Juglander Review
Mktvartvelo: Supreme Court gives final ruling on same-sex marriage legal challenge
Mktvartvelo's Supreme Court has issued a new ruling, in which the court has assessed the constitutionality of the Fairness and Equality Act, passed by the National Assembly a few months ago. The ruling, which is legally a binding assessment which can not be appealed, has reviewed negatively a number of articles and clauses of the legislation, including the most well-known consequence of the law, as it is the legalization of same-sex marriage nationwide in the Unitary State of Mktvartvelo.
In their ruling, the Supreme Court's justices have rewritten 6 articles, suspended 2 and dictated the interpretation for 17 more, mostly those dealing with same-sex couples, positive discrimation and other policies aimed to improve inclusiveness and equality of opportunities, and disability and minorities protections.
The ruling was passed by a 10-4 majority, and it has highly critical not just with some of the articles and clauses but with the preamble, language, and reasoning of important sections of the act. "The legislators seem to have confused the purpose of the powers, rights, and duties granted to them and the institution they represent, and lose themselves in abstract and ideological justifications as if they were forced to find or discover new sources of legitimacy", argued the final ruling. "On the contrary, the own legislators seem to concede their own weakness", it continued in one of the most critical passages of the ruling, "when they try to move through loopholes even if they will later will return to perform as if they were legislators of a constituent assembly and not moving in a proper instutional framework".
The ruling judged that the legislation violated the Charter of Khisjvari in particular the article establishing that the state authorities shall take the religious beliefs of the Mktvartvelo's society into account and shall consequently maintain proper cooperation with the religious authorities. "This, of course, does not mean that religious authorities and their institutional representatives were granted a right of veto over the parliament and other state institutions", the ruling argued, "but the lawmakers went a stop beyond by ignoring altogether both the secular and religious jurisprudence as well as the official doctrine of the religious authorities which oversee the institutional, social, and personal framework of a clear majority of the society toward authorities, including executive, legislative and judiciary powers, have the duty to protect and serve".
"It is not between the rights and duties of the legislative power to discuss and establish the true nature of legal and social institution as marriage", the ruling later continues, "as that nature and purpose is well established through jurisprudence, tradition, custom, social life, and through the free choice and social relations of citizens every day". As a consequence, the Supreme Court definitively suspends and nullifies male same-sex marriage as a violation of the Charter of Khisjvari and the sources of Mktvartvelo's judiciary system, even in the form of non-religious civil marriage. "It would be nothing but a legal and institutional dereliction to ignore that it is not between the rights [of the National Assembly] to determine the purpose of marriage, as this purpose is already well established".
In opposition to the final ruling, a dissenting opinion was issued, which have the support of three justices, arguing against the final ruling. "While the majority feels compelled to remind us the duties and limits of the power and responsibility that the Charter granted to the legislature -an assessment and principle that this opinion can only concurs-, it dares to enter toward a hermeneutical reasoning that it established the legal framework and duties to the judiciary, including the same institution that it created and which we have the privilege to serve, even to the head of state himself, who was himself the origin and source of the Charter itself".
The ruling has received rather mixed reactions, as neither suspended the legislation as a whole, as called the appeal to the court by legislators from the opposition that caused the ruling, nor affect the de facto establishment of female same-sex marriage in Mktvartvelo as consequence of the final assessment of the court, which has been ambiguously been received by pro-LGBT organizations. On the other hand, a government spokesperson has declared that "while disappointed...we respect and accept the final assessment of the [Supreme] Court".