If the Supreme Court rules favorably on this, it has the potential to reshape commerce clause law dramatically. The power of the federal government to interfere with small businesses would be cut back dramatically. I see this case as being a direct challenge to Wickard v Filburn.
Lawyers who won gun rights case forced out of law firm
You would think any law firm would consider itself lucky to have two skilled lawyers with major Supreme Court wins on their resume. But apparently not.
Abortion has always been an uncomfortable issue for me. As someone who could easily have been a victim of one, I know there are other options and I hope mothers choose those other options instead of killing their unborn children. I have long recognized that Roe v Wade was horribly decided and needed to be overturned, while being uncomfortable forcing my own moral views on others, and also acknowledging that the fact that two lives are involved changes that moral calculus.
Also, recently, the left has shifted from the position that abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare" to actively celebrating abortion in the manner of the death cults of Moloch. That shift demands a response.
I have, generally, sought to avoid participating in the debate. I intend to continue that policy.
But I do welcome this decision as both Constitutionally and morally correct.
This won't change the balance of the court, but it will likely preserve one of the three solidly left-wing seats as a left-wing seat. Breyer and/or the left generally are clearly reacting to Breyer's age and the risk that they may lose the Senate in 2022 and then face another situation where McConnell could hold the seat open for a Republican president in 2024.
With a 51-50 Senate the Dems will probably get this through. There may well be fireworks, especially after Kavanaugh and if Biden nominates someone from the far left. Which he almost certainly will.
NRA declines to file amicus brief in 2nd Amendment case
The NRA's failure to put legal pressure behind 2nd Amendment court cases has long been a reason for gun owners to support other groups that do apply that pressure. I've supported the 2nd Amendment Foundation for that purpose. Even the major gun cases early in this century, particularly Parker v DC which became the Heller case, did not have support from the NRA initially. The NRA had to seek to intervene in the case later.
It feels like the Supremes finally taking a gun case has opened the floodgates.
And obviously this is unconstitutional. If you have to remove three guns on the list in order to add one, eventually your list will have just one or two guns on it and no other models -- ever -- will be allowed.
This is a small but significant step forward, as the FOID card itself represents an effective state level registration list of who owns a gun even if it does not map individuals to specific firearms. The card itself also represents a prior permission requirement.
My take is that the court wants to strike down may-issue concealed carry licensing, while leaving shall-issue licensing in place. They may even want to be specific about what may issue regimes are allowed.
This will be the first 2nd Amendment case the Supreme Court has taken up in some time, and how the justices vote will be closely scrutinized.
Not even FDR managed to pack the court, though he tried -- and arguably the threat of doing so caused the court to stop striking down his programs, so FDR got what he wanted. Democrats seek to recreate the same dynamic by threatening to pack the court with four (!!) more justices despite holding only very narrow majorities in the House and technically no majority at all in the Senate (Kamala Harris' tie breaking vote in the only thing giving them primacy there).
Whether by packing the court directly or by threat of doing so, the Democrats plan to neutralize the potentially significant 6-3 advantage Republicans now hold on the court.
Unfortunately, Roberts has already all but switched sides, making the practical majority 5-4. And even that majority was insufficient to decide the electoral fraud cases in 2020. If the Democrats do succeed in packing the court, they will hold an 8-5 majority. And their justices vote in lockstep when required.
Passage of this legislation would be a disaster with generational consequences.
9th Circuit rules concealed carry not protected by 2nd Amendment
It seems likely we're going to have to find out how far we can trust Trump's justices on gun rights. Like the original poster, I don't trust Roberts. That puts us at 5-4... if no one else defects.
Supreme Court rejects last election challenges without comment
Gateway Pundit's take is a little pessimistic, but only a little. The court refusing without comment (denial of certiori) doesn't set legal precedent, so in theory the same issues could come up again and be taken up by the court at a later date.
In practice, the Roberts court blinked and until the court slate changes for the better, we're not likely to see any improvement.
I fear the outcome in these cases is now preordained. Had these cases been decided before the election, their decisions could be made honestly. Now? If the court rules that Biden's wins in several of the states was actually illegitimate... how do you uninstall a president who is occupying the White House?
You don't, absent impeachment, which will not happen due to Democratic control of both houses of Congress (or the 25th Amendment, which doesn't apply here). But if the Supreme Court rules honestly that the rules were illegally changed and the election was invalid, it will tear apart the country and likely spark civil war.
The only justice I trust to have that level of fuck-you is Clarence Thomas. The others are unknown quantities or known squishes.
Looks like we'll find out of the court has found the stomach to stand up for gun rights. From the description, this case should really be a slam dunk. No violence, no crime, unwarranted search of a home, confiscation of property that was never returned. If "but it was a gun!" can legally justify all that, the Constitution is a dead letter.
