The Court’s decision of 15 May 1939 was unanimous. “However, Justice Douglas recused himself, most likely because he was appointed to the Court on 4 April 1939, and so had not heard oral arguments on 30 March. Justice James Clark McReynolds delivered the six-page decision. The first third contained almost the entire text of the indictment; the full text of the National Firearms Act; the claims by Miller and Layton to Judge Ragon that NFA ’34 was unconstitutional. They had explained that the National Firearm Act of ‘34 attempted to usurp police power reserved to the States by taxing items and also that the United States had the power to regulate the types of guns which they argued violated the Second Amendment. The court summarily dismissed – with a paragraph of case citations – "the objection that the Act usurps police power reserved to the States". According to The U.S. v Miller Case, Revisited the cases cited showed that Congress could impose taxes as it saw fit, if such taxes were meant to raise meaningful amounts of revenue, even if the States had the powers to regulate possession of or commerce in the items in question. Justice McReynolds then dealt with the remaining matter, the scope of the Second Amendment. In a single paragraph the Court narrowly defined the issue. The question turned on the nature of the short-barreled shotgun: "In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a ’shotgun
The Supreme Court ruled that to let Congress make that a law you would have
White people were getting worried that African-Americans would overthrow the government because of their rapid growth in population. Soon after, the Alabama government dictated that only the votes of white people would count. After that happened many African-Americans rioted against the government and white owned businesses. When that happened a man named Professor Gomillion filed suit against the mayor and other high officials saying it was against the 14th Amendment. When the suit reached Judge Frank Johnson he dismissed the case saying the state had the rights to draw a boundary of what he could accept, but after he dismissed the case it had reached the Court of Appeals and the ruling was upheld. Booker T. Washington, the head of Tuskegee, helped to advance education and self-improvement for blacks, saying that whites needed to accept that black people were deserving of voting rights. Gomillion and his attorneys appealed to the U.S Supreme Court. The case was argued by Alabama Civil Rights attorney Fred Grey. This was a landmark case, The Supreme Court ruled this was against the 14th and 15th amendment. Martin Luther King Jr. also influenced this case when he marched in Alabama, getting many whites and African Americans on his side helping the final decision of the
that wanted to fight the local law regarding gun ownership. There was a law that you can only have a rifle or shotgun but they must have a trigger lock on and this would not let the owners use this weapon. Another problem was that they could not have a hand gun. In 2002, Robert A. Levy, began gathering names to form a Second Amendment lawsuit. He and Clark M. Neily, gathered six people to be the plaintiffs. Dick Heller a police officer that carried a hand gun all day but wasn’t allowed to have one in his home. He wanted this law to be removed. The Supreme Court overruled the local law and allowed for gun ownership and adjusted the rules for guns. All of the 6 people felt like they won because they were provided a better opportunity to own and possess guns in the way that they felt the Second Amendment
To understand the question, focusing on the court cases of Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education, we must first understand each court case on its own. Plessy v. Ferguson resulted in the year 1896. The case involved the 1890s Louisiana law that basically stated that there were separate railway carriages that were specifically labeled for blacks only and whites only. Plessy v. Ferguson involved Homer Plessy, who was seven-eighths white and one-eighth black and appeared to look like a white man. Plessy took an open seat in a white only railway car. He was soon arrested for violating the 1890 law. When Plessy was convicted of violating the 1890 law during his trial, he soon filed a petition against the judge, John H. Ferguson. Ferguson
For centuries people of African descent have suffered of inhumane treatment, discrimination, racism, and segregation. Although in the United States, and in other countries, mistreatment and marginalization towards African descendants has stopped, the racism and discriminations has not. Unfortunately, there have been events proving such statement and it is upsetting to know that after all the decades of fighting for equality this is still an issue for blacks, especially for African-Americans living in our country.
Justices Breyer, Ginsberg, Souter, and Stevens were those who dissented. I found the dissent opinion written by Breyer to be very interesting. Justice Breyer concluded, “a sounder approach would be a “balancing test” that focuses on “practicalities” (Rose, August 20, 2010, Pg. 1). To me this sounds as if government agents would have the right to determine how practical a citizen’s constitutional rights are and limit those rights by their will. Furthermore, Breyer believe that by taking account of the evidence of gun crime and gun violence relative to location the ban would be constitutional. One major issue I find with this opinion is the fact that there has never been any accredited research that states the banning of firearms has any positive affect on violence and crime. There is possibly even evidence that suggests the opposite. In summary Breyer and the other dissenting Justices believed that private self-defense was not fundamental to the principles of liberty and justice.
