We Found the Most Galling Argument of the Upcoming Supreme Court Term [More]
Yeah, two wolves and a sheep can’t decide what’s for dinner. F_n’ individual rights…
A hyperventilating Charles D. Jacobs pops his Rapex, for Slate, naturally.
Notes from the Resistance
“The most galling part of their argument is the recurrent invocation of—and self-righteous cloaking of their argument in—the language of democracy. “The decision whether a type of arm is too dangerous for ordinary Americans to possess,” they wrote, “is one that the people are entitled to make, not one that courts are empowered to make for them.”
If he thinks that’s galling, he’s already lost.
The very purpose of the Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the Courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights, may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.
—SUPREME COURT OF THE US, WV BOARD OF EDUCATION V. BARNETTE, 319 US 624 AT 638
The essence of constitutionalism in a democracy is not merely to shape and condition the nature of majorities, but also to stipulate that certain things are impermissible, no matter how large and fervent a majority might want them.
–GEORGE WILL
If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution — certainly it would if such a right were a vital one.
–ABRAHAM LINCOLN