You're on SCOTUS: What is you're guiding philosophy?

[Kingpoleon]

Is that insane? There are no 14th Amendment cases involving a right to marriage¹ until Zablocki v. Redhail, which was a 1978 case; it was decided 8-1 with Rehnquist dissenting, and Thomas and Alito generally share much of Rehnquist's philosophy. It never seems to say anything direct about marriage; for over 100 years of its history nobody thought the 14th Amendment had anything to do with it.

(I'm uncertain Washington v. Glucksberg -- which found no right to assisted suicide -- was decided correctly; it seems to me that there is no meaningful right to privacy² or bodily autonomy without it. I agree with you that Obergefell was decided correctly in the light of Zablocki -- and I think Zablocki was decided correctly, though I'm conflicted about it -- but it seems rather bizarre to me to argue that the Constitution protects marriage more than assisted suicide.)

¹Unless you count Loving, but that case didn't find a right to marriage; it found anti-miscegenation laws to unconstitutionally discriminate based on race.
²"The right of the people to be secure in their persons..."
[/quote]

The right to marry has been affirmed by virtually every Justice on the Supreme Court in the latter half of the twentieth century - including Rehnquist and Scalia.

Loving: “The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.”(Earl Warren, 9-0 decision)
Meyer v. Nebraska: “While this court has not attempted to define with exactness the liberty thus guaranteed, the term has received much consideration and some of the included things have been definitely stated. Without doubt, it denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint but also the right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children.”(James McReynolds, 7-2 decision)
Skinner v. Oklahoma: pWe are dealing here with legislation which involves one of the basic civil rights of man. Marriage and procreation are fundamental to the very existence and survival of the race.”(William Douglas, 9-0)
Zablocki v. Redhail: “The right to marry is of fundamental importance for all individuals."(Thurgood Marshall, 8-1, including Burger and White)
Turner v. Safley: “The decision to marry is a fundamental right.”(Sandra Day O’Connor, 9-0, including Scalia and Rehnquist)

[Kingpoleon]

No case before Zablocki explicitly found a right to marry protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, even if there were some that brought up marriage as a natural right in dicta. Rehnquist did not quite say that "there is no right to marriage" in Zablocki, but he did say:

The statute in question prohibited parents in the state of Wisconsin who did not pay child support from marrying without a court's permission. Clearly marriage is not really that fundamental of a right, in Rehnquist's view, if the right can be stripped from someone for nonpayment of fines.

(Also, the earliest decision you cite -- Meyer -- is from 55 years after the Fourteenth Amendment was passed. I also wonder whether Meyer would be decided the same way today; it seems like an open-and-shut First Amendment violation to me, but I suppose before the incorporation doctrine some kind of nonsense about due process had to be invented for the Court to strike down such an obviously tyrannical law.)

(My own view is that a marriage protection might be found in the First Amendment -- preventing individuals from marrying, even in civil ceremonies, seems easily characterizable as "prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]" -- but probably not in the Fourteenth, except inasmuch as it incorporated it against the states. Observed this way, from my point of view, the holding in Obergefell follows very easily.)

I was not commenting on where the right to marriage is found, just asserting that Scalia and Rehnquist has previously found such a right to exist.

[Kingpoleon]

Above all, justices should be prudent.  That means interpreting the questions in the case as narrowly as possible and avoiding establishing new, broad rules or sweeping precedents.  In practice, the Court should correct injustices resulting from government action but it should very rarely create new positive rights or exemptions that upend the legislative process. 

What Justice would you say was most in line with this view?

[Kingpoleon]

Hmm...I haven't really given much though to this question.  I would say the "least prudent" justices seem to be Gorsuch and Sotomayor, which is funny considering they're ideological opposites.  I think Roberts and Kavanaugh have prudent sensibilities, while Breyer's "pragmatism" is actually very encompassing and sweeping.   

Going back a few years, I think Sandra Day O'Connor was the justice best in this mold.  A lot of her opinions really delve into articulating and dissecting the specific fact patterns on which the cases turn, not making broad-sweeping generalizations that could be read as future precedent.  

It’s interesting that your judicial philosophy specifically contextualizes itself, but does it very distinctly from originalism. Would you say, then, that your judicial philosophy would have been quite unwilling to rule as the Court did in Marbury v. Madison?