Second
in a Series. "Marshall's Own Panel Said Her Courts Are a Disaster. But
She Has Managed to Keep the Report Quiet Until Now"
Marshall Was Worried: "What Were Those Three Other
Justices Going to Do?"
Justice
Marshall had plenty to worry about. If those three judges on her court
were not on her side, they would cause enormous problems. If the vote
of those six Associate judges turned out 4-2 in Marshall's favor, she
could take the "high road," do the ethical thing and recuse
herself. That would mean that gay marriage would pass by a 4-2 vote,
even if Marshall did not participate in the decision.
But Marshall soon learned
that three of the judges would vote against her --- with passion, saying
their Court did not have the power under the state Constitution to regulate
marriage, only the Legislature did. They would write that Marshall had
no power to do what she was attempting and she was violating the Constitution, not following it.
That meant that Marshall
could not "take the high road". She would have to vote herself,
or else the vote would be a tie. Gay marriage would be dead. She understood
that the case had been appealed to her from the highly-respected Superior
Court, the state's historic trial court. The judge there had held that
the matter must be decided by the Legislature. For him to decide the
matter would be for him to violate the Constitution.
But Mary Bonauto had
appealed to Marshall with great assurance that she would grant her victory.
Marshall did that. And Mary Bonauto was deemed a heroine all over the
state. The illustrious Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly named her Lawyer-of-the-Year
for two years in a row. Of course, very few knew that an editor there
was a closeted homosexual.
Panel's
Report Was Deadly
As if all that was not enough trouble,
the panel that Marshall had appointed on August 6, 2002 was giving her
terrible marks for the courts she was running. (Apparently Marshall
appointed the panel because the Massachusetts Bar Association was demanding
that it be allowed to rate all the trial judges in the state, and Marshall
had handpicked a committee to rate her court as well. This turned out
to be a disaster for her.)
It is not indicated
when the Report was given to her by the panel, but it was clear she
would have to release it quickly. She had more than enough to do, and
she had overloaded her judges with the tremendous burden of gay marriage.
Judge Cordy wrote the dissenting opinion, which was also signed by the
other two dissenters, and his opinion was even longer than Judge Marshall's.
One must believe that
the major work done by all the judges from March 2003 until November
18, 2003 when the opinion was released, was on gay marriage. What a
time for the citizens to hear that the state courts under Margaret Marshall
were a disaster. No wonder they were when Marshall was using them for
her own personal desires.
Worse,
Yet! MassNews Had Interviewed Panel Members
When the Report
was first released, MassNews had interviewed members of the panel who
fleshed-out what had been said in the Report.
