The U.S. Supreme Court’s Surprising Show Of Restraint

Today the United States Supreme Court surprised just about everyone by declining to hear appeals in any of seven cases in which lower courts had struck down as unconstitutional state laws banning same-sex marriage.  Legal bloggers are having a field day as they try to understand why the four solidly conservative justices on the court (Roberts, Scalia, Alito and Thomas) did not vote in favor of granting at least one of the petitions for a writ of certiorari.  (Only four votes are required to grant a cert petition.)

I am ill-equipped to weigh in on this issue.  But here are three links (click here, here and here) to a few different perspectives on the issue.  A more extensive discussion of the Court’s surprising decision appears on SCOTUSblog.