President-elect Obama, you spoke truthfully when you said that"[o]ur law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition."
American soldiers engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan remind us that our debates about the state of American culture are far from actual "wars." Unlike other societies where division often leads to violence, we inherited a framework for resolving our differences according to shared principles and practices of constitutional government.
In the last month, federal judges in Massachusetts and San Francisco delivered rulings striking down the traditional legal definition of marriage. These decisions remind us of the extraordinary power of our judiciary, and often that power may be misguided.