Of all of the rights our Constitution purports to protect, the liberty right of writ of Habeas Corpus is of such fundamental importance - so natural, that the Founders guaranteed against its encroachment in the original text of the Constitution. Other rights we often find as fundamental and natural as Habeas, such as free speech or religion, are guaranteed against encroachment in the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights was enacted 4 years after the enactment of the Constitution. The right of Habeas was so important that the people dared not risk four years without its guaranteed protection.

Despite this special status of Habeas in our Constitutional regime, our attorney general argued today before our Senate that not every citizen of (let alone individual within) the United States possesses this most natural of rights:

Specter: Now wait a minute, wait a minute. The Constitution says you can’t take it away except in the case of invasion or rebellion. Doesn’t that mean you have the right of habeas corpus?

Gonzales: I meant by that comment that the Constitution doesn’t say that every individual in the United States or every citizen has or is assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn’t say that. It simply says that the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended.

So, some of us neither have, nor are “assured” (by the state, I presume) certain natural rights and liberties? I guess our legal and political culture has been dead wrong for at least 231 years, or for at least 318 years, if not for at least 907 years.

PDF of the decision here.

… committed same sex couples must be afforded on equal terms the same rights and benefits enjoyed by opposite-sex couples under the civil marriage statutes. The name to be given to the statutory scheme that provides full rights and benefits to samesex couples, whether marriage or some other term, is a matter left to the democratic process.

At first glance, the decision seems similiar to the Vermont Supreme Court decision from several years ago directing the legislature to create a statutory schema allowing for same-sex “civil unions,” but not necessarily directing the legislature to create a statutory schema allowing for same-sex “marriage.”

Semantics, semantics.

UPDATE: Jack Balkin also compares the NJ Supreme Court decision to that of the Vermont Supreme Court. He also correctly spells similar.

UPDATE II: … and lest you think this decision was the doing of “activist judges,” Glenn Greenwald at C&L provides some background:

The decision today is entirely consistent with the democratic will of New Jersey residents. The New Jersey legislature already enacted a domestic partnership bill two years ago which recognizes, and grants a whole array of marital rights to, same-sex couples. But the way the laws were written, some rights were still assigned only to “married” couples. The court decision today simply requires that those same-sex partnerships have all of the rights which are given to married couples. But New Jersey voters, through their representatives, already approved of recognition of same-sex relationships two years ago.