“I tell people the Constitution doesn’t belong to a bunch of judges, it’s yours,” [Justice Anthony] Kennedy said. “We have to reflect on what these issues mean.”
He compared the reaction to the same-sex marriage case to the unpopularity of his 1989 opinion in the flag-burning case, and how public opinion evolved over time.
“Eighty senators went to the floor of the Senate to denounce the court,” he said. “President Bush took the week off and visited flag factories, but I noticed that after two or three months people began thinking about the issues.”
He also noted the difference between the U.S. Constitution, and the word “constitution,” which he defined as “the sum total of manners and customs, the traditions of people.”
“That’s the constitution most people look at when they look at the United States. They say, ‘What kind of people are these? How do they behave? What are their traditions and customs, their rules regarding the dignity they accord to their fellow citizens?’
“And the more the big ‘C’ Constitution relates to the small ‘c’ constitution, the stronger a decision is. The stronger we are,” Kennedy said.’
DOWNTOWN SAN DIEGO — It took U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy six days to write the landmark majority decision allowing same-sex marriage nationwide. Like all major opinio…
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And the ‘PC/cancel culture’ myth conflicts with the “small ‘c’ constitution” that belongs to the people, that authorizes private citizens in the context of private society to determine what speech is appropriate and what speech is not, consistent with the “rules regarding the dignity [we] accord to [our] fellow citizens.”