I’m Completely Cool With This

Liberals Use Heller to Bolster More Than the Second Amendment

The Supreme Court’s 2008 ruling in D.C. v. Heller was a constitutional earthquake, breathing life into the Second Amendment as a guarantee of an individual right to bear arms.

But the aftershock of that decision is beginning to transform the constitutional landscape well beyond gun rights, in ways that have liberals cheering and even joining hands with one-time adversaries like the National Rifle Association.

In a follow-on case pending before the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a progressive legal group and liberal law professors including Yale Law School’s Jack Balkin earlier this month joined gun-rights advocates in urging that the right established in Heller, which involved only the District of Columbia, be extended to apply against gun restrictions in the 50 states. The case is McDonald v. Chicago, a challenge to that city’s strict gun control law and, no matter what, the outcome is likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court.

But these academics and the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center, which filed a brief in the case, have not suddenly taken up the Second Amendment cause, Charlton Heston-style. Rather, they joined the case to urge the court to adopt a new way of making the rights protected by the federal Constitution apply to the states (a process known as “incorporation”).

Basically, instead of the piecemeal incorporation of rights by taking each one through the courts, this could lead to the entirety of the Bill of Rights being incroporated. Go and read the article. It is great food for thought.