Talk:United States v. Miller

message: As I have indicated in another talk page, this matter came to the Supreme Court after a timely posed demurrer by one or both defendants at trial. Therefore, a likely explanation regarding the lack of evidence might be that no evidence to the aforementioned effect had even been presented at the trial -- the defendants' demurrer may have been sustained by the trial court before anybody could get around to presenting evidence. (For non-lawyers, what this basically means is that if the trial court threw out the case before the defendants had a chance to present "evidence" there obviously would have been no such "evidence" in the record on appeal for the Supreme Court to even talk about. In other words, this may have been a case where the defendants were "too successful," or their initial success at the trial court essentially may have backfired once the case was appealed.)
The Supreme Court hears and decides questions of law but does not normally decide questions of fact (i.e., does not normally hear "evidence"). Appeals courts such as the U.S. Supreme Court do look at "evidence" in certain technical ways, but not in all the same ways that a trial court looks at evidence. Generally, the Supreme Court and other appeals courts look only at evidence presented at the trial court proceeding.
If the Supreme Court considered the question of whether the firearm in the case was "ordinary military equipment" for purposes of the statute to be a question of fact, then the Court could easily have taken the lack of "facts" in the trial court's record as a lack of "evidence." By contast, if an appeals court such as the Supreme Court considers a particular question decided by a trial court to be a question of law, the court will have no problem re-examining that question.
The Court also noted that it could take no judicial notice that the weapon was part of ordinary military equipment. This seems to support the argument that the Court did indeed treat the question as a question of fact -- one requiring "evidence" to be presented at the trial court -- and apparently none was presented, because the defendants were successful in having the case thrown out first.
If you don't present "evidence" at trial, you are basically out of luck. Under our legal system, the Supreme Court and other appeals courts generally do not consider or look at "evidence" unless that evidence was at least presented at the trial court level. So, even if the defendants or their lawyers HAD shown up at the Supreme Court, any "evidence" they didn't try to put into the trial court record would generally not be regarded by the Supreme Court anyway. Yours, Famspear 15:24, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Background on this case

message: An anonymous editor has inserted "The court indicated that only military type arms are constitutionally protected." The only explanation was "rv vandalism".
I had removed the sentence, because the court did not actually say that. The article does quote what the court actually said. The sentence is inaccurate and misleading, and it just promotes someone's POV about how the court's opinion should be interpreted. Interpretation belongs in the following section, not the section on what the court actually said. Roger 17:09, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Whether only military type arms are protected 

message: First line should be edited that Miller is a case that affirmed the right of the federal government to regulate firearm ownership, through NFA 1934.  Nobody is argueing against that. Rather than the weak notion that both sides say its supports their side.  Gun Rights supporters would hardly claim this case as a victory even if it did uphold the individual rights view, per se.  And anti-gunners have to make some giants leaps in logic to make. Thus that sentence should be replaced and leave that dichotomy in the main page. Chudogg (talk) 02:42, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe you say that it affirmed the power of the feds to tax the interstate transfer of firearms that have no military use. I think that the lead paragraph is just fine. Roger (talk) 07:29, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Miller has a case that supports Gun regulation  

message: The text re: Printz v. U.S. was partially incorrect; "the Court" did not state that, rather, Justice Thomas did in a concurring opinion. For those unfamiliar with legal terminology, a concurring opinion is one written by a justice who agrees with what the majority has held but would like to comment independently on the topic. This is a crucial distinction; had "the Court" written that line, its effect would be substantial, essentially knocking the collective right position in the Second Amendment debate out of the ball park at the Appellate level, demolishing the key cornerstone of the bulk of Circuit Courts' Second Amendment precedent, and more than likely would have been seen as an indication by the Court that it was willing to hear a Second Amendment challenge. That it was written instead by Thomas in a concurrence means that it has virtually no value, except to the extent it signifies his individual stance on the issue.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.62.136.206 (talk) 03:53, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Precedent 

message: There is a 1985 Supreme Court case also of the name United States v. Miller, which deals with the grand jury procedure. How do I go about (and should we go about) changing the disambiguation italics to reflect this, even if the 1985 case isn't terribly notable. Huadpe (talk) 08:22, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: 1985 case of same name

message: USAG Cummings who designed the 1934 NFA and Justice McReynolds who ruled on the NFA in 1939 were also involved in the famous "court packing" proposal of 1937. Justice James McReynolds once proposed a policy of adding a federal judge for each who refused to retire at age seventy at full pay. After the 1936 election, President Roosevelt instructed USAG Homer Cummings to draft court reform legislation. Both were attracted to McReynolds' proposal, for it would give FDR the power to appoint six additional judges to the US Supreme Court, which had ruled some policies of FDR's first term unconstitutional. The "court packing plan" caused an uproar and the proposal died in congressional committee. Which is why we still have a nine judge Supreme Court, and not a Supreme Court that grows by one every time a sitting judge reaches 70 and refuses to retire. Naaman Brown (talk) 14:28, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  side note 

message: I may be nitpicking here, but shouldn't the relevant cases be listed in ascending order (i.e. 1961-2008) instead of descending order (2008-1961) as they currently are? Vyselink (talk) 04:25, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I reordered the Supreme Court opinions and put them in chronologically. WP:BRD  7&6=thirteen (☎) 12:44, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Order 

message: The Court in Emerson  looked at "Miller" and found 1)That SCOTUS granted standing to Miller's 2nd amendment claim. and 2)Did not question Millers membership in an organized militia. Sister circuits had atenuated "Miller" and split as to the question of States right or limited individual right (the right of soldiers to have guns that they brought from home). The court in Emerson found that Miller supports the "Standard model" by name. I started a score card for the circuits but I have to figure out where to put it. J8079s (talk) 22:26, 19 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Emerson 

message: I found the doj briefs "DoJ Brief in U.S. v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939)". Retrieved 28 July 2014.  some what different than what we have. J8079s (talk) 09:18, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: All the documents are here; to help build this article. J8079s (talk) 17:14, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  DOJ briefs