Hadley Arkes: Judge Tauro Does DOMA

Hadley Arkes write at the National Review Bench Memos Blog: “Judge Joseph Tauro, in the federal district court in Boston, took it upon himself to strike down the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). With that stroke he would remove one of the key barriers standing in the way of imposing same-sex marriage on the nation as a whole. And it would be done through the power of judges alone, without the need to agitate the community in any political controversy, and without citizens or legislators needing to do such unseemly things as voting. Judge Tauro accomplishes this task by essentially presupposing the most decisive points that he should have been obliged to establish in an argument . . . “