To paraphrase the great US supreme court justice Robert H Jackson, the US constitution should not be read as a suicide pact. That seemingly obvious bit of wisdom appears lost on the present court. Over the course of the past week, the court handed down three landmark decisions, each disastrous in its own right. But taken together they reveal a dangerously hidebound court intent on turning the constitution into an instrument of obstruction, a formidable obstacle to solving some of the nation’s most pressing problems.
First, in New York State Rifle v Bruen, the court, by a 6-3 vote, struck down a New York law that required a person demonstrate “proper cause” to carry a concealed handgun. The Sullivan law had been on the books for over a century without running afoul of the constitution. Indeed, between 1791 and 2008, the supreme court had never struck down a government gun regulation, presumably because as Warren Burger, the conservative chief justice appointed by Richard Nixon once observed, the idea that the second amendment creates a personal right to gun ownership is “one of the greatest pieces of fraud – I repeat the word ‘fraud’ – on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime”.
