NJCSD predicts SCOTUS decision

L

liaison@nnjcsd.org

Moderator
May 5th, 2008; Washington Township, NJ
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact: Robert Kreisler

In a stunning first-of-its-kind announcement, the New Jersey Coalition for Self Defense (NJCSD) predicts that the Supreme Court Of The United States (SCOTUS) will confirm an individual right interpretation of the 2nd Amendment in Heller vs. DC, foreshadowing an end to decades of acrimonious debate over the meaning of what is widely considered to be a core principle for many Americans.

Using an advanced market research method known as a KJ analysis (named after its creator, Kawakita Jiro) a team of five analysts independently reviewed the statements made by the Justices during testimony in the Heller vs. DC case to arrive at this conclusion. The KJ method was developed as a way to examine complex problems where differing interpretations may exist and has become popular in business for its effectiveness.

The project was conceived and led by Joe Ficalora of SBTI Inc., a Texas-based management consulting firm. This is the first known time such an analysis has been applied to a contemporary legal issue and represents a groundbreaking implementation of this method. “Though we've been painstaking in our analysis, there’s always the remote possibility we may be surprised,” said Ficalora. “However, my experience indicates that the Supreme Court will confirm an individual right interpretation. I’m willing to stake my reputation on this in public, and in front of my colleagues in this industry.”

For many years, anti-gun factions have argued that an earlier decision by the Supreme Court in US vs. Miller established that the 2nd Amendment implied a collective right, meaning that private citizens had no individual right to own or carry firearms for self-defense or home protection.

“We're relieved that the hard facts point to what we've known all along - that the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is a personal right guaranteed to the American people as our legacy of freedom, preserved for us by our Founders and does not apply solely to the military or National Guard as some mistakenly believe," said Robert Kreisler, President of the NJCSD. “While we don’t mean to be presumptuous by leading the Supreme Court with this announcement, it is important to give America hope that our nation has not swung hopelessly toward socialism and that there are still those who support a traditional view of our Constitution and the liberties it was intended to enshrine through all ages.”

Arthur Rosbury-Yoder, NJCSD’s Executive Director, added, "This is just one example of the out-of-the-box kind of thinking we try to do at the NJCSD. Our organization exists to overcome the fear and ignorance perpetuated by liberals and socialist zealots who appear determined to eliminate our natural rights and by a mass media by a liberal bias against core principles of liberty, especially when it comes to gun rights and self-defense. When was the last time you heard the media put out a positive gun story of any kind?”

The New Jersey Coalition for Self Defense is a not-for-profit organization which has a focus on self-defense and Second Amendment rights. For more information please visit www.njcsd.org or call 877-690-5460.
 
I hope you are right. I don't know much about this KJ analysis you used, but I do think that what a Justice says and even believes can differ from the opinion he or she ends up writing. Justices seem to be moved not only by their individual interpretations of The Constitution, but by political pressures as well. It has been said that they may very well return a decision so narrow in scope that it bears relevance only to laws that very closely approximate DC's gun ban, and give little relief to other second amendment infringements. This is what I expect to see. If they go even an inch farther than that, it will taste a lot like gravy.
 
wow...how simple it would be to just read the Bill of Rights
Click to expand...
You miss the nuances. Every law school teaches that stare decisis trumps the written word of the constitution and every candidate is made to swear their loyalty to stare decisis during the confirmation hearing. This is the principle that for the purposes of stability that past judgments even when wrong must trump the written text of the constitution.

Second you miss the liberal belief that it's the duty of the courts to pick and choose which parts of the constitution to enforce or even recognize based on personal politics. The liberal principal that the founding fathers were too stupid and rich to understand that the state is mother and that the state is father and that the state is god and that all power must be vested in the state. Liberal judges are driven to twist that poor tortured document to read however they choose. Allowing you do own assault rifles or sniper (hunting) rifles, or hand guns are a threat to the power of the state. Liberal justices see that and will rule accordingly.
 
I too am hoping for a good result. But it is generally impossible to predict a SCOTUS decision. The questions any judge asks during oral argument may or may not be indicative of his thinking. And the devil is always in the details.

It is a colossal waste of time and energy to now speculate on what the decision will be in Heller. We'll know when it is published.
 
FireMax said:
... the Supreme Court upholding the intent of the Constitution? Now that's revolutionary thinking.
Click to expand...
Whatever the ruling, the folks who like it will claim that it upholds the intent of the Constitution, and those who don't like it will claim that it doesn't. We won't know until it's published whether it upholds your view of the intent of the Constitution, but then you're not (nor am I, or anyone here) the final word on what the Constitution means. As a practical matter, SCOTUS is the final word on what the Constitution means, at least in regard to the cases that come before it.
 
counting chickens prematurely is just plain bad luck...

