The Hawaii Supreme Court handed down a unanimous opinion on Wednesday declaring that its state constitution grants individuals absolutely no right to keep and bear arms outside the context of military service. Its decision rejected the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment, refusing to interpolate SCOTUS’ shoddy historical analysis into Hawaii law. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed the ruling on this week’s Slate Plus segment of Amicus; their conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
The conservatives on the supreme court are crap historians and even worse judges.
Originalism is nothing more than a mechanism for the Supreme Court to undo past precedent they don’t like. Welcome to the new lochner era.
Hopefully we end this one like we ended the last, with a wave of socialism and a tough president willing to pack the court.
Sorry Loving v Virginia, it didn’t used to be widely understood that the equal protection clause would forbid inter racial marriage bans. After all, both white and black people are forbidden from marrying other races by those laws. There, equal. That’s how it was historically understood, heck it was illegal in 16 states still at the time and widely disapproved of.
But this presumes origialism is some coherent philosophy in the first place, instead of an excuse for partisan hackery cherry picking by Heritage Foundation stooges to get the conclusion they want.
Count me in favor of packing the court, not like there’s any integrity to jeopardize. More to lose by doing nothing while they continue to rampage.
The next two civil rights I’m guessing we lose are gay marriage (Obergefell) and contraceptive access (Griswold). Obergefell because it was already close and hating anyone that’s not cis is in vogue now on the right. Griswold because it was determined on exactly the same lines as Loving and Roe (In fact, Griswold is what underlay roe) and there’s enough religious nuts out there that feel like contraceptives are sinful.
We may lose sodomy as well (Lawrence)
The Senate already changed the number of justices to 8 for a year. I don’t see why it would be wrong to add extras after they admitted the count doesn’t matter.
In practice, “Originalism” refers to a quality of the judgements. Each ruling is its own original interpretation of the Constitution very clearly independent of any others.
And the major questions doctrine is just there to change laws they don’t like.
Given the current crop of politicians moving through the state and federal seats, I’m not holding my breath.
Both of those assume good faith
The liberal judges on SCOTUS still recognize 2A, though maybe with a few more restrictions. You wouldn’t see them pass this decision.
I don’t know how they would have decided on this specific case, but I’m happy to see anyone standing up to the extreme extent the modern court has taken things with the second amendment. DC vs Heller, which started this nonsense not allowing basically any effective gun control legislation to stand, was a close decision, 5-4. The dissenting opinion was even written by a conservative registered republican, appointed by a republican president (John Paul Stevens, yes he was considered a conservative appointee, but looked more liberal over time as the court got more extreme around him): In a dissenting opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens stated that the court’s judgment was “a strained and unpersuasive reading” which overturned longstanding precedent, and that the court had “bestowed a dramatic upheaval in the law.”
Our current judicial extremism on gun rights is out of control. More recently a gun control law that had stood for a hundred years in New York was struck down. And yes it was 6-3 with all the liberal justices strongly dissenting. Our current interpretation of the second amendment is an extreme modernist interpretation twisted by people like the Federalist Society and NRA, with plenty of money from gun manufacturers and other interests flowing in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_State_Rifle_%26_Pistol_Association,_Inc._v._Bruen
Popular opinion.