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4 

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER 

Opinion of the Court 

(1998).

Logic  demands  that  there  be  a  link  between  the  stated
purpose  and  the  command.  The  Second  Amendment 
would  be  nonsensical if  it  read,  “A  well  regulated  Militia, 
being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of 
the people to petition for redress of grievances shall not be 
infringed.”  That  requirement  of  logical  connection  may
cause  a  prefatory  clause  to  resolve  an  ambiguity  in  the 
operative  clause  (“The  separation  of  church  and  state 
being an important objective, the teachings of canons shall
have  no  place  in  our  jurisprudence.”    The  preface  makes 
clear  that  the  operative  clause  refers  not  to  canons  of 
interpretation  but  to  clergymen.)    But  apart  from  that
clarifying  function,  a  prefatory  clause  does  not  limit  or 
expand the scope of the operative clause.  See F. Dwarris, 
A  General  Treatise  on  Statutes  268–269  (P.  Potter  ed. 
1871) (hereinafter Dwarris); T. Sedgwick, The Interpreta­
tion and Construction of Statutory and Constitutional Law 
42–45 (2d ed. 1874).3  “ ‘It is nothing unusual in acts . . . for 
the  enacting  part  to  go  beyond  the  preamble;  the  remedy
often extends beyond the particular act or mischief which 
first  suggested  the  necessity  of  the  law.’ ”    J.  Bishop, 
—————— 

3 As  Sutherland  explains,  the  key  18th-century  English  case  on  the
effect of preambles,  Copeman v. Gallant, 1 P.  Wms. 314, 24 Eng. Rep. 
404 (1716), stated that “the preamble could not be used to restrict the
effect of the words of the purview.”  J. Sutherland, Statutes and Statu­
tory  Construction,  47.04  (N.  Singer  ed.  5th  ed.  1992).    This  rule  was 
modified  in  England  in  an  1826  case  to  give  more  importance  to  the 
preamble,  but  in  America  “the  settled  principle  of  law  is  that  the
preamble cannot control the enacting part of the statute in cases where
the enacting part is expressed in clear, unambiguous terms.”  Ibid. 

JUSTICE  STEVENS  says  that  we  violate  the  general  rule  that  every 
clause in a statute must have effect.  Post, at 8.  But where the text of a 
clause  itself  indicates  that  it  does  not  have  operative  effect,  such  as 
“whereas” clauses in federal legislation or the Constitution’s preamble,
a court has no license to make it do what it was not designed to do.  Or 
to put the point differently, operative provisions should be given effect
as operative provisions, and prologues as prologues.