Source: http://www.potowmack.org/supct2.html
Timestamp: 2017-05-26 12:54:33
Document Index: 211713981

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1889', '§ 1890', '§ 1791', '§ 1792', '§ 1830', '§ 1831']

http://www.potowmack.org/supct2.html
Intro:The Libertarian Fantasy on the Supreme Court
Joyce Lee Malcolm, Stephen Halbrook, Don Kates, Joseph Story's "palladium of the liberties of a republic," Blackstone's Commentaries
[Halbrook]
[Supremacy of Law]
Clarence Thomas lists Don Kates, "Handgun Prohibition and the Original Meaning of the Second Amendment," 82 Michigan Law Review 203 (1983), #14 on LaPierre's list. The "personal right" in Kates does not include a right to be armed outside of accountability to public authority. He wrote p. 265:
...the concept of anonymity or privacy in gun ownership profoundly departs from the conditions under which the Founder envisioned the amendment operating. Under the militia laws (first colonial, then state and eventually federal), every household, and/or male reaching the age of majority, was required to maintain at least one firearm in good condition. To prove compliance these firearms had to be submitted for inspection periodically. While the firearms-maintenance provisions of state law and the First Militia Act have long since been repealed, federal law continues to classify the entire able-bodied male citizenry aged seventeen to forty-five as "the militia of the United States." This being the country's ultimate military resource, men in this group remain liable for muster in dire military emergencies, e.g., when necessary to keep order in the aftermath of an atomic attack or both the Army and the National Guard have been deployed overseas. Since one can scarcely argue that the First Militia Act violated the amendments, it is difficult to see that it would be unconstitutional for Congress even today to require every member of the present militia to possess a firearm and regularly present it for inspection to assure that it is being maintained in good working order. Alternately, and fully consistent with these purposes, a national gun
registration scheme could allow federal authorities to mobilize selectively those members of the unorganized militia who are already armed and presumably familiar with the handling of weapons. In sum, the historical background of the second amendment seems inconsistent with any notion of anonymity or privacy insofar as the mere fact of one's possessing a firearm is concerned.
Kates' intellectual honesty that the militiamen were accountable to public authority and were armed for the state or as the state not against the state causes apoplexy in gun lobby extremists like Stephen Halbrook. Kates has three articles on LaPierre's list second to Halbrook's
five. Halbrook denounced the passage from Kates above in "To
Bear Arms for Self-Defense: Our Second Amendment Heritage,"
American Rifleman, Nov., '84. Halbrook's problem with
political authority is quite explicit. Joyce Lee Malcolm, Van
Alstyne, Clarence Thomas, and Scalia, in their devotion to the
"personal right," show no appreciation of the conflicts within
the gun lobby itself. Clarence Thomas cites the pseudoscholarship of Stephen Halbrook
who argued Printz and Mack for the NRA before the
Supreme Court and to whom the Potowmack Institute has given much
attention (See .../196rehm.html, .../196fp46.html, and .../196locke.html) as one proponent in what Halbrook describes as a public
debate. Thomas also lists Van Alstyne,
Robert Cottrol, Sanford Levinson, and Don Kates. (See Wayne LaPierre's list in
Guns, Crime, and Freedom and all quote James Madison's
words from Federalist Paper No. 46 out of context to mean something very different from what they
mean in context.
None mention the true scholars of the Second Amendment, militias,
and citizen soldiers:
John Kenneth Rowland, .../potowmack/1197row.html,
previously unpublished PhD dissertation, Ohio State, 1978.
(jus militiae) and professional army.
historian but who did spend many years on the Senate Armed
and the Militia."
Thomas and Scalia also list the pseudoscholarship of Joyce Lee Malcolm. Malcolm's review of Halbrook's That Every Man Be Armed is
#10 on LaPierre's list. LaPierre does not mention that Malcolm's is a very critical review, but she is not critical because Halbrook is a fraud and a charlatan who repeatedly lifts words out of context and gives them new meaning (See .../196fp46.html, and .../196locke.html). She is critical of Halbrook for not making a better case. Malcolm does not examine Halbrook's intellectual dishonesty and offers no critique of his "libertarian
republicanism." By not challenging Halbrook's doctrine she gives
it her endorsement.
