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Cornell Webpage on the Constitution
The superb Cornell Univ. website (I subcribe to their email alert system, which emails you the syllabus of each Supreme Court ruling the day it comes out) has added a set of pages on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Checking out their Second Amendment page, I was pleased to find it as comprehensive as one might desire in such a page, and far more impartial than I had expected.
When matters are summed up with reasonable impartiality, though, a pattern emerges which seems unique to the Second Amendment. The vast bulk of serious legal scholarship goes one way, and the vast bulk of caselaw the other. I can't think of an area of law where you have this pattern, at least in a division this sharp and broad -- what does an amendment mean, rather than the fine details of its application to specific facts.
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Why is legal scholarship at odds with the case law? John Adams had the right answer. "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." - John Adams in Defence of the Defendants of the Boston Massacre.
It appears the judges prefer the “dictates of their passions” over the facts.
We all have filters between our Minds and Reality. Those filters are built from experience, and color our judgements.
Judges, unless they are members of the "gun culture" see only the negative side of gun usage, day after day. When they "ascend" to the appelate bench, that experience colors their judgement. When asked to determine if guns should be available, their instinct is going to tend "no", and this, probably unconscious, bias accounts for
the case law trend shown.
Judges, despite the system'S attempts to portray otherwise, put on their pants one leg at a time. "Decisions" are, far too often, simply verbal justification for gut feel.
It shows.
I checked out the website and it is indeed suprisingly evenhanded.
C.A.G.