Justice Breyer: Founding Fathers Would Have Allowed Restrictions on Guns

[purplehaze]

Sticking to the subject of the thread which is a time period prior to 1890 your ideas are very progressive and foreword thinking and I agree with them.

Would you mind explaining how limiting the power of government is liberal or progressive? Or how activist judges (who by definition just make up new rights and laws from the bench through reinterpretation) are in any way related to my viewpoint (which is the extreme version of strict constructionist)?

 

[purplehaze]

Because a right is an imaginary thing when you come right down to it. In the days of the founding fathers what limited the federal Government had little to do with what happened on a state level.

PH I understand the 14th amendment and incorporation. For those of us that dont understand please give us an example of how we can have a right on a federal level and not on a state level. I was confused about this in the recent supreme court cases. We all live in a state except the residents of DC. thanks willard

 

[Gideon]

Sticking to the subject of the thread which is a time period prior to 1890 your ideas are very progressive and foreword thinking and I agree with them.

Ok, thank you for clearing that up.

Oh and WILLARD, a good number of rights have been incorporated at the state level by now, but to give an example of one of the more famous cases from the past...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barron_v._Baltimore

Barron sues the city, claiming their construction work slowed his business and altered his land. He originally won some damages, but the appellate courts overturned his victory, claiming that the Fifth Amendment's guarantee that government takings of private property for public use require just compensation is a restriction on the federal government alone.

 

[purplehaze]

The Oklahoma constitution practically mirrors the federal constitution. Thankfully, progressive thought, much like all the other posters on this thread, took hold and decided that the founding fathers couldn't see into the future and that the constitution was a living document and needed to keep pace with the times and decided the constitution should be applied to the states.