I hesitate to guess the opinion of the supreme court no matter what I WANT it to decide when I got burned by the eminent domain thing and realized I have no idea how these guys think.
 
Whatever the ruling, the folks who like it will claim that it upholds the intent of the Constitution, and those who don't like it will claim that it doesn't.
Click to expand...

I predict that no matter what the ruling very few people will be completely happy with it. It is funny that for everyone saying just read the constitution where is plainly says such-and-such there is usually an equal number of people with and entirely different view of what the constitution says and means. If the constitution was so easy to understand why would we need a SCOTUS to determine what it means with a 5-4 decision. Contrary to popular belief the different beliefs are not due to politics but rather a true difference in belief of what it says.
 
It is funny that for everyone saying just read the constitution where is plainly says such-and-such there is usually an equal number of people with and entirely different view of what the constitution says and means. If the constitution was so easy to understand why would we need a SCOTUS to determine what it means with a 5-4 decision. Contrary to popular belief the different beliefs are not due to politics but rather a true difference in belief of what it says.
Click to expand...
I completely disagree. The constitution is pretty plainly written and the framers never intended to make the supreme court the interpreters of the constitution, or even the final arbiters of the meaning of the constitution. They intended for the supreme court role as the final enforcer of the constitution and the final check on congress and the executive both gone wild. The founding fathers deliberately provided the supreme court with one and only one power... the power to veto laws or actions that are in conflict with the written word of the constitution. The expanded role of the supreme court was a result of a power grab by one of the early courts.

The camps that you describe really fall into defenders of a conservative and strict adherence to what the framers intended, and the liberal - how far can the words be twisted and what sections can be ignored to give the result they want. A great example is the 10th Amendment. Under a strict enforcement of the 10th Amendment Social Security could not exist, nor the most of the Endangered Species Act, nor most of the Clean Air Act and many many others because these are not among the powers granted the federal government by the constitution, and those powers not specifically granted the federal government are forbidden to the federal government and reserved to the states. The answer has been to ignore the 10th Amendment almost completely as an obsolete clause. Rather like the public ignoring laws forbidding bank robbery as an obsolete law.

In the case of the 2nd Amendment the antis know what the framers intended but hope that the supreme court will ignore the framers' intent that the populace always be armed well enough to be a threat to the federal government. Their hope is that the SCOTUS will decide that it's an obsolete right and so twist the wording in their favor. The reality will probably fall somewhere in between. The SCOTUS will most likely ignore the original intent of the framers as obsolete (and therefore ok to ignore) and rule that it only covers the possession of guns suitable for home defense and hunting.
 
sholling, you miss the point and fail to understand how the courts and the law actually work in real life. What will finally count is results. If you are arrested for violating a law that you think is unconstitutional, and the Court finally doesn't agree, you're still in jail. You can disagree all you want with the way SCOTUS and lower courts interpret the Constitution, but that won't have any affect on real life activities in the real world.

sholling said:
...the framers ...intended for the supreme court role as the final enforcer of the constitution ....
Click to expand...
And how is the Supreme Court supposed to enforce the Constitution without interpreting its meaning and thus its application to the facts of a matter before the Court?

sholling said:
...The founding fathers deliberately provided the supreme court with ...only one power... the power to veto laws or actions that are in conflict with the written word of the constitution
Click to expand...
And exactly where in the Constitution does it say anything about the Supreme Court having any kind of veto power?

In fact, Article III of the Constitution provides as follow:

Section 1 - Judicial powers

The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish...

Section 2 - Trial by Jury, Original Jurisdiction, Jury Trials

(The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority; to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls; to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction; to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party; to Controversies between two or more States; between a State and Citizens of another State; between Citizens of different States; between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.) (This section in parentheses is modified by the 11th Amendment.)...
Click to expand...

The 11th Amendment, which modifies Section 2 of Article III, reads as follows:

The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.
Click to expand...

Judicial power is generally the authority to interpret and apply the law and adjudicate legal disputes. The Constitution is part of the Law, and so judicial power would include the responsibility to interpret the Constitution and its application in a legal dispute being adjudicated. Note that a court does not "veto" laws. It interprets and applies the law in application to particular controversies brought before it by the parties.
 
