Yet another “big case” this term was saved for last. District of Columbia v. Heller had been decided in favor of an individual right at the D. C. Circuit Court of Appeals in Parker v. District of Columbia, and the circuit court’s decision was affirmed this morning.
Justice Scalia with the majority opinion of the court, joined by the Chief Justice and Justices Alito, Thomas and Kennedy, with two dissents: one by Justice Breyer, joined by Souter, Stevens and Ginsburg, and the other by Stevens, joined by Breyer, Souter and Ginsburg.
Opinion here. An excerpt where Scalia destroys the dissent’s view of “arms” (on page 13 of Scalia’s opinion):
In any event, the meaning of “bear arms” that petitioners and JUSTICE STEVENS propose is not even the (sometimes) idiomatic meaning. Rather, they manufacture a hybrid definition, whereby “bear arms” connotes the actual carrying of arms (and therefore is not really an idiom) but only in the service of an organized militia. No dictionary has ever adopted that definition, and we have been apprised of no source that indicates that it carried that meaning at the time of the founding. But it is easy to see why petitioners and the dissent are driven to the hybrid definition. Giving “bear Arms” its idiomatic meaning would cause the protected right to consist of the right to be a soldier or to wage war—an absurdity that no commentator has ever endorsed. See L. Levy, Origins of the Bill of Rights 135 (1999). Worse still, the phrase “keep and bear Arms” would be incoherent. The word “Arms” would have two different meanings at once: “weapons” (as the object of “keep”) and (as the object of “bear”) one-half of an idiom. It would be rather like saying “He filled and kicked the bucket” to mean “He filled the bucket and died.” Grotesque.
Scalia’s conclusion (Page 64, emphasis mine):
In sum, we hold that the District’s ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense. Assuming that Heller is not disqualified from the exercise of Second Amendment rights, the District must permit him to register his handgun and must issue him a license to carry it in the home.
* * *
We are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country, and we take seriously the concerns raised by the many amici who believe that prohibition of handgun ownership is a solution. The Constitution leaves the District of Columbia a variety of tools for combating that problem, including some measures regulating handguns, see supra, at 54–55, and n. 26. But the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table. These include the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home. Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.
Judicial Restraint. It’s a concept lost on too many Judges, and it is refreshing in a way. But this case, with that opinion, should have been 9-0, not 5-4. Further excerpts from Scalia’s opinion, as compiled by SCOTUSBlog’s Tom Goldstein, can be found here.
Fresh Cracks...