Even though the majority of California voters approved Proposition 8, Judge Vaughn Walker's decision to overturn the gay marriage ban does not mean that he is an activist judge who ignored the will of the people and engaged in creating rather than interpreting the law as required by the Constitution. In fact our constitution requires something quite different from that.
Many great thinkers including Plato, Aristotle, James Madison, Alexis de Tocqueville, and John Stuart Mill have worried that the tyranny of the majority is one of the great dangers of democracy, and it is a frequent topic in the Federalist Papers so critical to the founding of this country. The reason our constitution includes a bill of rights is specifically to protect minority rights from being squashed by majority opinion. A fundamental responsibility of federal judges is to ensure that no law passed by the majority or its representatives impinges on those rights.
Judge Walker found that Proposition 8 did just that. It isn't a terrible injustice that a single judge can thwart the will of the majority; it is one of the key components of our constitutional democracy that makes our country great.
