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Supreme Court

The Supreme Court Rules On Second Amendment

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by Thomas Sowell

Now that the Supreme Court of the United States has decided that the Second Amendment to the Constitution means that individual Americans have a right to bear arms, what can we expect?

Those who have no confidence in ordinary Americans may expect a bloodbath, as the benighted masses start shooting each other, now that they can no longer be denied guns by their betters. People who think we shouldn’t be allowed to make our own medical decisions, or decisions about which schools our children attend, certainly are not likely to be happy with the idea that we can make our own decisions about how to defend ourselves.

When you stop and think about it, there is no obvious reason why issues like gun control should be ideological issues in the first place. It is ultimately an empirical question whether allowing ordinary citizens to have firearms will increase or decrease the amount of violence.

Many people who are opposed to gun laws which place severe restrictions on ordinary citizens owning firearms have based themselves on the Second Amendment to the Constitution. But, while the Supreme Court must make the Second Amendment the basis of its rulings on gun control laws, there is no reason why the Second Amendment should be the last word for the voting public.

If the end of gun control leads to a bloodbath of runaway shootings, then the Second Amendment can be repealed, just as other Constitutional Amendments have been repealed. Laws exist for people, not people for laws.

There is no point arguing, as many people do, that it is difficult to amend the Constitution. The fact that it doesn’t happen very often doesn’t mean that it is difficult. The people may not want it to happen, even if the intelligentsia are itching to change it.

When the people wanted it to happen, the Constitution was amended 4 times in 8 years, from 1913 through 1920.

What all this means is that judges and the voting public have different roles. There is no reason why judges should “consider the basic values that underlie a constitutional provision and their contemporary significance,” as Justice Stephen Breyer said in his dissent against the Supreme Court’s gun control decision.

But, as the great Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, his job was “to see that the game is played according to the rules whether I like them or not.”

If the public doesn’t like the rules, or the consequences to which the rules lead, then the public can change the rules via the ballot box. But that is very different from judges changing the rules by verbal sleight of hand, or by talking about “weighing of the constitutional right to bear arms” against other considerations, as Justice Breyer puts it. That’s not his job. Not if “we the people” are to govern ourselves, as the Constitution says.

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Exploring Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan

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by David Limbaugh

President Barack Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, once wrote that Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court judicial nominees should explore a “nominee’s set of constitutional views and commitments.” By all means, let’s accommodate her and begin exploring.

We could start with the presumption, given Obama’s ideology and judicial philosophy, that any nominee he chooses will be troubling for advocates of judicial restraint and interpreting the Constitution according to its original understanding. But let’s put that aside for this little exploration.

On my initial research, a number of problematic areas have surfaced. Consider, for starters:

—She has no judicial experience and hardly any experience practicing law. She’s mainly been an academic. I confess this one bothers me less than others, for I believe an intellectually honest academic, with proper respect for the Constitution, could make a fine appellate judge.

—Kagan, as dean of Harvard Law School, joined an amicus brief in an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit and another brief to the Supreme Court challenging a congressional law that denied federal funding to universities that didn’t allow military recruiters access to their campuses. Kagan was outraged at the military because of its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which banned openly homosexual men and women from the service, once calling it “a profound wrong — a moral injustice of the first order.”

—Kagan clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall. Following Marshall’s death, Kagan wrote a glowing tribute to him in the Texas Law Review. Two passages from her article deserve particular scrutiny. She wrote, approvingly: “In Justice Marshall’s view, constitutional interpretation demanded, above all else, one thing from the courts: it demanded that the courts show a special solicitude for the despised or disadvantaged. It was the role of the courts, in interpreting the Constitution, to protect the people who went unprotected by every other organ of government — to safeguard the interests of people who had no other champion. The Court existed primarily to fulfill this mission.” Kagan said Marshall told her the other justices had rejected his proposal for a new Supreme Court rule: “When one corporate fat cat sues another corporate fat cat, this Court shall have no jurisdiction,” Kagan wrote. “However much some recent Justices have sniped at that vision, it remains a thing of glory.”

Like Obama and Marshall, Kagan apparently believes the court exists to protect the little guy against evil corporate America, not to interpret the Constitution and the law as written.

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First Amendment Confirms Freedom To Think For Ourselves

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Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President of the NRA, is at it again with another wonderful article for his Standing Guard journal. Posted are some of the highlights, but it is well worth the time to read the entire post.

When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the ban on pre-election corporate and union political speech in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in January, we expected expressions of outrage from the speech-ban crowd—but the venom, lies and intentional distortion by the media and self-serving politicians are truly shocking.

