{"id":12297,"date":"2010-08-11T22:23:53","date_gmt":"2010-08-11T22:23:53","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-08-11T22:23:53","modified_gmt":"2010-08-11T22:23:53","slug":"john-eastman-gay-judges-not-fit-to-decide-equality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2010\/08\/11\/john-eastman-gay-judges-not-fit-to-decide-equality\/","title":{"rendered":"John Eastman: Gay Judges Not Fit To Decide Equality"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>John C. Eastman, a law professor at the Christian-affiliated Chapman School of Law, wrote an editorial today for the San Francisco Chronicle in which he concludes that a gay judge is not fit to decide whether Proposition 8 violates the U.S. Constitution:  <\/p>\n<p>If Judge Walker is indeed in a long-term, same-sex relationship, he certainly has an &#8220;interest that could be affected substantially by the outcome of the proceeding&#8221; &#8211; he and his partner are now permitted to marry! &#8211; and that, according to Judge Walker&#39;s own finding, has financial benefits as well. Such conflicts would have required recusal, and cannot be waived by the parties.  <\/p>\n<p>There is no logic to this argument at all, and its embarassing coming from a law professor. <\/p>\n<p>Not surprisingly, Mr. Eastman&#39;s thoughts on recusal are malluable depending on the circumstances.&nbsp; In 2004, for example, he <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/templates\/story\/story.php?storyId=1835003\">farcibly argued<\/a> that Justice Scalia should not recuse himself from deciding a case against Scalia&#39;s close friend, Dick Cheney. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It would be a dangerous precedent<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They&#39;re trying to get him to recuse himself to change the outcome of the case, and that is an inappropriate use of this and it is a dangerous trend . . .&#8221;&nbsp; He called the Sierra Club&#39;s request asking Judtice Scalia recuse himself&nbsp; &#8220;politically motivated to try to alter the outcome of the cas, having nothing to do with Justice Scalisa&#39;s relationship with Dick Cheney.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Sound familiar?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>When asked about the appearance of&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>When protecting rights under the Constitution, a Judge is always going to personally benefit from the decision.&nbsp; After all, we&#39;re all better off when our rights are protected.&nbsp; Take the right to privacy as an example.&nbsp; When deciding constitutional issues, Judges decide cases that could personally affect them all the time.  Let&#39;s look at just a few examples:  <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In Griswold v. Conneticut, the US Supreme Court struck down a law that prohibited contraceptives, holding that the When a Judge enjoins a polluter from spewing toxic pollution into the air, she benefits from that ruling by having clean air to breathe.  When enjoining a company under the Clean Air Act  As part of these ruling, the Judgexx<\/li>\n<li><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John C. Eastman, a law professor at the Christian-affiliated Chapman School of Law, wrote an editorial today for the San Francisco Chronicle in which he concludes that a gay judge is not fit to decide whether Proposition 8 violates the U.S. Constitution:  <\/p>\n<p>If Judge Walker is indeed in a long-term, same-sex relationship, he certainly has an &#8220;interest that could be affected substantially by the outcome of the proceeding&#8221; &#8211; he and his partner are now permitted to marry! &#8211; and that, according to Judge Walker&#39;s own finding, has financial benefits as well. Such conflicts would have required recusal, and cannot be waived by the parties.  <\/p>\n<p>There is no logic to this argument at all, and its embarassing coming from a law professor. <\/p>\n<p>Not surprisingly, Mr. Eastman&#39;s thoughts on recusal are malluable depending on the circumstances.&nbsp; In 2004, for example, he <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/templates\/story\/story.php?storyId=1835003\">farcibly argued<\/a> that Justice Scalia should not recuse himself from deciding a case against Scalia&#39;s close friend, Dick Cheney. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It would be a dangerous precedent<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They&#39;re trying to get him to recuse himself to change the outcome of the case, and that is an inappropriate use of this and it is a dangerous trend . . .&#8221;&nbsp; He called the Sierra Club&#39;s request asking Judtice Scalia recuse himself&nbsp; &#8220;politically motivated to try to alter the outcome of the cas, having nothing to do with Justice Scalisa&#39;s relationship with Dick Cheney.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Sound familiar?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>When asked about the appearance of&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>When protecting rights under the Constitution, a Judge is always going to personally benefit from the decision.&nbsp; After all, we&#39;re all better off when our rights are protected.&nbsp; Take the right to privacy as an example.&nbsp; When deciding constitutional issues, Judges decide cases that could personally affect them all the time.  Let&#39;s look at just a few examples:  <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In Griswold v. Conneticut, the US Supreme Court struck down a law that prohibited contraceptives, holding that the When a Judge enjoins a polluter from spewing toxic pollution into the air, she benefits from that ruling by having clean air to breathe.  When enjoining a company under the Clean Air Act  As part of these ruling, the Judgexx<\/li>\n<li><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-3cl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}