“Heaven must be a Kentucky kind of place.”

― Daniel Boone

Sometimes it’s very difficult to explain why a particular US court ruled a particular way, unless you’ve been infected with a legal education. People in general, and the press in very particular, tend to look at legal decisions and their effects in terms of results only. That is, they think if a court rules against the proponents of a particular law or measure, it must be because the judge or judges are against that law or measure, especially on sensitive or controversial subjects. But as Sportin’ Life said in Porgy and Bess, “it ain’t necessarily so.”

Procedure and precedent are every bit as important to a court as the facts of the case under review. Put simply, sometimes actions or laws are called down not because their aim is wrong, but because they’re not doing things the right way. Setting a bad precedent to get a “good” law or regulation is, to the judicial mind, every bit as bad as reaching a decision that is wrong altogether.