Posted by: Bryan Pick on Tuesday, June 24, 2008 Mike O’Shea at Concurring Opinions talks about the probability and implications of Justice Antonin Scalia writing the opinion for DC v Heller. Noting that “[t]omorrow might be the big day” for the much-anticipated decision, he writes, Court-watchers have noticed that [...] the only case left from the Supreme Court's March sitting is D.C. v. Heller, and the only Justice who hasn't written any majority opinions from that sitting is ... Justice Antonin Scalia. Tom Goldstein [of SCOTUSblog] thinks it's "exceptionally likely" that Scalia was assigned to write the Court's lead opinion in the most important Second Amendment case in American history.Do read the whole thing, because an awful lot is riding on this. Scalia is about the best the gun-rights crowd can hope for in the current Court, at least as far as federal laws go. Incorporation might be another matter. The Left, seeing the writing on the wall of public opinion, has mostly backed off of guns as an election issue in recent years; the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban sunsetted in 2004 without much fuss, and as McQ pointed out a couple of weeks ago, even groups like the Brady Campaign are falling back to a lower-key, incremental approach, which would be considerably eased by an opinion that resisted incorporation. Beyond the historical implications of a strong pro-individual rights ruling on the Second Amendment, I'll be interested to see how the presidential campaigns respond to the Heller decision. McCain may not be golden on the Second Amendment, but the gun-rights crowd is piling up the ammunition on Obama's record and there may be an opportunity on the Right to make Obama confront the issue. Time will tell. UPDATE: SCOTUSblog reports: At the close of Wednesday’s public session, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., announced that the Court will issue all remaining decisions for the Term at 10 a.m. Thursday. The test case on whether the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a gun is among those remaining (District of Columbia v. Heller, 07-290). |
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