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« A real ATF undercover op | Main | How to completely end your judicial career »

Lots of Heller in Harvard Law Review

Posted by David Hardy · 25 November 2008 09:22 AM

Online here.

· Parker v. DC

5 Comments | Leave a comment

RKV | November 25, 2008 11:24 AM | Reply

Here are a few excerpts from A.R. Amar in HLR Nov. 2008

"Justice Scalia’s landmark ruling merits our attention for its method as well as its result. Behold: a constitutional opinion that actually dwells on the Constitution itself! Most constitutional opinions do not do this."

"The majority opinion in Roe v. Wade, for example, never even quoted the constitutional clause that the Court used to reach its sweeping result. In countless cases involving application of the Bill of Rights against the states, the operative Fourteenth Amendment text has received little or no mention."

Regarding Stevens dissent, Amar takes the former Harvard Law grad to the woodshed. "His was largely a precedent-based claim about the sheer number of lower court judges on his side, and as such his claim fell flat. ... the Heller Stevens wrapped himself in the robes of precedent and argued that even if precedent has strayed from the original meaning, precedent should be followed. ... In Justice Stevens’s opinion, then, we see a remarkable failure to offer a coherent analysis of one of the most obvious, important, and recurring questions of constitutional law: what to do when case law contradicts the Constitution.”

Amar further extends the debate on incorporation of the 2nd via the 14th Amendment, reminding readers of the relationship between the Freedmans Act’s specific protection of 2nd Amendment (and other) rights of the newly freed slaves as essential to understanding the 14th Amendment.

And here it is, laid out on a platter "After Heller, it is hard to conceive how Cruikshank can still stand" [nota bene: YEAH!]

Breyer's "deference to legislatures" gets pilloried, as Amar shows how Breyer's own partial birth abortion rulings don't follow this line.

Unfortunately he ends by sucking up to Obama calling him something demonstrably untrue - "a gifted constitutional lawyer"

RKV | November 25, 2008 11:44 AM | Reply

David, if an HLR article ever deserved your response (and a Fisking of monumental proportions) it is Siegel's. I looked up "clueless" in the dictionary, and they had her picture.

WP Zeller | November 25, 2008 2:05 PM | Reply

Heaven help us, Cass Sunstein's saying in there saying the meaning of the Second Amendment's "ambiguous" and declaring the whole thing a house of cards.
With all due respect to all the law professors here, only a high-ranking media-celebrity law professor could publish that with a straight face.
Sunstein's long adoration of the power of the State sends chills down spines, particularly now with that guy who used to be next door to him grasping for the Executive Order pen.

WP Zeller | November 25, 2008 2:07 PM | Reply

Uh, you can delete that first "saying" in the above post.
My excuse- I have no education.

Don Hamrick | November 27, 2008 12:22 AM | Reply

The Useful Idiots at Harvard
By Pluribus

GunNewsDaily.com
November 21, 2008
http://www.gunnewsdaily.com/editorial2.htm

Friday, November 21 , 2008

The folks at the Harvard Law Record are what Michael Savage refers to as Red Diaper Doper Babies. They are what Lenin referred to as "useful idiots. They would be well suited for writing a new constitution for the former Soviet Union. However, they are ill suited to comment on the Constitution of the United States of America. If you have the stomach to learn how the liberal law school types "think" go to:

http://media.www.hlrecord.org/media/storage/paper609/news/2008/11/20/News/Profs.District.Of.
Columbia.V.Heller.Is.A.second.Amendment.Revolution-3554271.shtml

Actually it more of an article about how to avoid intellectual honesty. In the Heller Case, five of the Supreme Court Justices decided that the Second Amendment and the mountain of writings by the Founding Fathers indicated that their intent was that individuals have the right to keep and bear arms. This interpretation is exactly what everyone in the United States believed from its inception until 1968.

Yet these Harvard types are appalled that the justices used "Orginalist" interpretations as the basis of the decision. A Professor Cass Sunstein stated "even if we presume the decision is defensible on originalist grounds, why should the Court use originalism here and now? That approach would have been unthinkable even ten years ago." Spoken like a true liberal. Why would we want to use the original meaning of the Constitution when it interferes with their Communistic tendencies of disarming their subjects?

Apparently what they teach at Harvard is that U.S. Constitution is not acceptable in its current form. Following the amendment process put in place by the founders is something they do not subscribe to. They want activist judges to legislate their liberal views that have no basis in the Constitution whatsoever.

"Lanie Guinier also took time to register her opposition to originalist jurisprudence, stating, "My biggest problem with originalism is that the focus on the community of consent at the Founding [which she noted excluded African-Americans, women, and others], does not allow current communities to express their views¦[We] must give people presently in a consent community an opportunity to participate."

The professor apparently is ignorant that the election of legislators and amendment process is the way "the people" express their views. The Founding Fathers, and the U.S. constitution are irrelevant at the Harvard Law School. However, all of us find that the Harvard Law School is irrelevant.

GunNewsDaily authorizes the distribution of this commentary providing that GunNewsDaily.com is recognized as the originating source.

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