MY STATE SUPREME COURT

That's right - they're MY State Supreme Court, the New Jersey one, and today I'm taking full credit for them.  I've been arguing cases before various permutations of this Court for some fifteen years now.  Some of my all-time favorite Justices are no longer there: booted out by Chris Christie for political reasons (Justice Wallace), recently retired (Justice Long).   But the three depicted in the above photo are some of my current favorites: all deeply principled people, for whom I have tremendous respect.  They're (left to right) Justice Jaynee Lavecchia, Chief Justice Stuart Rabner, and Justice Barry Albin.  I like all the other sitting Justices too, actually, but I've never been prouder of all of them as a group than I've been since Friday.  They could have made a wishy-washy statement about gay marriage and still denied Christie's motion for a stay.  They could have said that the public has an interest in postponing same-sex weddings until after the entire substantive case has been decided (it'll be argued in January, and decided some time months later), but that it was outweighed by the interests of the same-sex couples who want to be able to marry.  But that's not what they did.  Instead they said, unanimously, that there is NO public interest in delaying the weddings.  None.  None at all.  Got it?
     Perhaps the bravest of them was the Chief Justice, who will come up for reappointment during what will presumably be Christie's next term as governor.  The Chief is a very, very smart man, who no doubt knows full well that with this ruling, he has just kissed any chance of his being reappointed by this governor goodbye.  But, unlike some Speakers of the House I could name, he did not put his own job security ahead of what he believed to be right.  He voted his conscience. 
      My Court.  I think I'll keep them.