Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf
Page Number: 8

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

5 

Opinion of the Court 

Commentaries  on  Written  Laws  and  Their  Interpretation 
§51,  p.  49  (1882)  (quoting  Rex  v.  Marks,  3  East,  157,  165 
(K.  B.  1802)).    Therefore,  while  we  will  begin  our  textual 
analysis  with  the  operative  clause,  we  will  return  to  the 
prefatory  clause  to  ensure  that  our  reading  of  the  opera­
tive clause is consistent with the announced purpose.4 

1. Operative Clause. 
a. “Right  of  the  People.”    The  first  salient  feature  of 

the  operative  clause is  that  it  codifies  a  “right  of  the  peo­
ple.”  The unamended Constitution and the Bill of Rights
use the phrase “right of the people” two other times, in the
First  Amendment’s  Assembly-and-Petition  Clause  and  in
the Fourth Amendment’s Search-and-Seizure Clause.  The 
Ninth  Amendment  uses  very  similar  terminology  (“The 
enumeration  in  the  Constitution,  of  certain  rights,  shall
not  be  construed  to  deny  or  disparage  others  retained  by 
the  people”).    All  three  of  these  instances  unambiguously 
refer  to  individual  rights,  not  “collective”  rights,  or  rights
that  may  be  exercised only  through  participation  in  some 
corporate body.5 

—————— 

4 JUSTICE STEVENS criticizes us for discussing the prologue last.  Post, 

at 8.  But if a prologue can be used only to clarify an ambiguous opera­
tive  provision,  surely  the  first  step  must  be  to  determine  whether  the 
operative provision is ambiguous.  It might be argued, we suppose, that 
the prologue itself should be one of the factors that go into the determi­
nation  of  whether  the  operative  provision  is  ambiguous—but  that
would cause the prologue to be used to produce ambiguity rather than 
just  to  resolve  it.  In  any  event,  even  if  we  considered  the  prologue 
along with the operative provision we would reach the same result we 
do  today,  since  (as  we  explain)  our  interpretation  of  “the  right  of  the 
people  to  keep  and  bear  arms”  furthers  the  purpose  of  an  effective 
militia  no  less  than  (indeed,  more  than)  the  dissent’s  interpretation.
See infra, at 26–27. 

5 JUSTICE  STEVENS  is  of  course  correct,  post,  at  10,  that  the  right  to 
assemble  cannot  be  exercised  alone,  but  it  is  still  an  individual  right,
and not one conditioned upon membership in some defined “assembly,”
as he contends the right to bear arms is conditioned upon membership