But (and I'm sincerely asking here) what does this mean:
Two years ago, the court declared for the first time that the gun rights of individuals were protected by the Constitution. This year, the justices made clear this was a "fundamental" right that extended to cities and states as well as federal jurisdictions.??? Haven't protected individual gun rights as a broad idea been established since the Bill of Rights was written? The debate is over periphery of what those rights mean; not whether the right to gun ownership exists at all...
Lastly, I find it tedious to hear the notion that cancelling out prior decisions and returning to a prior standard is the same thing as creating a brand new standard. That strikes me as a logical fail...(I'm not using this as an argument that the Roberts Court is ipso facto always doing so; merely that lots and lots of commentators seem to suggest that such a notion is impossible.
I'm reminded of William F. Buckley's famous remark on the distinct methods of pushing old ladies....
As it happens, David Savage is among the most respected legal commentators in the newspaper industry. I can see why you don't like him. (Joke, joke.)
ReplyDeleteBut it's not at all inaccurate. Heller v. D.C. did, for the first time, declare incontrovertibly that the Second Amendment guaranteed an individual right to keep and bear arms (at least in areas governed by federal government). Before, it was widely assumed the amendment referred to gun rights only in connection with those "well-regulated militias" mentioned in its text.
The key words in the Savage excerpt you quoted -- "gun rights of individuals" -- was what the court case was about. Legal commentators across the spectrum have said the same thing about the case.
As for your other argument -- that the Roberts court cancels (newer) prior standards and returns to (older) prior standards -- well, I don't think that happened in the Heller case. In the Heller case, Scalia and Stevens spar over whether or not the Court is overruling longstanding precedents; Scalia takes the position that he's not -- as he writes, "for most of our history the question [of what the Second Amendment meant] did not present itself."