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Originally Posted by SirLance
Article 4, section 1, Constitution of the United States of America:
So the fact is, there is a law. I don't know how it applies to marriage, and I don't think there's been a test case at the Federal level.
I know that in other areas, public policy of one state might preclude it from such recognition, and that usually flies. If, however, congress enacted a law that specifically stated that all states must recognize marriages of other states, that would put the issue to bed (no pun intended).
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If you don't know how it applies to marriage, how can you use it to rebut my statement that there is no law forcing states to recognize each others' marriage proceedures? The simple response is that Article 4, section 1 does not apply to marriages. Please re-read your quoted portion very carefully. Marriages are not judicial proceedings. There is
no law the requires states to recognize the marriages of other states. You can keep thinking so if you want, but you're arguing against legal experts and a loooooong history of jurisprudence stating otherwise. Did you skip over my legal brief? Did you not read the article I posted about a specific federal test case on this very issue? I find these kinds of discussions very frustrating. I go through the trouble of digging around to find my professional writings and the opinions of other, known experts, and people want to refute my professional opinion without doing their own research or mishandling the evidence they happen to come across.
On what basis do you think Congress could pass such a law mandating the states to recognize each other's marriages? Any such legislation wouldn't pass Constitutional scrutiny.
I've got a well-written, lay-oriented book sitting on my shelf called,
Law 101: Everything you need to know about the American legal system by Jay Feinman. It's just a bit over 300 pages and you could read it at B&N or Borders over some coffee. You could actually refer to any good constitutional law book to better understand the issues surrounding federalism and state sovereignty, but this one is written in an easily consumable format.