U.S. Congress attempts to nullify doctrine of judicial review

Posted by MacDood
So as of this Friday the media's reporting that the House has passed and forwarded to the Senate a bill, called the "Marriage Protection Act", that would "prevent federal courts from ordering states to recognize same-sex unions that took place in other states". Except, wait a minute, isn't that exactly what the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 did? So what's the point of this bill? Well, that's where things start to get interesting. If you go and look up this bill (H.R. 3313) on thomas.loc.gov, you'll find it actually amends the Defense of Marriage Act. And, in fact, all it does is add a single clause to the end of the DOMA, saying:`No court created by Act of Congress shall have any jurisdiction, and the Supreme Court shall have no appellate jurisdiction, to hear or decide any question pertaining to the interpretation of, or the validity under the Constitution of, section 1738C or this section.'.So, are you following this? This bill doesn't "prevent federal courts from ordering states to recognize same-sex unions that took place in other states", as Yahoo News puts it-- that's what the DOMA does. This bill does something much more interesting, and much more questionable: it bans the courts from ruling the DOMA unconstitutional. [Kuro5hin.org]