Border wars

It seems to me that there have been several situations in our history where a law went from universal acceptance to being divisive. The courts find themselves in the middle of the fray, as always. Since they cannot bring action on their own, you can even say they are our country's eternal peacemakers in these border wars. They have to be armed in and of themselves or else they have no power to enforce their decision and worse yet, would be plowed under or ignored during disputes.

Kelly, this last paragraph struck me, and I want to spend some time reflecting on it....

Issues like marriage and abortion were not litigated in our court system for the first 200 (or so) years of our Republic because, as you say, they were among several issues which became more divisive as America became more diverse and less governed by Judeo-Christian ethics of community and sacrifice. Even so, polls consistently show that a vast majority of Americans hold to traditional views of marriage, and a majority of Americans held the view that abortion should be illegal at the time of Roe v. Wade. This raises the question: Are the courts keeping the peace or disrupting the peace?

Allow me to elaborate: The wisdom of illegalizing abortion was, admittedly, being debated among the state legislatures during the 1950s and 1960s. Several states had liberalized their abortion laws by the time the Supreme Court took on the Roe case and issued its decision, ripping the debate out of the state legislatures, short-circuiting the democratic debate, and decreeing the state of things concerning abortion. Now, was this a necessary act to "keep the peace?" Or did the Court end any possibility of peace and compromise when it came to abortion laws?

I would submit the affects of its Roe ruling were the latter, ironically undermining the Court's authority, increasing the very danger you warn of: that the Court will be "plowed under or ignored during disputes".

I would hope that the federal courts will learn the lessons of Roe in the realm of marriage laws and not let a few disrupt the peace or the chance of finding peace through the democratic process. As messy as democracy is, it's still the best we've got.