>>>Yeah, people keep trotting out that "judicial legislation" horse hockey.
>>>
>>>The SC did not change the constitution. They merely read it and came to the conclusion that same-sex marriage had actually been legal all along. There was nothing in the constitution forbidding it.
>>
>>The California Supreme Court wrote in their 2008 decision that marriage is a "basic civil right". That changed the constitution by explicitly providing a right where previously one did not exist.
>
>The wording of the CA constitution did not change until the passage of Prop. 8.
>
>Dan

You do not have to directly change the wording of the constitution to affect constitutional change. Supreme and Appeals court rulings are used as precedent for future cases. Because of the way the ruling was worded, a right was established which previously did not exist.