Well, let's see just how the Court's decision could be overturned and see if there's any basis at all to declare such a move unconstitutional:
1. The Court could overrule its prior decision, either over time (e.g., Brown overruling Plessy), by some Justices retiring and others changing their minds (e.g., Barnette overruling Gobitis in just over 3 years), or by enlarging the membership of the Court and packing it (the latter was unsuccessfully tried by FDR). Can't see any way any of that is unconstitutional.
2. The Constitution can be amended to overturn the Court's prior ruling. This is extremely rare: it's happened only three times in cases involving rulings on constitutional law (the 11th, 13th-15th, and 16th Amendments). Can't see how that could ever be declared unconstitutional.
There's nothing inconsistent in saying that the Court's decisions are the law and that its decisions can be overturned. The same is true for legislation, but nobody claims that statutes aren't the law simply because they can be repealed.
None of this addresses my point or answers my question. ("What would your 9th-grade civics class textbooks say should SCOTUS rule
that such an attempted overturning is unconstitutional (or otherwise 'unlawful')?" - emphasis added.)
You stated that it is "uneducated" and "moronic" to hold "the ... notion that a Supreme Court decision is unlawful."
If SCOTUS ruled (for whatever reason) that an attempted overtuning of one of its decisions (regardless of how such an ostensible "overturning" might have occurred) was "unconstitutional" (or otherwise "unlawful"), then - by your own assertion - such a ruling must necessarily be "lawful" (i.e., not "unlawful" - since to conclude otherwise would be "uneducated" and "moronic"). But as a justification for the attempted "overturning" of such a ruling, to make reference to
anything (such as the Constitution, for example)
beyond or apart from the plain, unqualified fact of the SCOTUS ruling (regardless of the ruling's basis) must necessarily entail that it is possible for SCOTUS rulings to be "unlawful." (IOW: If the standard by which a ruling is to be deemed "lawful" is "whatever SCOTUS decides," then SCOTUS can on that basis "overturn"
any attempt to "overturn" any of its decisions - but if the standard by which a ruling is to be deemed "lawful" is something
other than or in addition to "whatever SCOTUS decides," then it must be possible for SCOTUS decisions to be "unlawful" ...)
The only way around this is either (1) to equivocate upon the meaning of the term "(un)lawful," or (2) to be reduced to asserting that "(un)lawful" merely means "whatever some group (such as SCOTUS or those who would 'overturn' SCOTUS) is able to arbitrarily decree (and subsequently uphold or enforce)." (And in the latter case, a SCOTUS decision could be rendered effectively "unlawful" merely by the refusal of the executive to carry out or implement the SCOTUS decision - as Andrew Jackson did when he essentially told the Marshall court to go pound sand in re
Worcester v. Georgia.)
Now if you're defining the "law" in terms of some Platonic notion of immutable natural law then your objection to legal positivism is well-taken. But if that's where you're coming from then there's no basis for complaining about Obergefell's trampling over States' Rights; I know of no theory of natural rights that enshrines federalism.
The nature of my objection to legal positivism has nothing to do with how I define "the law" (which would certainly not be Platonic in any case, as I am not a Platonist).
It has entirely to do with the fundamental, ultimate and inescapable nature of legal positivism - namely, that it is tritely truistic ("the law is the law") and/or vacuously circular ("'the law' is whatever the 'officially' designated expositors of 'the law' say 'the law' is - and whatever the 'officially' designated expositors of 'the law' say 'the law' is is 'the law'"). My rejection of legal positivism is entirely due to its own inherent demerits as an exercise in recursively self-justifying hand-waving ...
