How to Recall a California Supreme Court Justice

Information is power if power has already been granted to you. Indeed, in California great political authority has already been granted to its citizens. That power is our history and our legacy, for the California Constitution in Article 2 Section 1 reads: "All political power is inherent in the people. Government is instituted for their protection, security, and benefit, and they have the right to alter or reform it when the public good may require."

The voters of California have recently reformed their state by way of a ballot initiative called Proposition 8. This was a reformation because marriage in California (and in all the world) has always been between a man and a woman. Only in recent months did our justices deem it fit to alter our state laws and our constitution. Because the justices are sworn to uphold the constitution, not alter it, they should be recalled for the failure to discharge their duties. The people of California have also been granted this right. It is within our authority as states Article 2 Section 13: "Recall is the power of the electors to remove an elective officer," and, as the constitutional framers saw fit and in California Supreme Court Justices are elected, not appointed; Article 2 Section 16a: "Judges of the Supreme Court shall be elected at large and judges of courts of appeal shall be elected in their districts at general elections at the same time and places as the Governor. Their terms are 12 years beginning the Monday after January 1 following their election." Because California Supreme Court Justices are not appointed as they are under the federal constitution, but elected, they are subject to recall by the electorate.

The constitutional framers made the manner of recall very simple. The recall process has two parts. Both of these parts are stated plainly in Article 2 Section 14a. The first is: "Recall of a state officer is initiated by delivering to the Secretary of State a petition alleging reason for recall. Sufficiency of reason is not reviewable." The petition to remove these elected officials is not "reviewable." That means that the voters could say, "We the people of California petition for the removal of these four Supreme Court Justices because they are dumb dumb heads, and we don't like them any more." Such a claim could not be rejected on legal grounds; however, such simplicity might not be considered overly persuasive either. Nonetheless, the point is that the California Constitution makes this matter simple because its intent is that the people of California, not its lawyers or its judges, define the nature and scope of our laws.

Those who choose to circulate a petition to recall each of these four judges might contemplate a petition that says:

"We the people of California, petition for the recall of Chief Justice Ronald M. George, Associate Justice Joyce L. Kennard, Associate Justice Kathryn M. Werdegar, and Associate Justice Carlos R. Moreno for the following reasons:

Unless one is of an unsound mind, seeks personal aggrandizement, or sets himself above the body of laws and the constitution he has taken an oath to uphold, the historic documents surrounding the constitution and the historic contexts of the documents surrounding the family law of California cannot be construed to include homosexuality as a suspect category in civil right laws: these are plainly limited to race, religion and gender.

The historic documents of California and the body of documentation surrounding California can not be held to imply or refer to a right for same sex couples to pretend to marriage by law, and any such conclusion is evidence of an unsound mind, self seeking, or a judicial hubris that pretends to be above the body of laws embodied in the constitution of California he swore to uphold.

In altering the Constitution of California and the body of laws it embodies, this jurist has undermined the civil right to marry for all couples; he has reduced marriage to a mere legal contract defined by states rather than upholding the court's legitimate responsibility to recognize the union of a man and a woman. This is an ancient contract between two people based on exalting that which nature and the God of nature has set within the heart of all people everywhere without regard to race, religion or gender. This fundamental joining, like the right to free speech, like the right to worship in accordance with our conscience, like the right to free movement and like the right to defend oneself against tyrants and any who would threaten life and property, exists prior to governments and any government that refuses to recognize such rights is illegitimate.

In altering the Constitution of California and the body of laws it embodies, these jurists have undermined civil society, civil conversation, and the peace of this great state, for we have had untold expenditures of time and money resulting only in increased acrimony and civil unrest. This is entirely the fault of this Court. Rather than undermining the documents and laws of this land designed for the express purpose of maintaining civil discourse, a democratic union and the peace of this people, this court could have urged the plaintiffs in "re Marriages" to utilize the ballot initiatives to democratically amend our State's Constitution. Instead, this court has purposely misrepresented the documents of our state and deceived many of its unwitting populace into feeling that it has "rights" it never received in accordance with the democratic principles of our society.

The ruling of this court expresses an explicit intent to order state representatives to deceive others by applying the historic name and honor of the institution of "marriage" on unions that have no history at all. This legislated fraud would have constituted a tyranny and would have affected young children of every race, religion and gender from the tender ages in which they enter our public school system.

Article 2 Section 14a also sets out the second condition for demanding the recall of its elected judges: "Proponents (of the recall) have 160 days to file signed petitions." Article 2 Section 14b and c contains the instructions on filing the petition:

"A petition to recall a statewide officer must be signed by electors equal in number to 12 percent of the last vote for the office, with signatures from each of 5 counties equal in number to 1 percent of the last vote for the office in the county. Signatures to recall Senators, members of the Assembly, members of the Board of Equalization, and judges of courts of appeal and trial courts must equal in number 20 percent of the last vote for the office. (b) The Secretary of State shall maintain a continuous count of the signatures certified to that office."

California is one of the most liberal states in These United States of America in the oldest and truest meaning of that word. California is not liberal because has relativism, high taxes, deficit spending and a "nanny government" written into its constitution. California is proudly one of the most liberal states in the Union because, rather than specifying that the authority and responsibility for governance resides primarily in the representatives of the people, it gives the authority and responsibility for governance to the people in some of the most direct and practical ways ever devised. Californians ought to prize the authority its citizens have been granted, but with this greater authority comes greater responsibility. Californians have a responsibility, a duty, to recall these judges. This matter has not been left to lawyers, other judges, or to elected representative. They do not, therefore, have the responsibility to recall these judges. Californians, however, do. It is therefore, the people of California who are responsible for the harm these judges have done and will do if they do not act together swiftly and decisively to recall them.

