Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf
Page Number: 66.0

Cite as:  554 U. S. ____ (2008) 

63 

Opinion of the Court 

Third  Branch  of  Government—the  power  to  decide  on  a
case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insist­
ing  upon.  A  constitutional  guarantee  subject  to  future
judges’  assessments  of  its  usefulness  is  no  constitutional 
guarantee at all.  Constitutional rights are enshrined with
the  scope  they  were  understood  to  have  when  the  people
adopted  them,  whether  or  not  future  legislatures  or  (yes) 
even future judges think that scope too broad.  We would 
not apply an “interest-balancing” approach to the prohibi­
tion  of  a  peaceful  neo-Nazi  march  through  Skokie.    See 
National Socialist Party of America v. Skokie, 432 U. S. 43 
(1977)  (per  curiam).    The  First  Amendment  contains  the 
freedom-of-speech  guarantee  that  the  people  ratified,
which  included  exceptions  for  obscenity,  libel,  and  disclo­
sure  of  state  secrets,  but  not  for  the  expression  of  ex­
tremely  unpopular  and  wrong-headed  views.    The  Second 
Amendment  is  no  different.  Like  the  First,  it  is  the  very 
product  of  an  interest-balancing  by  the  people—which 
JUSTICE BREYER would now conduct for them anew.  And 
whatever  else  it  leaves  to  future  evaluation,  it  surely
elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding,
responsible  citizens  to  use  arms  in  defense  of  hearth  and 
home. 

JUSTICE  BREYER  chides us for leaving so many applica­
tions of the right to keep and bear arms in doubt, and for 
not  providing  extensive  historical  justification  for  those 
regulations  of  the  right  that  we  describe  as  permissible. 
See  post,  at  42–43.    But  since  this  case  represents  this
Court’s  first  in-depth  examination  of  the  Second  Amend­
ment,  one  should  not  expect  it  to  clarify  the  entire  field,
any  more  than  Reynolds  v.  United  States,  98  U. S.  145 
(1879),  our  first  in-depth  Free  Exercise  Clause  case,  left
that  area  in  a  state  of  utter  certainty.    And  there  will  be 
time  enough  to  expound  upon  the  historical  justifications
for  the  exceptions  we  have  mentioned  if  and  when  those
exceptions come before us.