« Back up! | Main | 40th high school reunion »
Interesting thought
SCOTUSBlog has some thoughts on the Chicago gun cases.
To begin with, eight of the nine Justices have never ruled whether a Federal bill of rights liberty is applied to the States by the 14th amendment. The sole exception is Justice Stevens, who was on the Court in 1979 when it last considered a rather small subset of the issue. (back in the 60s the Court had held that the right to a criminal jury trial bound the States. In the 1979 case, it held that allowing conviction on a less than unanimous verdict by a less than 12 member jury would violate this right).
3 Comments | Leave a comment
Watching Alan Gura on Fox News right this minute - with a guy from the Brady Bunch on the other side. They're talking about the McDonald case. Alan is excellent. After seeing him in person about two weeks ago, I am confident that he is the right guy for this job.
The 14th Amendment was ratified by the states (albeit through coercion) after the Barron v. Baltimore decision and is “Constitutional” by definition. Why then wasn’t Barron v. Baltimore considered moot by the court once the 14th Amendment became a part of the Constitution? Has the SCOTUS in its infinite arrogance taken upon itself the power to declare a portion of the Constitution (the 14th Amendment) unconstitutional de-facto by refusing to recognize the inapplicability of Barron v. Baltimore?
"...it held that allowing conviction on a less than unanimous verdict by a less than 12 member jury would violate this right"
Somebody should tell Oregon that. I was outvoted to convict someone on a posession charge that only required 10 votes. That was somewhere in the early 90's. It might have been a misdemeanor charge, if that makes a difference.
This was a case that I'll never forget, because we had one juror, the classic little old lady, who must be a defence attorney's nightmare. She made the statement that "she must have done SOMETHING, or the police wouldn't have arrested her."