CJ Roberts allows ballots without postmarks to be counted after election
4-4 split leaves absurd lower court decision in place. We need Amy on the court to resolve these decisions without absurd ties. And we need Roberts to wake the fuck up and do his job, or else resign and publicly admit that the left has been blackmailing him. Seriously. In what sane universe do you count votes without postmarks that were received after the election? That is an invitation to fraud. And if those ballots decide the presidency... well, that's a nightmare scenario we don't need.
This is hardly a surprise. Biden has signaled his opposition to gun rights by such things as hiring "Beto" as his gun control czar. But it's nice to have him on the record as opposing the Bill of Rights.
Assuming the Senate actually goes into recess, this seems like a good idea. We really do not want a Supreme Court tied 4-4 during election season. It does open things up to some legal risks; recess appointments have been challenged on various grounds and Congress has been less than willing to admit it is in recess in recent years, precisely to block such appointments. It would also risk reducing the urgency of a permanent confirmation vote.
But the payoff of a full court that can resolve election issues decisively may spare us from a terrible drawn-out election season of rioting and endlessly "discovered" ballots.
If the Senate does not promptly confirm Trump's nominee permanently, Trump should make the recess appointment so the court can function in the meantime.
However, with only a few weeks to go before the election, the left will see the chance of losing control of the Supreme Court for real. (Despite the supposedly conservative majority, enough Justices go wobbly that the left has had significant influence on cases that matter to them). They will go absolutely crazy to prevent Trump from successfully nominating and confirming a replacement. And if they manage to block a confirmation before the election, the election itself will have massively increased levels of violence, fraud, riots, and everything else. The left will see this election as being for all the marbles. The right, among which I count myself, will see a chance to make lasting gains on goals long denied.
This election was already tense, with figures on the left openly threatening succession and civil war if they lose. This will only increase the tensions. Civil war is now a real possibility.
Retired Justice Stevens suggests Supreme Court may advance gun rights
First the factual aspect. Assuming it's accurate, it confirms something the gun rights community has long suspected. (I don't particularly doubt the accuracy of the claim, although Stevens may be overstating his own role as as persuasive force...)
Now the facts.
We don't know where the current court sits on gun rights. Roberts has demonstrated squishy behavior before. Kennedy was replaced with Kavanaugh, presumably a solid 2nd Amendment vote, but Trump's first pick Gorsuch replaced Scalia (solid pro-gun vote) with a presumably solid pro-gun vote. Neither Kavanaugh nor Gorsuch have really been tested yet and Roberts is untrustworthy. We're probably better off with Kennedy replaced. But we need to win one more to feel secure, and even then, we can't count on the new Justices until we see how they vote.
Since Stevens is clearly trying to stoke panic here, let me rebut.
Gun free zone laws around schools have stopped precisely zero school shootings. As with other places declared gun free, criminals view them as soft targets. The only people deterred from carrying in such zones are the honest, law-abiding people who you would want to have a gun in case of such an attack.
"Laws intended to keep firearms out of the hands of especially dangerous individuals" has a couple possible meanings. Do they mean felons? Most felons will be able to get a gun as easily as they can get drugs, ie, illegally. Challenges to the core of felon-in-possession laws seem unlikely in the near future, though we will likely see nibbles around the edges for people acting in self-defense, whose crimes were not violent in nature, and who have been rehabilitated into society. Do they mean people like the Parkland shooter, who should have been on the naughty list but was not due to law enforcement failures? Law enforcement will have failures no matter what laws you pass. Do they mean people like the man who died at the hands of police in Maryland recently? How many innocent people need to die because one of their in-laws didn't like them owning a gun?
Aside from the bit of dicta about machine guns, which is probably an unfortunate necessity at this point, that's a fairly solid position. We still don't know who was the weak point on the court preventing 2nd Amendment cases from being heard and decided properly, but if it was Kennedy, his replacement will be a positive change. We can't be certain of forward progress until at least one of the remaining left-wing judges is replaced.
I don't claim to have looked into this set of nominees closely, simply for lack of time and interest. Some think Hardiman or Kethledge would have been better on the 2nd. That may be true. But I think Kavanaugh will be willing to advance the court's jurisprudence in this issue in the right direction, and that's enough.
Power Line has the details, along with inappropriate snark about him being the Chief Justice. He's not. Roberts is. The retirement is effective July 31st, meaning we have a month or so to argue about who replaces him. Some on the left are already screaming about Gorsuch, but holding an open seat on the Supreme Court for more than two years and then hoping to win the election may be a bridge too far. I expect the Democrats will try to hold past the midterms in the hopes of getting the Senate majority, which would allow them to completely block a replacement justice and force Trump to bargain with his nominee.
Whether McConnell will allow them to do that is another matter.
The Democrats are already going nuts, with mob violence and stalking of administration officials, pervasive threats from deranged individuals, and even occasional acts of politically motivated violence. This will only raise the stakes. They are going to go batshit crazy.
