This column is adapted from an item first published Thursday on the columnist's blog.
The Arkansas Supreme Court announced Thursday a little something I wish to paraphrase generously, indeed embellish.
I do so only for the worthy purpose of plowing through the court's confusion.
So here goes:
The court basically said in so many words that it did not want to rule on the same-sex marriage appeal pending before it, and most likely would not do so.
The court said we couldn't make it rule even if we tried.
We just don't want to, the justices basically said.
Their judgeships are matters of popular election and the people of Arkansas don't much like same-sex marriage, which the justices might be forced to permit by precedence and law and justice and stuff.
So the eminent justices said they simply will concoct lame, indeed nonsensical, excuses not to opine on Circuit Judge Chris Piazza's stayed ruling legalizing same-sex marriage.
They will stall until the U.S. Supreme Court handles the issue probably by June and perhaps makes moot the state case. That would give everybody in Arkansas someone else to blame.
That probably will be Barack Obama, who gets blamed for everything else.
Justice Paul Danielson, the real jurist on the seven-member state high court, dissented on the latest stalling tactic, which was to create from thin air a new case to decide whether to decide the old case or proceed with a new case, since the court has stalled so much already that the old case was heard before two new justices were added to the court by the last election.
You see.
Justices other than Danielson are hiding under their desks with their robes pulled over their heads.
Except, that is, for Justice Rhonda Wood, who is newly elected to the court and didn't hear the case last year. She announced separately that she had disqualified herself from the court's latest stalling tactic, since it had to do with a question involving her--whether the court should open another case to decide whether the old case should be reargued from the start in a new case for the benefit of the two new justices.
You see.
Justice Wood told me on Twitter, where I was surprised to find her, that, if not disqualifying, she would have dissented with Danielson on that decision to start a new case for the argument about whether to start a new case.
She said she was ready and willing to hear the case. The other new case, that is, by which I mean a redoing for her benefit of the old case.
You see.
What it comes down to is that the court has now made an entirely separate case of deciding how to proceed in the actual case.
So allow me to take a second to untangle my typing fingers so we may run through this narrative.
Piazza ruled nearly a year ago that same-sex marriage was to be permitted in Arkansas. After a few days of gay weddings, the ruling was stayed for appeal to the state Supreme Court.
The appeal was fully briefed and orally argued in early November. By usual procedure, the justices would have gone into conference and decided the case and issued a ruling by the end of the term in December.
But they didn't. Why? Justices don't discuss such things.
The best speculation is that somebody on the court didn't like the majority decision, whichever way it went, and delayed the entire affair by insisting on writing a dissent, or maybe even a self-serving consenting opinion, that just so happened not to get finished in time, thus carrying the matter over to the new term when the court would add two new members and get presented with new stalling opportunities, or a different outcome.
So the two newly elected judges joined the court in January. So then Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, who was elected to push back against Obama and gays, asked the court to consider the question of whether to start over and rehear the case with the newly constituted court.
So the court said that was a swell question, right up its alley, and asked for briefs, which have now been submitted.
What specifically happened Thursday was that the court said it was now opening a whole new case for the argument of whether to have new oral arguments on the existing case, and that, since it was creating a whole new case for arguing about how to handle the existing case, the parties would need to supply fresh briefs on the now-recycled question of whether to conduct start-over oral arguments.
You see.
It is unclear whether lawyers will be allowed simply to photocopy their recent arguments on that question.
The Supreme Court could always open a third case on that question. Or a fourth case.
There may now be yet another case on the matter of the columnist's contempt of court.
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John Brummett's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 04/07/2015