Legal Commentary

I went out yesterday to exercise my First Amendment rights at the L.A. version of the nationwide marches for marriage equality.   If you haven't attended a protest march in a while it's something you ought to consider doing.  My sense is that we do in fact bowl alone a lot more nowadays, and that goes for political expression, too.  Physically gathering with like-minded people to express myself was quite a rush.  The crowds on the subway were boisterous and friendly, the 20something lesbian punk couple next to us squeezed into one seat so my husband and I could sit (I think they had ulterior motives, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt), and a brass band (!) was playing as they were getting off another train when we arrived at the City Hall stop.   The rally and march were similarly upbeat: the speakers were generally on point and not long-winded, everyone seemed to be taking care of everyone else, and the kids that were brought along were all adorable.

I was also struck by the signs.  A lot of people carried the "No on 8" signs that were all over town during the campaign.  But others created their own -- sometimes witty, sometimes poignant.  As a law professor, though, I was most struck by the signs that spoke constitutional language.  Of course, "equal rights" or a variation thereof was a main theme.  But one sign had a pretty long quotation from the Gettysburg Address, another had the "we hold these truths to be self-evident" language from the Declaration, others made observations about equal liability for taxes being combined with unequal status, and many of them had some variation of "separation of church and state."

I'm not here to praise any of these messages (though my earlier posts this month and before, plus my presence at the march, should make it clear basically where I stand).  I'm simply saying that I'm impressed and, frankly, grateful, that so many of my fellow citizens -- not lawyers, not academics -- are able to appropriate constitutional language in political discourse.  The popular constitutionalists are right to worry about the atrophying of people's constitutional awareness and of their sense of responsibility for safeguarding our constitutional rights.  But based on my experience yesterday people know these terms and they're comfortable using them.  Sure, they were just slogans on handmade signs.  No doubt they heard and got cues from more "sophisticated" advocates arguing in the media.   And of course most of them couldn't do the intricate analysis a court does when deciding a constitutional case.  But they get the basic ideas, and yesterday they took responsibility for them.  And that's pretty cool