A State Supreme Court Just Issued Another Devastating Rebuke of the U.S. Supreme Court

The Hawaii Supreme Court handed down a unanimous opinion on Wednesday declaring that its state constitution grants individuals absolutely no right to keep and bear arms outside the context of military service. Its decision rejected the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment, refusing to interpolate SCOTUS’ shoddy historical analysis into Hawaii law. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed the ruling on this week’s Slate Plus segment of Amicus; their conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Ranvier,

The conservatives on the supreme court are crap historians and even worse judges.

cogman,

Originalism is nothing more than a mechanism for the Supreme Court to undo past precedent they don’t like. Welcome to the new lochner era.

Hopefully we end this one like we ended the last, with a wave of socialism and a tough president willing to pack the court.

Ranvier,

Sorry Loving v Virginia, it didn’t used to be widely understood that the equal protection clause would forbid inter racial marriage bans. After all, both white and black people are forbidden from marrying other races by those laws. There, equal. That’s how it was historically understood, heck it was illegal in 16 states still at the time and widely disapproved of.

But this presumes origialism is some coherent philosophy in the first place, instead of an excuse for partisan hackery cherry picking by Heritage Foundation stooges to get the conclusion they want.

Count me in favor of packing the court, not like there’s any integrity to jeopardize. More to lose by doing nothing while they continue to rampage.

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