To the Editor:

The recent district court ruling invalidating the Marshall-Newman Amendment defining marriage in Virginia as limited to one man with one woman is an example of abuse of judicial discretion. Our Constitution’s legitimacy relies on its preamble’s opening words, “We the People.” The U.S. Constitution created the judicial branch, but both the Constitution and the judicial branch it established are subordinate to the People. When the people of 31 out of 50 states reach a consensus, in this instance marriage defined as one man with one woman, the judiciary, even if it can articulate a basis, is insubordinate to the People when it annuls the legal principle they have embraced — especially based on a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling.

Former Sen. Mike Gravel, speaking at the National Press Club last May, described a paradoxical feature of the Constitution: While it acknowledges our system’s ultimate legitimacy as residing with the People, it treats the People as juvenile by ceding so much of their power to various organs of governance with varying degrees of accountability to the People. The courts — the least accountable branch — having such power over even the People is an example of what Senator Gravel described. I cannot understand why legislatures would allow the federal courts to override their states’ legal and constitutional enactments without issuing calls for a special convention to revise the U.S. Constitution so as to rein in such abuses of power as the recent court rulings invalidating definitions of marriage in the majority of states.

Dino Drudi

Alexandria