[Kates]
Halbrook's doctrine is found on p. 9 of That Every Man Be Armed:
...an understanding of the authoritarian absolutism of Plato, Bodin, Hobbes, and Filmer is as necessary as an understanding of classical libertarian republicanism in order to know what America's founders rejected as well as what they accepted. Those who drafted and supported the Bill of Rights followed the libertarian tradition of Aristotle, Cicero, and Sidney, and they rejected the authoritarian, if not totalitarian, tradition of Plato, Caesar, and Filmer. These two basic traditions in political philosophy have consistently enunciated opposing approaches to the question of people and arms, with the authoritarians rejecting the idea of an armed populace in favor of a helpless and obedient populace and the libertarian republicans accepting the armed populace and limiting the government by the consent of that armed populace.
According to this doctrine the citizens have to be armed first then they consent to be governed. Presumably they keep their guns outside of the reaches of the political community which means they never consented to be governed at all. Is this what Malcolm endorses? A little explanation is in order.
One of Malcolm's favorite quotes is from Blackstone's
Commentaries. She put it this way before the House Subcommittee on Crime April 5, 1995: "[Blackstone] saw the people's right to be armed as their protection when 'the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression." These words are used by Halbrook and many others. It is as important to look at these words in full context and the context of their time.
Blackstone's Commentaries was published in 1763, a
quarter of a century before the American Revolution. An overview
of the transformation from the political concepts of the
pre-American Revolution British Constitution to the concepts of
the US Constitution of 1787 is provided in .../1197row.html. This transformation is described in great detail by Gordon Wood
in The Creation of the American Republic (1969).
Blackstone's "violence of oppression" was in the context of the
rulers and the ruled as separate estates of the realm in the
British Constitution. In the US Constitution the rulers and the
ruled became one and the same (.../1197row.html) and Blackstone's "violence of oppression" lost its meaning and
its context. [TOP]
Blackstone defines the three absolute rights of Englishmen as the
rights to personal security, personal liberty, and private
property. "[T]o protect and maintain the[se] three great and
primary rights," there have been "established certain other
auxiliary subordinate rights of the subject, which serve
principally as outworks or barriers." Blackstone's observations only make sense in the context of concepts of the British Constitution where the rulers and the ruled were separate estates of the realm. The King's army was a standing army composed of mercenaries, foreigners (Germans in the
American Revolution), and social outcasts and misfits. They only
knew the military life and were regarded by the people with
suspicion although no one questioned the royal prerogative to
maintain a regular army. The militia were the local, rooted
people led by respectable men of rank and property. Blackstone's rights are described in this context, Book I, p.
1. The constitution, power, and privileges of parliament, of
which I shall treat at large in the ensuing chapter.
2. The limitation of the king's prerogative, by bounds, so
certain and notorious, that it is impossible he should either
mistake or legally exceed them without the consent of the
people....Of this also, I shall treat in its proper place.
3. A third subordinate right of every Englishmen is that of
applying to the courts of justice for redress of injuries. Since
the law is in England the supreme arbiter of every man's life,
liberty and property, courts of justice must at all times be open
to the subject, and the law be duly administered therein....
4. If there should happen any uncommon injury, or infringement
of the rights before-mentioned, which the ordinary course of law
is to defective to reach, there still remains a fourth
subordinate right, appertaining to every individual, namely, the
right of petitioning the king, or either house of parliament,
for the redress of grievances....
5. The fifth and last auxiliary right of the subject, that I
shall at present mention, is that of having arms for their
defence, suitable to their condition and degree, and such
as are allowed by law. Which is also declared by the
same statute 1 W. & M. st. 2. c.2, and it is indeed, a public
allowance under due restrictions, of the natural right of
resistance and self-preservation, when the sanctions of society
and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of
oppression [by the rulers].
