Ideals and what I can live with

I generally agree with this argument. Though I do not cry when courts affirm individual liberties when they are not explicitly given expression in the law.

Gay Marriage and the California Courts

Griswold v. Connecticut is not based on an explicit protection for privacy in the Constitution. But I do think the individual liberties involved warrant some kind of legal affirmation, even as I prefer that affirmation to come from democratic politics.

I definitely think a culture that affirms individual liberties is a stronger and more reliably mature liberal democratic culture. But I'm not in a hurry to revisit every court decision that affirms liberties based on our liberal democratic traditions.

What matters to me is that America and all liberal democracies take their liberal and democratic traditions more seriously and strengthen their commitments to free and self-governing socieities, independent of courts. Democratic outcomes - referendums, initiatives, legislative decisions, and the individual attitudes in the culture, generally - are better barometers of that commitment. Court rulings, generally, I think, offer protections for freedoms when majorities are not prepared to support them. That is a precarious way to affirm liberty, long term. But it is not a mortal sin. And challenges to majority rule based on principles of individual liberties and constitutional principle is a long and proud tradition in American juris prudence and the history of liberal democracies.

I don't know if majorities support the rights of Aghani women to vote and get an education. I certainly hope they do or will come to such a commitment. But I have no issue when Afghani courts interpreting that Afghani constitutional principles affirm such rights even if they do not explicitly make such affirmations or if majorities do not support them. They may be reversed. They also happen to be on the right side of the question.

Democracy is ideal. Court decisions that come down on the right side I can live with.