Six Amendments (book cover), by Justice John Paul Stevens
As if on cue, US Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens (ret.) has written a new book, titled
Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution (Little, Brown & Co., due April 22, 2014). He helps open up discussion on the US Constitution, including some of the faulty Scalia-led decisions.
It's worth reminding young Democrats that amending the US Constitution has been in our national party platform since 1944, up through the present. This is true even if publicly supporting this amendment might work against candidates in some districts -- no-one forces them to do so, but we continue the dialogue. (Surprisingly, the GOP also supported this Equal Rights Amendment from 1940-1980.) Progressives look forward to achieving what is right, not simply driven by polls of current political expediency.
A full review of Stevens' book will have to wait until publication, but a few passages published in BusinessWeek and elsewhere are already noteworthy.
Justice Stevens served on the US Supreme Court for 35 years -- the second-longest of any Justice in US history. He knows a thing or two about the US Constitution and American jurisprudence. As with Justice Warren Burger, Stevens disagrees with those who (like Scalia) think the Second Amendment guarantees an individual's right to firearms for self-defense, and who argue that this trumps all other rights and goals.
Stevens writes in this book:
Emotional claims that the right to possess deadly weapons is so important that it is protected by the federal Constitution distort intelligent debate about the wisdom of particular aspects of proposed legislation designed to minimize the slaughter caused by the prevalence of guns in private hands.
[For 200 years], federal judges uniformly understood that the right protected by the [2nd Amendment] text was limited in two ways: first, it applied only to keeping and bearing arms for military purposes, and second, while it limited the power of the federal government, it did not impose any limit whatsoever on the power of states or local governments to regulate the ownership or use of firearms.
Justice Stevens repeats the comment from Chief Justice Warren Burger (1969-1986), about the gun-lobby's campaign to oppose gun control laws because of Second Amendment rights:
“one of the greatest pieces of fraud—I repeat, fraud—on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.” [quoting Burger]
Stevens wrote the dissent in
Heller vs. DC, joined by the three other liberal justices. (Breyer wrote a
second dissent, also joined by his three liberal colleagues.)
Reading the majority opinion by Scalia (joined by the four right-wingers), I'm struck that Scalia's argumentative style and repeated denunciation of Stevens is behavior that might be characterized as "dickish." Scalia's rhetorical bullying has been picked up by others who assert his misinterpretation of the 'right to keep and bear arms.' Here are just a few examples of Scalia's arrogant, aggressive, condescending and disrespectful tone, which I've taken from Heller 2008:
Justice Stevens propose is not even the (sometimes) idiomatic meaning...
Justice Stevens uses the same excuse... That analysis is faulty [and] unknown this side of the looking glass.
Justice Stevens flatly misreads the historical record.
Other than that erroneous point, Justice Stevens has brought forward absolutely no evidence...
Justice Stevens’ view thus relies on the proposition, unsupported by any evidence...
Justice Stevens betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of a court’s interpretive task.
Unfortunately for Justice Stevens’ argument ... Justice Stevens’ statement ... is simply wrong.
Nothing so clearly demonstrates the weakness of Justice Stevens’ case.
Justice Stevens can say again and again ... but the words of the opinion prove otherwise.
It is particularly wrongheaded...
It is demonstrably not true that, as Justice Stevens claims...
Justice Stevens is dead wrong to think that...
Justice Stevens resorts to the bizarre argument...
Contrary to Justice Stevens’ wholly unsupported assertion...
Justice Stevens provides no support whatever for his contrary view...
Justice Stevens’ accusation that this is “not accurate,” is wrong.
[T]heir erroneous reliance upon an uncontested and virtually unreasoned case...
[Etc.]
Stevens' book is a reminder that this issue is far from over.
Stevens notes in Six Amendments that the Heller decision did not preclude federal, state, or local governments from restricting the ownership of assault rifles (as used in the CT, VA, CO and AZ mass-shootings).
Stevens believes the Second Amendment refers to the threat a national standing army posed to state sovereignty, and not to e.g. hunters' foraging or homeowners' anxiety about intruders. But post-Heller, in order to make this abundantly clear in the face of Scalia's misinterpretation, Stevens proposes that the Second Amendment should be modified by adding five words, as follows:
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