California Conservative

The Supreme Court finally delivered a sane ruling in striking down D.C.’s gun ban. As you’d expect, the majority and dissenting opinions were like a night and day difference. Here’s a sample of Justice Scalia’s brilliance:

1. Operative Clause.
a. “Right of the People.” The first salient feature of the operative clause is that it codifies a “right of the people.” The unamended Constitution and the Bill of Rights use the phrase “right of the people” two other times, in the First Amendment’s Assembly-and-Petition Clause and in the Fourth Amendment’s Search-and-Seizure Clause. The Ninth Amendment uses very similar terminology (“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”). All three of these instances unambiguously refer to individual rights, not “collective” rights, or rights that may be exercised only through participation in some corporate body.

What Justice Scalia is saying is that simple English shouldn’t be mangled to the point that a former president asks what the meaning of the word is is. Justice Scalia said that the meaning of the Second Amendment is clear when you look at other examples in the Constitution.

In the opposing corner is Justice Stephen Breyer’s dissent:

Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a separate dissent in which he said, “In my view, there simply is no untouchable constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment to keep loaded handguns in the house in crime-ridden urban areas.”

The first three words of Justice Breyer’s dissent should scare the daylights out of thoughtful people. “In my view” doesn’t have a place in a SCOTUS ruling. If it isn’t in the Constitution and its amendments, then it doesn’t belong in a judicial opinion.

This is the perfect picture of what judicial activism looks like. Judicial activists use the term “In my view” to replace “In the Constitution.” The best way I know how to chastize Justice Breyer and likeminded justices is to adapt a Clinton War Room slogan to say “It’s the Constitution, Stupid.”

You’ll never have to worry about that with Roberts, Alito, Thomas and Scalia because that phrase is ingrained in their DNA.

Technorati Tags: SCOTUS, Second Amendment, Stephen Breyer, Judicial Activism, John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Strict Constructionist

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 26th, 2008 at 11:58 am and is filed under Judiciary, ACLU, 2nd Amendment, Author: Gary Gross. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.