Justice Kennedy’s reasoning in Obergefell is fully encapsulated by his first line: Americans have a constitutional right “to define and express their identity.” Of course, this right is contingent on their defining only those things to which the Supreme Court is willing to ascribe “dignity,” in prose so purple it must be read with tinted glasses. On its face, the reasoning is as risible as it is contemptible. In this new, metastasized version of substantive due process, the business of adjudicating rights no longer demands analysis, only ascription.

The dissents are among the harshest, most dismissive, and most suggestive in the history of the Supreme Court. Justice Scalia opines that the Court has “descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie.” He says, “If I ever joined [such] an opinion . . . I would hide my head in a bag.” Alas, as self-governing citizens of a constitutional republic, we cannot get off so easily. We can neither run nor hide. Aphoristic reasoning of the sort Justice Kennedy has produced is owed nothing by the citizens it purports to control. We must offer resistance to a decision so patently ungrounded in the Constitution that the dissenters themselves suggest it is owed no deference. The Supreme Court cannot command our obedience when it has not earned our respect. As Daniel Webster said, “God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.”

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Read the article “Reclaiming the Rule of Law after Obergefell” on nationalreview.com.