Constitutional Law

Balkanization goes to town on Chicago's brief

Right here. A few samples:

"In the city?s attempt to preserve its weapons ban, it proves too much, essentially urging the Supreme Court to find that protection of the Bill of Rights and other fundamental liberties against state infringement has no basis in constitutional text or history, and is instead achieved solely by judicial implication. To make matters worse, Chicago?s brief makes common cause with precedent that has been properly labeled by civil rights leaders as ?among the most misdirected in the history of the Court? and celebrates a post-Civil War Court that looked the other way while Jim Crow perpetuated decades of discrimination and violent rights suppression."

"Chicago?s repeated deference to these decisions of the post-Civil War Court?beyond merely respecting them as precedent, the city?s brief calls them a ?venerated? line of decisions?is disconcerting. As the NAACP points out, in the line of cases initiated by Slaughter-House, ?the Court enunciated principles far broader than were necessary to decide the matters at hand, and it too readily struck down Congressional legislation designed to combat discrimination against African Americans after the Civil War, including both the Ku Klux Klan?s reign of terror and the establishment of a reconfigured caste system in the form of the Black Codes and Jim Crow.?"

Via Instapundit.

Full post as published by Of Arms and the Law on January 21, 2010 (boomark / email).