It’s quite easy, though, to cherry-pick historical examples that prop up an end in search of a rationale - which is precisely what the Supreme Court majority did this week, twice. It’s difficult to become an expert in American political, legal or social history. Want to read more stories like this? POLITICO Weekend delivers gripping reads, smart analysis and a bit of high-minded fun every Friday. Drafted by Justice Clarence Thomas, the decision applies a strict originalist frame to conclude that “nly if a firearm regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s unqualified command.’” In a decision that purports to rely on deep historic knowledge of the founding generation’s views on gun control, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court knocked down a New York State law limiting the concealed carry of firearms. This week, what was once a fringe intellectual concept, confined to conservative legal circles, achieved its ultimate ascendance. The theory, which views jurisprudence as frozen in time, flatly rejects the idea of the Constitution as a a living and evolving document and instead demands that we interpret its provisions exactly as the framers intended. Most laws are meant to stop people from doing something, and to penalize those who disregard those laws.“Originalism has been the reigning constitutional theory of legal conservatives since the election of Ronald Reagan,” a contributor to the National Review wrote recently, with glowing approval. More generally, laws are meant to protect the society from the law breakers.īut our immigration laws are different. Here the whole focus is on the “plight” of those who have broken the laws, and on what can be done to lift the stigma and ease the pressures they feel, so that they can “come out of the shadows” and “normalize” their lives. The Associated Press refuses to let their reporters refer to people who sneaked across the border into this country, in violation of American immigration laws, as “illegal immigrants.” Merely using the word “illegal” to describe their breaking the law is considered to be a sign of mean-spiritedness, if not racism. On the other hand, if an ordinary American citizen breaks a law, no one cares if he has to live in fear for years - “in the shadows,” as it were - worrying that his illegal act will be discovered and punished. No one bothers to come up with euphemisms to keep from calling what he did illegal. No cities announce that they will provide “sanctuary,” so that American shoplifters, or even jay-walkers, will be protected from the law. But, in some places, illegal immigrants are treated almost as if they were in a witness protection program. What is even more remarkable about this special treatment is that you are not supposed to think about it as special treatment. When a new immigration law is proposed that simply overlooks violations of the old law, that is not supposed to be called “amnesty” - even though the word “amnesty” has the same root as “amnesia.” It is all about forgetting. Why is it not supposed to be called “amnesty”? Because illegal immigrants must “earn” their citizenship. But if an ordinary American citizen gets a traffic ticket, the law is not going to just forget about it, no matter what good deeds he does afterwards. People who come here perfectly legally have to earn their citizenship.
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