In these several articles consist the rights, or, as they are
frequently termed, the liberties of Englishmen: liberties more
generally talked of, than thoroughly understood; and yet highly
necessary to be perfectly known and considered by every man of
rank and property, lest his ignorance of the points
whereon they are founded should hurry him into faction and
licentiousness on the one hand, or a pusillanimous
indifference and criminal submission on the other. And we have
seen that these rights consist, primarily, in the free enjoyment
of personal security, of personal liberty, and of private
property. So long as these remain inviolate, the subject is
perfectly free; for every species of compulsive tyranny and
oppression must act in opposition to one or other of these
rights, having not other object upon which it can possibly be
employed. To preserve these from violation, it is necessary,
that the constitution of parliament be supported in its full
vigour; and limits, certainly known, be set to the royal
prerogative. And, lastly, to vindicate these rights, when
actually violated or attached, the subjects of England are
entitled, in the first place, to the regular administration and
free course of justice in the courts of laws; next, to the right
of petitioning the king and parliament for redress of grievances;
and lastly, to the right of having and using arms for
self-preservation and defence. And all these rights and
liberties it is our birthright to enjoy entire; unless where
the laws of our country have laid them under necessary
restraints. Restraints in themselves so gently and moderate,
as will appear upon farther inquiry, that no man of sense or
probity would wish to see them slackened. For all of us have it
in our choice to do everything that a good man would desire to
do; and are restrained from nothing, but what would be
pernicious either to ourselves or our fellow citizens...
Blackstone's consciousness requires cognizance of other passages
in the Commentaries. Book I, page 415:
To prevent the executive power from being able to oppress, says
baron Montesquieu, it is requisite that the armies with which it
is entrusted should consist of the people and have the same
spirit with the people; as was the case at Rome, till Marius new-
modelled the legions by enlisting the rabble of Italy, and laid
the foundation of all the military tyranny that ensued. Nothing
then, according to these principles, ought to be more guarded
against in a free state, than making the military power, when
such a one is necessary to be kept on foot, a body too distinct
from the people. Like ours, it should wholly be composed of
natural subjects; it ought only to be enlisted for a short and
limited time; soldiers also should live intermixed with people;
no separate camp, no barracks, no inland fortresses should be
allowed. And perhaps it might be still better, if by dismissing
a stated number and enlisting others at every renewal of their
term, a circulation could be kept up between the army and the
people, and the citizen and the soldier be more intimately
To keep this body of troops in order, an annual act of parliament
likewise passes, "to punish mutiny and desertion, and for the
better payment of the army and their quarters." This regulates
the manner in which they are to be dispersed among the several
innkeepers and victuallers throughout the kingdom; and
establishes a law martial for their government. By this, among
other things, it is enacted, that if any officer or soldier shall
excite, or join any mutiny, or knowing of it, shall not give
notice to the commanding officer: shall desert, or list in any
other regiment, or sleep upon his post, or leave it before he is
relieved, or hold correspondence with a rebel or enemy, or strike
or use violence to his superior officer, or shall disobey his
lawful commands: such offender shall suffer such punishment as a
court martial shall inflict, though it extend to death itself.
Blackstone wants a strong connection between the citizenry and
the soldiery but does not have much tolerance for the mutinous
"armed citizen guerrillas" the NRA would have outflank their own
government. Blackstone's consciousness was a balance of power
between the people, the ruled, and the royal prerogative, the
rulers, within the eighteenth century British Constitution which
had lost its relevance to the American political system in 1787. When Joyce Lee Malcolm cites the fifth and last auxiliary right
above she leaves out the part about "the natural right of
resistance and self-preservation." Natural rights and civil
rights are two different things. Malcolm appears to be giving
her support to the right to self-defense the gun lobby uses in
its present appeal to defeat legislation. Self-defense is
already a right guaranteed and protected in law, but it is not an
excuse to be armed outside of the law. The right of resistance
is still a natural right subject to "necessary restraints"
and to be exercised in extremis as the Second Amendment
Foundation described it in Warin. It is not a civil right that can be guaranteed by government. Having arms for their defense was a
right "suitable to their condition and degree" which meant that
it was class based. It was also as allowed by law.
