Legal standing

A fascinating legal question has emerged in the aftermath of Judge
Vaughn Walker’s overturning of Proposition 8 in California: Who has
standing to appeal the decision? Amy Davidson spells this out in the New Yorker, and this summary from the San Jose Mercury News includes comments from leading scholars on court precedent on the matter.

The
question boils down to who can show that they are harmed by gay
marriage. It isn’t enough, in other words, just to be a citizen or
group of citizens opposed to gay marriage. To have standing in
court, you have to be in a position to show how it has caused you
actual injury. Can anybody do that?

Perhaps the larger question,
only touched on in these stories, is whether it is good for the
country, and the cause of gay marriage, for the issue to be settled by
the courts rather than legislatures. Are we priming for a culture war
like the one prompted by Roe v. Wade? Perhaps not, says Ruth Marcus, in an interesting exchange with Michael Gerson.