I'm with Kel on this one; as happy as I am that DOMA is gone and gay couples can marry in California again, I found the court's ruling on Prop 8 concerning. DOMA was found to be unconstitutional and was struck down so that's all tied up nice with a bow, but Prop 8 was not. All the Supreme Court said was that the group defending Prop 8 had no bearing in court to be doing so.
This leaves us with two problems; first, the ruling only knocked this whole mess back down a few rungs on the judicial ladder. They declined to rule on the law and threw out the Ninth Circuit's ruling leaving only the district ruling overturning Prop 8 (which is why gay people can get married right now). This leaves Prop 8 up in the air and ensures that there will still be further fighting over it (supporters have already submitted several emergency motions that have so far been shut down). This also had no effect on a national level; the ruling on Prop 8 does not affect this debate in any other state and as such the political fight continues (sticking with the original premise of the thread to focus on the legal issues so I'm going to drop that there).
Second is the point Kel originally made which is that its one of the DoJ's roles to defend the laws on the books. This might have been a bit of a gamble but now the Supreme Court has made its ruling; if the DoJ won't defend a law, then no one can. This would seem to me to be undermining some of our checks and balances because all the executive branch has to do now to influence the court is, well, nothing. Say you've got a law the current administration isn't fond of, undoubtedly (because we are a very partisan country currently) there's going to be people who like it. This inevitably leads to court battles and any big court battle will constantly go back and forth between rulings in favor of one side or the other until it works its way up to the Supreme Court. All the executive branch has to do then is wait for a ruling against the law (and with them having the ability to appoint federal judges they can be sure that will happen eventually) and then kick it up to the Ninth Circuit or Supreme Court, refuse to defend it, and that's that. In this way the executive branch could pull the claws out of an unfriendly Supreme Court and simply wait for enough of them to die to turn it back in their favor before letting them rule on anything worthwhile again. I agree with earlier posts that perhaps the DoJ or individuals within it should recuse themselves if they feel they will not adequately defend a law because of ideological reasons (otherwise they could just substitute lackluster defense for the above mentioned tactic) but there should be a system in place to appoint an appropriate defense in their stead.
I read an interesting study recently that examined people's acceptance of situations and scandals based on who was in power at the time. For example; in 2006 (when a Republican president was in office) 36% of Democrats supported the NSA monitoring phone traffic, whereas following the most recent political storm on the issue 64% of Democrats support it. I imagine a similar trend in numbers could be seen on this issue depending on whether this type of ruling was made against or in favor of a major Democratic issue.
I hate the party system.
Bravo.