Joyce Lee Malcolm's "decent respect for the past" does
not require that she mention the militia acts of the early
republic or the Whiskey Rebellion. These
should be of interest to Thomas and Scalia. Malcolm does
describe the "origins of an Anglo-AMERICAN right." Malcolm had the conceit to tell the House Judiciary Committee's
Subcommittee on Crime on April 5, 1995, that there were no
historians to argue with any more. Malcolm is a professional
historian. Her truth seeking responsibility is to know the
literature on the subject she examines.
Joseph Story, Commentaries,
Many people who lived through the American Revolution and participated in it did not understand the transformation in political concepts the Revolution achieved. It would not be remarkable if many others failed to
understand the transformation in political concepts. By citing Blackstone it is not clear that Story fully understood what had happened either.
Story goes on from his description of the "palladium of the
liberties of a republic" to lament that the militia was falling into disuse because the people were losing interest in the right to
participate. The decline of the militia was expected by the
Federalists. They wanted to build a viable nation with national
power. They knew the military force had to be based on a national
military force and the militia was useless to that purpose. The
transformation in political concepts that was achieved in the US
Constitution also meant that the militia no longer served its
theoretical function as a balance of power between the rulers and
the ruled as separate estates of the realm as it had in the
British Constitution and in the consciousness of Blackstone and the
Anti-Federalists. There was no longer a right of the people
to consent through Parliament to be ruled by royal prerogative
now that the rulers and the ruled were one and the same. The
Federalists could concede the Second Amendment as a political
accommodation to the Anti-Federalists because they knew it would
have disappearing relevance in the new nation. See .../1197row.html. The struggle
for the Federalists was over ratification of the Constitution not
the definition of words. The disappearance of the militia did
not mean the disappearance of liberty. The true legacy of the Second Amendment was embodied in the Selective Service Act of 1917 which for the first time combined the citizen soldier of the militia through a national system of conscription with the regular army. In the twentieth century we have described are armed forces as being composed of citizen soldiers and been proud of the condition and performance as such. The American anti-military tradition which survived up to the Second World War meant that American armed forces have usually been small in peacetime and composed of citizen soldiers in times of war. Even the NRA embraces the armed forces of the United States and describes itself as an auxiliary to the military. Witness the Civilian Marksmanship Division.
Story on the Second Amendment
§ 1889. The next amendment is:"A well regulated militia
being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of
§ 1890. The importance of this article will scarcely be
doubted by any persons, who have duly reflected upon the subject.
The militia is the natural defense of a free country against
sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and
domestic usurpations of power by rulers. It is against
sound policy for a free people to keep up large military
establishments and standing armies in time of peace, both from
the enormous expenses, with which they are attended, and the
facile means, which they afford to ambition and unprincipled
rights of the people. The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the
liberties of the republic; since it offers a strong moral
check against the usurpations and arbitrary power of rulers; and
will generally, even if these are successful in the first
instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them. And
yet, though this truth would seem so clear, and the importance of
a well regulated militia would seem so undeniable, it cannot be
disguised, that among the American people there is a growing
indifference to any system of militia discipline, and a
strong disposition, from a sense of it burdens, to be rid of
all regulations. How it is practicable to keep the people
duly armed without some organization, it is difficult to
lead to disgust, and disgust to contempt; and thus gradually
undermine all the protection intended by the clause of our
national bill of rights.
Story's words "system of militia discipline" and "to be rid of
all regulations" imply that the militia was a military organization and the discipline and regulation were imposed from above by law. They do not emerge from the militiamen themselves. The natural defense against "domestic insurrection" refers more explicitly to the NRA's "armed citizen guerrillas." Story does not give any more instructions on how to address the circumstance when the usurpation and arbitrary power comes from
the these "armed citizen guerrillas" when
it becomes their design to subvert the government. We saw it in
the twentieth century with the Nazi Party's Stormtroopers.
