The Supreme Court has finally used its authority to do something right! Though I don't believe that the fourteenth amendment was properly ratified, I don't think that it was needed in this case. The right to bear arms is a natural right which should be upheld regardless of what the Constitution says. The Constitution does not merely forbid its infringement, acknowledges that it is a unalienable right by calling it "the right". Thanks to SCOTUSBLOG for this great analysis and insight on this breaking story which follows:
McDonald – Incorporation, Irony, and History
McDonald debate, Robert Cottrol
| Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 5:26 pm
McDonald debate, Robert Cottrol
Robert Cottrol is a professor at the George Washington University Law School who has written on the Second Amendment, including a 1991 Georgetown Law Journal article, “The Second Amendment: Toward an Afro-Americanist Reconsideration,” which was cited by Justice Thomas in his concurring opinion in McDonald
Yesterday’s decision in McDonald v. Chicago will be examined and debated by constitutional scholars and legal historians for decades. Justice Alito’s decision for the Court, accompanied by Justice Thomas’s concurrence stand as convincing if narrowly accepted rebuttals to two great examples of result oriented historical denial that have long plagued American constitutional debate. The first of these is that the constitution protects no meaningful or enforceable right of individuals to have arms for their own defense. The second is the idea that the incorporation of the Bill of Rights through the Fourteenth Amendment was purely a judicial invention with little or no foundation in the text or history of the amendment. The careful and accurate historical analyses provided in the Alito and Thomas opinions provide a convincing rebuttal of both views as well as furnishing some delicious ironies along the way.
Matt -
ReplyDeleteI concur. Don't the political hacks in Chicago see that the environment that they are creating is one in which only the criminals have guns.
Pure foolishness...