The Prop 8 legal defense team has taken a beating in public debate. But the MSM, in the person of Washington Post reporter Lisa Leff (finally) start asking the right questions. What was the point, if any, of all the expert testimony presented in the original Prop 8 case?  Our side says it was basically pointless, from a legal point of view, and merely for public relations purposes.  Reporter Leff found some commentators who see the point:

Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law school professor whose popular legal-affairs blog was inundated with comments from observers critical of the defense’s trial performance, said, “If the question is whether they should have introduced more witnesses at trial, I’m skeptical it would have done any good. It certainly wasn’t necessary, and I’m not sure it would have been at all helpful.”

And University of Pittsburgh law professor Arthur Hellman said that the mere number of witnesses called by each side is unlikely to be decisive in any event.  "It is unlikely the court would consider itself bound and limited by what happened in the district court, that it could not go beyond the trial record," he said.