Just Say No

I've been thinking about the Massachusetts Supreme Court's Goodridge decision which says that the Massachusetts legislature must pass the laws in order to legalize gay marriage. My specific thought is "Huh?" Even Glenn Reynolds says, "Though I'm in favor of gay marriage, the Massachusetts opinion is just unpersuasive. There's astonishingly little in the way of actual legal analysis there, and that hurts them." I figure that if the Massachusetts supreme court cannot be bothered to write an actual legal opinion, why should the Massachusetts legislature be bothered to write an actual law? For that matter, they could say, "The Massachusetts Supreme Court has no authority to tell the legislature what laws to write. If they try to do it again, we'll impeach the lot of them." I'm not sure whether the Massachusetts state constitution would allow them to do that, but I like the precedent that would set. It would do a lot to curtail the overreaching of the courts.