The Plaintiff has argued that this regulation is in best interest for the public and provides security for the society as a whole. They want the regulation to be considered Constitutional because it was voted on by the majority and therefore, it is in the best interest of the community and should therefore be enacted. This argument does not speak to the constitutional issue of the case. The Supreme Court’s main objective is to protect individuals and minorities from oppressive government. This law is a clear violation of the fundamental right to keep and bear arms. The wording of the Second Amendment is clear and does not mention anything regarding regulations. We as the court must ignore the
An African American retired custodian, Otis McDonald, took on the city of Chicago, which had the similar law restricting gun control policies as the Heller case. So, it comes to no one’s surprise that according to Encyclopedia Britannica, McDonald filed his lawsuit on the same day Heller’s case decision was announced to the public. Chicago was banning new registration of handguns, yet making a registration for handguns a requirement. The decision to change this regulation was made on June 28, 2010, when the court sided with McDonald 5-4. Although this case is recent it is still not the most recent major court case regarding the subject of gun control. Jamie Caetano fought her conviction of possession of a stun gun just this year. She claims she was protecting herself, in self-defense, against an abusive ex-boyfriend. Massachusetts argues that stun guns were not what the second amendment meant by “the right to bear arms” and is not common amongst military use and therefore should be excluded. In a unanimous decision, the supreme court sides with Caetano saying that although it wasn’t in existence during the founding and the enactment of the second amendment, the right to use this stun gun as a method of self-defense is still protected under the second
Chicago case was the defining moment for supporters of the second amendment. The case started when Otis McDonald tried to buy a handgun to protect his family from local hoodlums. The City of Chicago had a handgun ban, preventing McDonald from purchasing the gun. McDonald challenged the ban, and took the feud to court. The City of Chicago ruled that they should be able to instate their own laws about gun ownership (“Otis McDonald...Second Amendment”), but McDonald took the case to the Supreme Court .
In my first case, I will analyze the Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller. In this case, in a 5-4 decision, the Court overrules its decision in United States v. Miller, in which, it stated that the Second Amendment only protects the right to keep and bear arms in relation with service in a well-regulated, government sponsored militia. In the majority opinion of Heller, Scalia divides the Second Amendment into two parts: the prefatory clause and the operative clause. The prefatory clause is the first half of the Second Amendment, it reads: “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,” while the operative clause is the second half of the Amendment: “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall
Over the course of American history, various court cases have significantly impacted the countries future. Two court cases that greatly shaped the future of America are the Scopes trial, by determining boundaries between evolution and the bible, and the Plessy versus Ferguson trial, by affecting racial discrimination towards blacks.
Since the begining of America, the Founding Fathers wrote the strong-standing Bill of Rights with amendments to protect the country that had just recently won their freedom, but one amendment has been the top theme of controversies for centuries. Gun laws offend the Bill of Rights in so many ways and they prove ineffective. Gun Laws are relevant due to thousands of deaths and self-protection. The argument goes on but without guns there is militia, one of the main intents of the Second Amendment. These simple rules can reduce deaths, proven by millions of influential people. Gun laws have their positives and negatives, but the debate isn 't resolved yet.
In 1909, the NAACP started its legacy of fighting legal battles to win social justice for African-Americans. The most significant of these battles were won under the leadership of Charles Hamilton Houston and his student, Thurgood Marshall. Nathan Margold found that, the facilities provided for blacks were always separate, but never equal to the facilities provided for whites, violating Plessy’s “separate but equal” principle. Thurgood Marshall continued the Association’s legal campaign, and during the mid-1940s, in Smith v. Allwright, Marshall successfully challenged the “white primaries,” which prevented African Americans from casting a vote in several southern states. In 1946 Thurgood Marshall also won a case in which the Supreme Court ended
The Second Amendment says, “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a Free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Gun rights has become the subject of intense political, social, and cultural battles for much of the last century. The pro-gun right side has asserted that the right to arms was absolute, and that any gun control laws infringed that right (Kopel, 2013). This right has been supported by the Supreme Court who has reinforced what has become the American consensus that the Second Amendment allows the right to keep and bear arms, especially for self-defense, and that it is a fundamental individual