My headline originally used the word “confer” in stating what the 2nd Amendment does. But that is wrong — the Bill of Rights enumerates rights already possessed and limits the government’s ability to take them away.
It’s not that legislatures won’t try and judges won’t agree with them. Or that legislatures will try to make laws that further insure these rights and judges will disagree with them. The Constitution may not be a “living” document, but interpretation and (misinterpretation) of it are alive and well.
For the best commentary from people who actually know what they are talking about, head on over to The Volokh Conspiracy.
It’s certainly needed, as Jeff Sadow points out.
Imagine if Hillary Clinton could have changed her vote for the Iraq war to ensure that it would happen, then could change her vote to be able to campaign that she voted against it.
It gives a whole new meaning to “I voted for it before I voted against it.”
Requiring complete consistency for politicians (or anyone else) is unreasonable. Anybody should be able to change their mind, but I expect a legislator to have thought about the matter up for vote and to vote honestly as MY representative, not as a representative of their future personal gains, such as re-election. I’d like to think they thought about carefully enough not to change their mind 8 hours (or less) later.
via Volokh, PreCYdent is up and running in an ”alpha” version. This should interest 2 or 3 of my readers. (ed. - you have readers?)
For myself, it’s absolutely wonderful. I like being able to go to the source of something and reading it in context rather than having to rely on someone else’s choice of excerpts and their interpretation.
I’m even dorky enough to have read law review journals other than the one my daughter edited a while back. (Note to new editors - time to update the site!!)
Now, maybe someone will work on getting medical research freely available and easily searchable.
Then, I’ll never leave the computer!
