissenting). The idea of gathering non-record information appears antithetical to the traditional understanding of sound judicial fact-finding; but, as we have seen with respect to legislative (though not adjudicative) facts, it is done every day as judgesespecially appellate judgessearch for authority to resolve difficult legal issues requiring policy resolution. Cross-examination of such non-record material, of course, is missing, except insofar as author contests author and the judge applies his or her own critical faculties to the debate. All the data is then tested against legal norms. In short, the appellate judge tests the parties' proffers of legislative fact against reasoned, published authorities who have attempted to seek the truth through documented research, often critical of earlier efforts. This is the process that Justice Holmes called merely identifying premises for adopting a rule of law, see Prentis, 211 U.S. at 227, 29 S.Ct. at 69-70, and that Professors Morgan, Davis, and others have characterized as part of judicial reasoning and law-making rather than of traditional fact-finding. See, e.g., E.M. Morgan, Judicial Notice, 57 HARV. L.REV. 269, 270-71 (1944); K.C. Davis, An Approach to Problems of Evidence in the Administrative Process, 55 HARV.L.REV. 364, 403 (1942); J.B. THAYER, PRELIMINARY TREATISE ON EVIDENCE 279-80 (1898); Erickson, 574 P.2d at 5-6. How can legislative fact-finding best be conducted? Ideally, several qualified experts on all sides of a social or scientific issue would appear in the trial court, subject to cross-examination not only about their own views but also about the views of other testifying experts, as well as the views of non-testifying authors of seminal articles on the subject. Indeed, ideally the very authors of the most probative studies would be among the experts who testify. In this way, highly qualified expert testimony would serve at least three important functions: focus the court's attention on the most relevant concerns, present the range of informed opinion on the subject, and both identify and critique the most probative literature. The court, therefore, would achieve a sharpened, presumably reliable insight into complicated matters that, without such help, would be much more difficult for the judge to understand. The dollar costs and time required for the ideal approach may be prohibitive, however, with the result that a typical hearing will involve only a few experts, often extreme proponents for the parties' respective views, who are likely not to be particularly well qualified and may not provide sufficient, let alone trustworthy, data permitting the court to rule with confidence. This court accordingly has stressedfor example, in connection with expert testimony on the question whether there is a consensus in the scientific community on the accuracy of EMIT drug testingthat non-record sources of information may be crucial to sound legislative fact-finding; reference to such outside sources may be useful in exposing a proffered expert's bias or incompetence. Jones, 548 A.2d at 42. Professor Donald L. Horowitz, who has substantial reservations about the capacity of courts to make social policy, is skeptical in part because he worries that the experts selected to testify as to legislative facts too often will lack sufficient qualifications, and that evidentiary rulesin particular FED. R.EVID. 803will keep out of the trial record seminal studies the courts should know about. He therefore advocates rules changes to admit books and articles on matters of social fact directly into evidence as exhibits, not require as a precondition that an expert refer to them in his [or her] testimony,[ [24] ] abolish the favored position of government reports,[ [25] ] and permit counsel to attack the reliability of the studies directly. This is no panacea, but it would bring the judge one step closer to the original materials, permit him [or her] more easily to check the statements of advocates and interpreters, andsince the studies will be more readily accessible to the judgeperhaps encourage expert witnesses to gear their presentations more closely to what the studies do and do not in fact show. So far, expert witnesses have had too much latitude to parade their own preferences as science. HOROWITZ, supra, at 281. In short, Professor Horowitz has greater confidence in legislative fact-finding directly by judges than he does in building a trial record with expert testimonyunless, presumably, the judge can supplement the record by any means necessary to reach critical sources that will help the judge test the experts when counsel have not effectively completed the job. If, as others have said, trial and appellate judges, as fact-finders, are presently allowed unlimited access to non-record sources of legislative fact, then of course Professor Horowitz's concerns about the rules of evidence have become substantially moot. Based on the foregoing considerations, it is questionable whether a hearing with expert testimony about issues of legislative fact would reveal more reliable or higher quality information than is available by referring to authorities submitted in briefs by both sides, and, in appropriate cases, by additional research at the appellate level. Erickson, 574 P.2d at 6. The advantage of such a costly exercise is likely, on too many occasions, to be marginal at best, and the further away the hearing is from the ideal model I have posited (using the most highly qualified experts), the more the judge will confront distorted, perhaps even biased, presentations and thus have to rely primarily on many non-record sources for critical scientific or social science information. See generally Erickson, 574 P.2d at 4-7. It is clear, of course, that a trial judge, or an appellate court reviewing a dismissal or summary judgment order, has discretion to order a hearing to help establish legislative facts. For example, in Chastelton Corp. v. Sinclair, 264 U.S. 543, 44 S.Ct. 405, 68 L.Ed. 841 (1924), when a landlord claimed that an emergency justifying rent control was at an end and that continuing such regulation was unconstitutionally confiscatory, Justice Holmes opined: It is conceivable that, as is shown in an affidavit attached to the bill, extensive activity in building has added to the ease of finding an abode. If about all that remains of war conditions is the increased cost of living, that is not in itself a justification of the act. Without going beyond the limits of judicial knowledge, we can say at least that the plaintiffs' allegations cannot be declared offhand to be unmaintainable, and that it is not impossible that a full development of the facts will show them to be true. In that case the operation of the statute would