In Justice Samuel Alito's opinion, the Supreme Court's recent ruling legalizing same-sex marriage has opened up a whole can of worms relating to the legal definition of liberty. In a conversation with The Weekly Standard, Alito decried the ruling for laying the groundwork for the elimination of a minimum wage — or for the implementation of a right to an annual income, depending on the leanings of future justices.
In Alito's opinion, the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling essentially defined liberty as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, which in this view grants "the freedom to define your understanding of the meaning of life." Alito contends that before this ruling, legal definitions of liberty were "deeply rooted in the traditions of the country."
"But the Obergefell decision threw that out," Alito says. "It did not claim that there was a strong tradition of protecting the right to same-sex marriage. This would have been impossible to find." Without these traditional precedents, justices will be able to base their rulings on "ideological whims."
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And now, he contends, "we are at sea."
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