Last edited:
Other than the baliff and I am not sure about that the Judicial branch has no power to enforce anything. The role of the judicial branch is strictly to settle disputes whether they be between two private parties, a private party and the government or between two governments. In settling such disputes their role is to interpret the constitution and any law involved. As much as we want to think they may not be following the original intent of the framers of the constitution they are doing exactly what the original intent was. Many laws are passed with one intent but the wording of the law does not express the intent and it is up to the courts to decide what the law says.

The role of the enforcer of the constitution is the executive branch and as long as there is no dispute about the meaning of the constitution then there is no need for the courts. This is exactly the basis of the Heller case in that you can complain all day about the constitution being written to be easily understood to mean one thing and the original framers meant that, but there is another group saying the total opposite. Did the original framers intend for the public to ride around in tanks and arm themselves with automatic weapons? Don't try to hand me that BS about munitions vs. arms either.

The SCOTUS will decide what they think the wording of 2A means whether it is what the framers thought it did or not. I don't think that the founding fathers would have used the same wording if they were writing it today but probably the same intent whatever that intent was. The SCOTUS will have to determine what wording the framers would be using today to reflect their original thoughts and apply that to the wording the used 200+ years ago.

I learned back in the 6th grade that the role of the judicial branch was to interpret the laws and it took me many years to understand what that meant. But I have never heard of a judge locking someone up. They may order the sheriff to do it but the judge does not enforce the law or constitution.
 
I learned back in the 6th grade that the role of the judicial branch was to interpret the laws and it took me many years to understand what that meant. But I have never heard of a judge locking someone up. They may order the sheriff to do it but the judge does not enforce the law or constitution.
Click to expand...

No, they don't personally enforce the law, but they can make a law unenforceable by declaring it unconstitutional thus striking it down requiring a legislative body to either rewrite the law as constitutional or amend the constitution.
 
PT111 said:
...the Judicial branch has no power to enforce anything....
Click to expand...
SecDef said:
...they don't personally enforce the law,...
Click to expand...
Absolutely correct, and I neglected to mention that.

It's been said that back in the 1830s, when Andrew Jackson was President, the Supreme Court issued an order against the State of George, and the State refused to comply. Jackson side with Georgia and reportedly said something to the effect that "Justice Marshall has issued his ruling, now let's see him try to enforce it." It probably apocryphal, but it's a good story. And it nicely illustrates that courts are essentially powerless. They may render decisions or issue rulings, but they must rely on someone else (the executive branch) to enforce them.
 
but they can make a law unenforceable by declaring it unconstitutional
Click to expand...

Actually there have been many laws struck down by the courts but still enforced by the executive branch. We recently had a local sheriff that tried to enforce his opinion on CC in a car against the rulings of judges and the AG. The legislature finally passed a act spelling out that his interpretation was in fact wrong and if he continued to enforce it he would be charged. The courts may declare a law unconstitutional but they cannot stop it from being enforced. If you are charged and carry it to court you will be found innocent but you must carry it to court.

Saying a judge declaring a law unconstitutional makes it unenforceable is the same as a sign saying no guns allowed prevents anyone from having a gun.
 
No, they don't personally enforce the law, but they can make a law unenforceable by declaring it unconstitutional thus striking it down requiring a legislative body to either rewrite the law as constitutional or amend the constitution.
Click to expand...
Exactly what I was speaking of when I said that the one and only power of the court was to veto actions or laws created by the other branches. I was speaking of constitutional law not tort law etc.

As for the other comments folks have made... the US Constitution is in plain English and needs little or no interpretation. Interpretation has become a code word for fold, spindle or mutilate the original intention of the framers to fit an expansion of government powers.
 
sholling, believe what you want. It doesn't change reality. Federal courts and state courts are continually making rulings that include interpretation and application of constitutional (both state and federal) provisions and that are affecting the rights and obligations, and lives and property, of real people.

You may believe that the Constitution doesn't (or ought not) require any interpretation, but the courts apparently don't agree with you.

And it would be helpful to be more careful of terminology. Courts don't "veto" laws. A veto is an act of the executive declining to accept into law an act of a legislative body, and turning that act into so much scrape paper -- it never becomes law. But when a court declines to enforce a law because it's unconstitutional or otherwise beyond the power of the legislative body to enact, the law remains on the books. It's just that the court will not apply it. This can get "interesting" when one Federal Appellate Circuit has declined to apply a particular law on constitutional grounds, but another Circuit has not. The law may be null in one Circuit while it may be enforced in another.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top