be at an end. We need not enquire how far this Court might go in deciding the question for itself, on the principles explained in Prentis v. Atlantic Coast Line Co., 211 U.S. 210, 227 [29 S.Ct. 67, 69-70, 53 L.Ed. 150]. See Gardner v. Collector, 6 Wall. 499 [18 L.Ed. 890]. South Ottawa v. Perkins, 94 U.S. 260 [24 L.Ed. 154]. Jones v. United States, 137 U.S. 202 [11 S.Ct. 80, 34 L.Ed. 691]. Travis v. Yale & Towne Manufacturing Co., 252 U.S. 60, 80 [40 S.Ct. 228, 232, 64 L.Ed. 460]. These cases show that the Court may ascertain as it sees fit any fact that is merely a ground for laying down a rule of law, and if the question were only whether the statute is in force today, upon the facts that we judicially know we should be compelled to say that the law has ceased to operate. Here however it is material to know the condition of Washington at different dates in the past. Obviously the facts should be accurately ascertained and carefully weighed, and this can be done more conveniently in the Supreme Court of the District [a trial court] than here. The evidence should be preserved so that if necessary it can be considered by this Court. Id. at 548-49, 44 S.Ct. at 406 (emphasis added). Justice Holmes, though mindful of the appellate court's authority to find its own legislative facts, concluded that, for the particular kind of facts at issueconditions of the District of Columbia housing market over timeit would be more convenient for the trial court to do the work. In every case, therefore, an appellate court has discretion, based on the nature of the inquiry and the trial court record, to determine how to decide questions of law when the record itself does not supply testimony or other documentation adequate for finding essential legislative facts. Certainly, the appellate court can remand for further proceedings as needed, see Chastelton Corp., 264 U.S. at 548-49, 44 S.Ct. at 406-07, but the court also can say, without fear of jurisprudential heresy, that the data proffered by the parties, as well as by the trial court, from non-record, uncross-examined sources, when supplemented by the appellate court's own like research, will suffice in a particular case for constitutional decision-making. This prescribed free rein for judges to consult non-record sources for legislative facts to inform their policy judgments is not without limit, however. While not necessarily undisputably true, it would appear that these legislative facts must at least appear to be more likely than not true if the opinion is going to have the requisite intellectual legitimacy upon which the authority of judge-made rules is ultimately founded. 2 MCCORMICK, supra, § 331, at 400 (emphasis added). Accordingly, despite the appropriateness, indeed the desirability if not necessity, of judges' conducting their own research in non-record, even non-proffered, sources, that exercise must reflect intellectual integrity such that the result, if not irrefutable, at least is unquestionably principled. The point not to be forgotten, however, as Professor Horowitz has emphasized, is that the likelihood of expert testimony of record being superior to the court's own resourcefulness in finding legislative facts is often highly questionable. See HOROWITZ, supra, at 281. The quality of the paid experts too often will be limited to persons who have not done the most careful studies themselves and, in any event, may have an ax to grind that, absent very skillful cross-examination, can create a record that hides the real truth. See id. It may be more convenient for an appellate court to remand for relatively easy legislative fact-finding, as in Chastelton Corp., where collection and presentation of historical economic data (housing market conditions) is likely to be straightforward, akin to adjudicative fact-finding. Arguably, the more complex the issuefor example, the nature and causes of homosexualitythe greater the risk that a hearing will yield no better, and perhaps less satisfactory, results than nonrecord sources, including a judge's own research into primary data, helped along, of course, by counsel's advocacy. See HOROWITZ, supra, at 281. Whether the process I have been discussing is called legislative fact-finding or answering questions of law, the exercise is all the more difficult because legislative facts not only are rarely indisputable or irrefutable but also commonly change from time to time, whether they are social, political, economic, or scientific facts. In contrast with adjudicative facts, which typically are static, see Lewis, 408 A.2d at 311 n. 11, legislative facts are not necessarily immutable because they typically involve patterns of behavioror understandings of patterns of behaviorthat can change over time. See HOROWITZ, supra, at 275. Patterns can and sometimes do change, especially at the lower levels of analysis at which verifiable propositions are likely to be found. If law is to follow behavior, it must constantly monitor such changesa most difficult undertaking. Id. (quoted in Lewis, 408 A.2d at 311 n. 11). The difficulties of legislative fact-finding especially its differences from traditional, record-based adjudicative fact-findingcause some lawyers and judges to say that, at least in difficult, controversial cases, legislative fact-finding should be left to the legislature. Perhaps they say this out of a belief that legislatures are better equipped to find such facts, since everyone even marginally interested in a matter has standing to be heard and, presumably, helps round out the record. But saying that proves too much, for the legislative process, virtually by definition, usually plays to majorities, and legislators can use any variety of protest or inconclusiveness of fact to ignore or defer attention to serious, often worthy claims of constitutional rights advanced by victimized minorities. The truth is, a legislative hearing is not necessarily better suited than a court hearing is to making supportable findings, for example, about the nature and causes of homosexuality, including its degree of immutability. In fact, there is no guarantee that a legislature would ever find reasonor political courageto schedule such a hearing. In contrast with legislatures, however, the courts are commissioned, among other things, to assure constitutional due process and equal protection of the laws for minorities, without fear of electoral consequences especially in jurisdictions, such as ours, where judicial selection is immune from popular vote. Difficult as it may be to determine legislative facts for making social and legal judgments about the constitutional rights of homosexuals, the courts have been asked to do so, they are obligated to do so, and they are as equipped as any institution to do so.