Story on Treason
§. 1790. The third section of the third article is as
follows: "Treason against the United States shall consist only in
them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason,
or on confession in open court."
§ 1791. Treason is generally deemed the highest crime, which
can be committed in civil society, since its aim is an overthrow
of the government, and a public resistance by force of its
powers. Its tendency is to create universal danger and alarm;
and on this account it is peculiarly odious, and often visited
with the deepest public resentment....
Story describes how the "history of England itself is
full of melancholy instruction on this subject," and goes on to
§ 1792. Nor have republics been exempt from violence and
tyranny of a similar character. The Federalist has justly
remarked, that newfangled and artificial treasons have been the
great engines, by which violent factions, the natural offspring
of free governments, have usually wreaked their alternate
malignity on each other.
So what is the difference between violent factions and
potentially violent factions like the NRA's "armed citizen
guerrillas" who insist upon a personal right to be armed outside
of the law and offer us nothing more than their word of honor
that they are not violent or potentially violent?
Story on The Supreme Law of the Land
§ 1830. The next clause is, "This is a constitution, and the
laws of the United States, which shall be made in pursuance
thereof, and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the
authority of the United States, shall be supreme law of the land.
And the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in
§ 1831. The propriety of this clause would seem to result
from the very nature of the constitution. If it was to establish
a national government, that government ought, to the
extent of its power and rights, to be supreme. It would
be a perfect solecism to affirm, that a national
government should exist with certain powers; and yet, that in
the exercise of those powers it should not be supreme. What
other inference could have been drawn, than of their supremacy,
if the constitution had been totally silent? And surely a
positive affirmance of that, which is necessarily implied, cannot
in a case of such vital importance be deemed unimportant. The
very circumstance, that a question might be made, would
irresistibly lead to the conclusion, that it ought not to be left
to inference. A law, by the very meaning of the term,
includes supremacy. It is a rule, which those, to whom it
is prescribed, are bound to observe. This results from every
political association. [This passage from is an almost verbatim citation from Alexander Hamilton's Federalist Paper No. 33.]
If individuals enter into a state of
society, the laws of that society must be the supreme regulator
of their conduct. If a number of political societies enter into
a larger political society, the laws, which the later may enact,
pursuant to the powers entrusted to it by its constitution, must
necessarily be supreme over those societies, and the individual,
of who they are composed. It would otherwise be a mere
treaty, dependent upon the good faith of the parties, and not a
government, which is only another name for political power and
supremacy. But it will not follow, that acts of the larger
society, which are not pursuant to its constitutional powers, but
which are invasions of the residuary authorities of the smaller
societies, will become the supreme law of the land. They will be
merely acts of usurpation, and will deserve to be treated as
such. Hence we perceive, that the above clause only declares a
truth, which flows immediately and necessarily from the
institution of a national government. It will be observed, that
the supremacy of the laws is attached to those only, which are
made in pursuance of the constitution; a caution very proper in
itself, but in fact the limitation would have arisen by
irresistible implication, if it had not been expressed.
In citing these sources, Thomas and Scalia reveal uncritical thinking and the predisposed gullibility of true believers in the libertarian fantasy. Their version of the libertarian fantasy and the personal right appears to be more directed at a limitation on the federal government than the authority of the states to regulate gun ownership. They don't seem willing to extend Fourteenth Amendment protection to the personal right they find in the Second Amendment that would protect gun ownership from the confiscation the gun lobby fears if it is undertaken by the states. The issue has not come up yet whether the Federal Government following from the Militia Act of 1792 can treat the guns in the society as a national resource and require the states to make inventories of that is, make a registries of gun owners and their guns for militia duty. The Potowmack Institute makes a policy recommendation along those lines.