A Jan. 23, 2010 commentary in The Washington Post is typical. Columnist Ruth Marcus fumed, “In opening the floodgates for corporate money in election campaigns, the Supreme Court did not simply engage in a brazen power grab. It did so in an opinion stunning in its intellectual dishonesty.”

“Intellectual dishonesty?” That defines the near universal reaction of media and anti-First Amendment politicians.

First … here is what the court did not do. It did not remove the ban on direct contributions by corporations to candidates and campaigns. It did not—as President Barack Obama rudely shouted at the Supreme Court Justices invited to hear his State of the Union address—reverse “a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests—including foreign corporations—to spend without limit in our elections.”

In terms of you and me, and our National Rifle Association, here is what the court actually did:

In its 5-4 decision, the high court struck down the onerous sections of BCRA that made it a felony—because we are a non-profit corporation—for the NRA to use dues or contributions to the association to pay for any broadcast that even obliquely refers to a federal candidate. Those criminal sanctions were locked in 30 days before a primary and 60 days before a general election.

When Congress passed the gag order on our corporate speech, it exempted media corporations, and that special exception to censorship is gone as well—deemed unconstitutional by the court.

Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy nailed it in his majority opinion: “Premised on mistrust of governmental power, the First Amendment stands against attempts to disfavor certain subjects or viewpoints or to distinguish among different speakers, which may be a means to control content.”

Simply put, the corporate speech of the NRA cannot be treated differently from the corporate speech of CBS, NBC or The New York Times and The Washington Post or any other media outlet. If their speech is sacrosanct, so is ours.

“If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech,” Justice Kennedy wrote.

Censorship—like the BCRA ban on paid political speech—has as much to do with the rights of listeners as it does the right of the speaker to put forth ideas. It is the heart of the First Amendment. As Justice Kennedy declared: “When Government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought. This is unlawful. The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.”

Read the entire post HERE.

Supreme Court Needs at Least One Veteran

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Phyllis Schlafly, contributor at Townhall.com, discusses the importance of having a Veteran serve in the Supreme Court. An observation that not many people have taken the time to look into, Phyllis offers her exceptional take in her latest article. Please take the time to read and understand the importance of having our Veterans continue their service to not only the country, but its people as well.

For as long as we can remember, the U.S. Supreme Court has included at least one military veteran. Recent examples include Republican-appointed Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who died in 2005, and Justice John Paul Stevens, who is expected to resign this year.

The Democrats have not placed a veteran on the Supreme Court in nearly half a century. When President Obama fills Stevens’ seat, will the High Court be left without anyone who has military experience?

Veterans in the U.S. Senate should make sure that such an embarrassment does not occur. Cases concerning the military appear every year before the Supreme Court, and our nation will not be well-served by a court lacking in military experience.

“Somebody was saying that there ought to be at least one person on the court who had military experience,” Stevens himself declared in a recent interview. “I sort of feel that it is important. I have to confess that.”

Stevens is a liberal, but he loves our nation as veterans do. In 1989 in Texas v. Johnson, Stevens dissented when the Supreme Court by 5-to-4 OK-ed a so-called free-speech right to burn the American flag.

Stevens wrote: “The case has nothing to do with ‘disagreeable ideas.’ It involves disagreeable conduct that, in my opinion, diminishes the value of an important national asset.”

Obama’s disdain for the military is no secret, and the leading names on his short list for possible Supreme Court appointment are as anti-military as he is. The number of veterans in Congress has declined to about 21 percent, but that’s enough for them to make a public demand that high court diversity include a veteran.

To continue reading, click HERE for entire article at Townhall.com

Supreme Court Rules On Campaign Spending

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In a monumental ruling, the Supreme Court issued a 5-4 ruling on overturning campaign spending limits. This ruling sent Democrats into a frantic frenzy over the constitutionality of the ruling. However, that is exactly what their ruling was based on. The Constitution.

President Obama added:

With its ruling today, the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics. It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans.

In one light, this ruling does seem to silence the small-wallet voice of the people. However, it was the voice of big business that had their First Amendment taken away previous to the overturn. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO both urged the court to strike down the McCain-Feingold provision, as did the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Rifle Association.

On the other side of the aisle, Sen. Charles Schumer (D, NY) said, “This is poisonous to our democracy,” while Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D, MD) said, “This will allow the biggest corporations in the United States to engage in the buying and selling of elections.”

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