Stevens claims that contemporary commentators are largely useless because 1) they discuss the 2nd amendment and Article VII of the English Guarantee of rights and because 2) they appear to be unfamiliar with the drafting history of the 2nd amendment.
Stevens 1st argument is especially illustrative. He had previously claimed that Article VII has little use because it was worded differently and written at a different time. However, faced with the fact that contemporary commentators often expressed the view that 2nd amendment was the logical progression of Article VII utterly fails to consider the possibility that this might mean that his view of Article VII is wrong and instead concludes that contemporary commentators are worthless on the subject.
His presents no evidence that those writing soon after the 2nd was ratified had no understanding of it's history. Given that, this statement seems to be based on nothing more than that they reached different conclusions than he did. I also find the proposition, common among academics, that we understand more about what was "really" going on in some time in the past than did those who experienced it to be incredibly arrogant.
Mona Charen's wrong on one point
She says:
In fact, Stevens' dissent in Heller does claim that our first amendment rights to assemble and petition the government are, in essence, collective rights.
Posted on Sunday, June 29, 2008 at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)