I again think the court's reasoning is quite correct (emphasis in original, some paragraph breaks added):

In his briefing before this court, the Attorney General agrees with our conclusions that Proposition 8 constitutes a constitutional amendment rather than a constitutional revision, and that the measure does not violate the separation of powers doctrine. The Attorney General, however, advances a novel, alternative theory under which he claims Proposition 8 should be held invalid. Relying largely on the circumstance that article I, section 1 of the California Constitution characterizes certain rights as "inalienable," the Attorney General maintains that "Proposition 8 should be invalidated even if it is deemed to amend the Constitution because it abrogates fundamental rights protected by article I without a compelling interest." ...

[But] the "inalienable" nature of a constitutional right never has been understood to preclude the adoption of a constitutional amendment that limits or restricts the scope or application of such a right. As noted above, from the beginnings of our state constitutional history, the right of the people "to alter or reform" the provisions of the Constitution itself has been understood to constitute one of the fundamental rights to which article I, section 1 refers, and California's 1849 Constitution enshrined this right as an integral part of the original Declaration of Rights in former article I, section 2, which provided: "All political power is inherent in the people. Government is instituted for the protection, security, and benefit of the people; and they have the right to alter or reform the same, whenever the public good may require it."

Indeed, the drafters of the 1849 Constitution, in their message submitting the proposed Constitution to the people of California, expressly described the people's right to alter or reform the Constitution as an "inalienable right." In like manner, when the people's authority to propose and adopt constitutional amendments by initiative was added to the California Constitution in 1911, the constitutional provision spoke of the initiative "not as a right granted the people, but as a power reserved by them."

Accordingly, there is no basis for suggesting that the inalienable rights set forth in article I, section 1, and the other provisions of the Declaration of Rights, are of a higher order than -- and thus exempt from -- the people's right to "alter or reform" the Constitution through either the legislative or the initiative constitutional amendment process. Indeed, a review of the current version of the constitutional provisions contained within article I's Declaration of Rights demonstrates that modification of such rights through the amendment process has occurred throughout our state's history.

In urging this court to confer upon the "inalienable rights" terminology of article I, section 1 a much more sweeping and far reaching meaning than it traditionally has borne, the Attorney General cites selected excerpts from a number of mid-19th-century opinions that gave voice to the natural-rights jurisprudence that was common in that era. As pointed out in the response filed by interveners, however, the expansive natural-rights jurisprudence of that time long has been discredited and, moreover, even the cited jurists never suggested that courts possess the authority to invalidate an explicit constitutional amendment, adopted through a constitutionally prescribed procedure, on the ground that the amendment is inconsistent with the scope of a right previously embodied in the Constitution. As discussed at length above, on numerous occasions in the past this court's interpretation of the fundamental constitutional protections accorded by the state Constitution to the "life and liberty" of those accused of crime has been modified by constitutional amendments proposed and adopted through the initiative process, and the constitutional validity of those amendments repeatedly has been sustained in our prior decisions. In short, the Attorney General's position finds no support in the governing California authorities.

In defending his argument, the Attorney General emphasizes that he "is duty bound to uphold the whole of the Constitution, not only the People's reservation of the initiative power, but also the People's expression of their will in the Constitution's Declaration of Rights." When we examine the entirety of the California Constitution, however, we find nothing that exempts article I, section 1 -- or any other section of the Constitution -- from the amendment process set forth in article XVIII.... [W]e would exceed the well-established and time-honored limits of the judicial role were we to take it upon ourselves to fashion such a restriction upon the present and future right of the people to determine the content of the Constitution that governs our state.

[Footnote: As one legal commentator has explained: "To empower the courts not simply to review the procedures whereby amendments were adopted but also to void amendments on the basis of their substantive content would surely threaten the notion of a government founded on the consent of the governed." (Viles, The Case Against Implicit Limits on the Constitutional Amending Process in Responding to Imperfection (Levinson edit.1995) 191, 198; see also Tribe, A Constitution We Are Amending: In Defense of a Restrained Judicial Role (1983) 97 Harv. L.Rev. 433, 442 ["allowing the judiciary to pass on the merits of constitutional amendments would unequivocally subordinate the amendment process to the legal system it is intended to override and would thus gravely threaten the integrity of the entire structure"].)]