Part I: Your text states that the judiciary has the power to interpret, apply or invalidate a law as it pertains to rights expressly created under the state or national constitution.

(1) Does the Constitution explicitly provide for that authority? If so, where in the Constitution is it so provided? If not, why does the Supreme Court have the power to strike down statutes passed by Congress as unconstitutional? Should it have that power? Why or why not? (this is of particular interest these days in the early part of the Trump administration!)

Part II: In 1967, in the case of Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional a Virginia statute that prohibited whites and African-Americans from marrying based on due process and equal protection grounds, stating, "Marriage is one of the basic civil rights of man, fundamental to our very existence and survival. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive to the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law".

In 2013, in the case of Hollingsworth, et al. v. Perry, et al. the Supreme Court avoided ruling on the substantive issue of whether States can prohibit same-sex couples from marrying; ruling instead that the petitioners in the case had no right (no standing) to contest the ruling of the lower court. The ruling essentially means that for the time being individual states can decide on their own the question of same-sex marriage.

(2) Do you believe each State should be able to decide whether same-sex couples can marry within their respective States or do you believe the issue is one for the Supreme Court to decide, similar to the Loving case cited above? Why or why not? Do you believe denying same-sex couples the ability to marry violates their constitutional rights of due process and equal protection?