General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The 2nd Amendment was NOT written "to protect us from our gov't," FFS... [View all]caseymoz
(5,763 posts)". . . and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding." Why would the Framers put that in?
I'll clarify this: I'm not talking about how it got fucked up later as states tried to weasel out of it and as the federal government had to compromise. I'm talking about what they meant when they wrote it, later case law notwithstanding. Considering how many compromises had to go into writing the Constitution, this section is very clear.
And I'm not saying later case law should be ignored, but it's spelled out in black and white how the Constitution was meant to to apply to the states when it was written, and would have been if the Constitution hadn't also given the Federal government the contrary task of accommodating slavery.
Maybe, just to make sure you understood, I should have said "reiterated in the 14th" Amendment rather than "implied," or perhaps, "very strongly implied," but I didn't think it would be so hard to go from one to the other. A reiteration is, after all, a very strong implication.
And reiteration was necessary, because some states had missed the meaning the first time, and because slavery made the Bill of Rights ambiguous for enforcement over the States. If the federal government hadn't tried to accommodate slavery, there would have been no doubt. In other words, if the most glaring flaw in the Constitution wouldn't have been there, nobody would have tried to hedge on the meaning of Article VI, Section 2.
And for "loop" error you refer to, I don't believe other posters cited Article 6 a counterargument. How can you parse the word "Land" to mean everyplace except the states? The states were practically the entirety of the settled land. Do you even notice that error? If "land" doesn't mean "states," it doesn't mean anywhere. And then there's the word "supreme": It can't be supreme and restricted.
And here's the other absurdity, how can federal government declare enforcement on the states in the 14th amendment if it never had the right to declare that power to begin with? I don't make my assertions out of ignorance of Constitutional history, I make them because there's no other honest, logically sound interpretation that can fit.
I'm not talking about case law, I'm not talking about anything else but those words. If there's ambiguity in Article VI, Section 2, find it. Describe it to me. Because I don't see it. No matter what was done later, how could it be read any other way?
I'll agree absurdities about the Bill of Rights not applying to the states were asserted over it later. They are now popularly believed, but if these absurdities are treated as the bedrock truth, the Constitution is invalid, because that's the main section that describes the relationship of federal and state power. It doesn't have the phrase "separation of powers," by the way.
Case law is just another opinion. It might be an opinion informed by the opinions of previous generations. More importantly, it happens to be the opinion of the powers that be at the time the cases were ruled. Because it's an opinion, however, I can give my contrary opinion, whether it's the enacted one or not.