In describing the Supreme Court?s recent gun ruling as the result of a battle between the court?s left- and right-leaning ideological blocs, Newsweek?s Stuart Taylor places some blame on both conservatives and liberals:
The pattern is clear: across a wide range of issues, both blocs appear remarkably inconsistent on what may seem like matters of legal principle ? whether to favor individual rights over government power, whether to defer to the elected branches and whether to honor inconvenient precedents.
What Taylor fails to note is that absolute devotion to any of those principles would ignore the court?s real duty: fidelity to the U.S. Constitution. First, individual rights should take precedence over government power, if the U.S. Constitution protects those rights. But the court is not supposed to be able to invent rights ? especially by finding new rights in the ?emanations? of ?penumbras? of legitimate rights.
Second, courts should defer to the elected branches, unless those other branches take actions clearly prohibited by the U.S. Constitution.
Third, courts should honor precedents, if the precedents are constitutional. In the recent gun ruling, the Supreme Court overturned a precedent that was so bad it earned inclusion in William Mellor and Robert Levy?s new book, The Dirty Dozen.
Mellor explained the book?s key points during this week?s John Locke Foundation Shaftesbury Society meeting.