Supreme Deception: the Evidence, Part II

A marriage is not a family and to call it one is a lie. A family always involves children. For the Supreme Court to continue to call a same sex relationship a “family unit” is extraordinarily deceptive because no family can ever occur as a result of a same sex relationship. This deceptive legal jargon has entered California jurisprudence during the period of time in which Judge George has been the Supreme Court’s Chief Justice. In 2005 the majority opinion in Kobke vs. Bernardo Club Country Club, uses the terms “family unit” and “domestic partnership” synonymously. What is new in the court’s jargon in “re Marriages” (May 2008) is the Chief Justice’s wider use of “family relationship” to mean “marriage” or “domestic partnership” (pages 65-66). All of this is in keeping with the Court’s open refusal to recognize marriage in the state of California. Marriage is not a “family relationship,” whatever that is supposed to mean. Marriage is not a “family unit” and never has been. Further, in the corrupt jargon of the state of California it is even more assuredly not a “family unit” or, in other words, a domestic partnership.

Californians are deceived if they think that marriage currently exists in their law as that law has now been defined by Chief Justice George and the Supreme Court of California. The definition of marriage has not been expanded to include domestic partnerships. Instead, the definition of marriage has been contracted and dehumanized. To the Supreme Court of California marriage is a mere patchwork of rights conferred on two people by the legislature and the courts. Marriage results in husbands and wives, not “Party A’s” and “Party B’s.” To cite Perez vs. The State of California, “Marriage is thus something more than a civil contract subject to regulation by the state; it is a fundamental right of free men” (p. 714). Likewise also in Williams v. Garcetti, the Supreme Court at that time stated: “… we have already recognized that ‘[t]he concept of personal liberties and fundamental human rights entitled to protection against overbroad intrusion or regulation by government [such as defining marriage as merely the rights conferred by government] ... extends to . . . such basic civil liberties and rights not listed in the Constitution [as] the right to marry, establish a home and bring up children… (page 577, brackets and italics added).”

None of this, however, fully describes the patterns deception perpetrated on the public by the Supreme Court of California in “re Marriages.” The majority opinion authored by Judge George is deceptive when it refers to other cases of precedent on the importance of “family relationships.” The Chief Justice refers to cases of precedent written before 2003 as evidence that supports the importance of “family relationships” as defined by the court in 2005 and 2008. For instance, on page 54, Judge George notes that

“…subsequent California decisions discussing the nature of marriage and the right to marry have recognized repeatedly the linkage between marriage, establishing a home, and raising children in identifying civil marriage as the means available to an individual to establish, with a loved one of his or her choice, an officially recognized family relationship” (Italics added).

Domestic partnerships are not what the case he cites, DeBurgh v. DeBurgh (1952), was about at all. Continuing on Judge George stated,

“…for example, in explaining ‘the public interest in the institution of marriage’ (id. at p. 863), this court (in Deburgh…) stated: “The family is the basic unit of our society, the center of the personal affections that ennoble and enrich human life. It channels biological drives that might otherwise become socially destructive; it ensures the care and education of children in a stable environment; it establishes continuity from one generation to another; it nurtures and develops the individual initiative that distinguishes a free people. Since the family is the core of our society, the law seeks to foster and preserve marriage.” (Id. at pp. 863-864.)

In his citation of DeBurgh v. DeBurgh Chief Justice George makes it sound as though this court referred to marriage as a family relationship. It never did. In 1952 marriage was marriage and a family was a family. Additionally, in order to utilize this quote about domestic partnerships, the judge must assume first that marriage is not between a man and a woman. However, George blurs this very important distinction rather than obviate it. He does this by using the jargon concocted under his rule as Chief Justice.

Similarly, throughout the section in which he notes past decisions about marriage in order to catalog the importance and rights of marriage (53-66), he assumes that each right or benefit of marriage from old precedents can be assigned to any legalized relationship between two people. On page 66 the judge concluded,

“It is true, of course, that as an historical matter in this state marriage always has been limited to a union between a man and a woman. Hence, the foregoing thirteen pages of supposed evidence are entirely irrelevant. Tradition alone, however, generally has not been viewed as a sufficient justification for perpetuating, without examination, the restriction or denial of a fundamental constitutional right.”

The italicized words are my addition. These words should have been added by Judge George, all the more because he concludes that this was all the traffic of mere tradition. Moreover, his conclusion that all of the rights attributed to marriage were based on no more than tradition is itself misleading. The references were observations justices made in specific instances; they were not observations about historic tradition. Finally, although no evidence was presented that same sex couples gain any of the benefits mentioned by the authorities referred to, nor that the state has any interest at all in same sex unions, the court behaves as though it has listed thirteen pages of evidence proving both the interest of the state and the benefit to individuals of same sex unions. This is misleading and deceptive. The Court should plainly admit that it is rewriting the definition of marriage in a way it sees fit and cease attempting to persuade Californians that this has anything whatsoever to do with previous case law.

The court would lead us to believe that the references to families as the building blocks of society are directly related to the civil institutions designated by governments. The court would have us believe that a same sex couple is a building block of society, just as these famed jurists of the past declared was the case with married couples and their children. This equation is at least, open to discussion.

While we can conceive of marriages and children leading to societies and governments, we cannot see same sex unions leading to the existence of nations states. Indeed, the existence of children in a same sex union is, like a school, inconceivable without the good graces of the society at large. This is a matter for legislation, not for courts. The people of California are under no genuine constitutional compulsion to submit children who are wards of the state for adoption to same sex couples. In California the people have legislated that such adoption is acceptable. Considering the incompetence of state agencies in every aspect of public and private life, perhaps the wisdom of the people of California is to be applauded.

In Part III of “Supreme Deception: the Right to Deceive” the court’s explanation of privacy rights and same sex marriage will be probed.