In Hollingsworth, the Proposition 8 case, the state of California has declined to defend the state’s own law. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed a group of private citizens, proponents of the proposition, to step in and defend the law in court. Former Solicitor General Walter Dellinger, who served under President Clinton, has filed a friend of the court brief arguing persuasively that these intervenors do not have standing to sue (meaning they have no legal stake in the issue, but only political interest). He has precedent on his side. More than 25 years ago, in Diamond v. Charles, the court held that a pro-life doctor did not have standing to defend an antiabortion law in court when the state attorney general refused to do so. The same lack of standing is true here.

If Mr. Dellinger is right (and I think he is), the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction to decide the Proposition 8 case, and neither did the Ninth Circuit. The court should vacate the decision striking down Proposition 8, leaving in place the original district-court order that prompted the case by allowing two same-sex couples to marry, but depriving Hollingsworth of precedential effect.

In Windsor, the Defense of Marriage Act case, the government also declines to defend its law, but the U.S. Solicitor General, unlike the California attorney general, filed a notice of appeal and a petition for review, and the government is continuing to enforce the law. That preserves the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction to decide the constitutionality of DOMA…

If the court dismisses the Proposition 8 case on standing grounds and strikes DOMA down on federalism grounds, the combined effect would be to reaffirm America’s democratic, decentralized decision-making process without imposing an answer—one way or the other—to the same-sex marriage question.