I watch Mark Smith’s Four Boxes Diner YouTube channel because he explains legal concepts clearly. He often addresses issues that I’m concerned with understanding.
There are more than a few things I’ve picked up from him, as far as language goes.
One of those is “inferior court”. Article III of the US Constitution establishes the Supreme Court and such inferior courts as … When I am speaking of an inferior court, it means that it has a superior court which tells it how to act.
Mark Smith makes this point over and over. I got it from him.
The concept of inferior court makes it very clear that all inferior courts should be taking their marching orders from the Supreme Court.
When a court does not follow the clear instructions of the Supreme court, I label it a rogue court, or a rogue judge.
One of the things I’ve learned, while reading 100s, if not 1000s, of court filings, is that rogue judges spend more time on what wasn’t said in Supreme Court opinions than they do on what was said.
These rogue courts will often latch onto a tiny part of an opinion and fixate on that part. Nothing else matters outside that small safety net of infringement.
They will quote Heller that “no right is absolute” as if that somehow makes this infringement that exception. Every modern regulation requires that nuanced approach.
My son is on the spectrum. We used to tell him, “Stop hunting zebras”. Yes, those hoof prints might be zebra prints, but we aren’t in that part of Africa, we aren’t near a zoo that has misplaced a zebra, it is much more likely that it is a horse.
The Supreme Court says, “When you are looking at a horse, this is how you ‘do it’. There is a small chance it is a zebra, in which case you “do it” this alternative way.” They then spend 99% of their instructions on dealing with horses.
Then an inferior court starts looking for zebras, doesn’t find a zebra, but it could be a zebra, the Supreme Court did mention a zebra in one sentence of one paragraph of a 70-page opinion, so we’ll assume this is a zebra, just like the Supreme Court said.
The other common argument used is the “they didn’t say anything about it, so it must be constitutional”. Heller went through every word of the Second Amendment and explained what each phrase meant. They didn’t bother with “infringe” because that’s straightforward.
All that is needed is to look at Samuel Johnson’s dictionary and you would know.
Too many inferior court judges instead throw up their hands and say, “We don’t know what it means, so it must mean the modern regulation is constitutional.”
The part about all of this that drives me bonkers is that Heller and Bruen clearly state that if the modern regulations touches fingers with the Second Amendment, the regulation is presumptively unconstitutional. To quote Mr. Smith, “When in doubt, throw it out.”
Finally, the actual lying to The People’s face. To look at a modern regulation, to absolutely know it is a gun control law, and then claim it doesn’t touch fingers with the Second Amendment.
Just make the assumption and let the Constitution work as intended. Instead, they are so afraid of following the plain text of the Constitution, as they know it will be the downfall of much of their statist regulatory dream.
I think it was maybe in the second grade when I first heard, and adopted until most definitely corrected, “They didn’t say I couldn’t do it, so I did it.” One would think that logic would be superseded by common sense in adulthood, but evidence proves otherwise..
ALL judges know what the Second Amendment says and they FULLY understand it’s intent and meaning. They simply DO NOT CARE. Virtually all judges are committed leftists. Their cree DEMANDS that the they disarm us…by any means possible. Thus they “dance on the head of a pin” using BS and sleight of hand to justify their assaults on the Second Amendment. Why do they do this? BECAUSE THEY CAN. They suffer zero consequences either personally or professionally for doing so. Till that reality changes the judiciary will continue and expand it’s assaults on freedom and our Rights. The same can be said for anti 2A politicians. They know what the Second Amendment says and means…they simply don’t care about it…or any of our Rights. And again, they act this way because they can. They rarely of ever suffer any consequences from their abuses pf power. Yet another reality that must change if we expect to actually be free. And since it’s no longer possible to vote these criminals out of power the only solutions remaining to us are extra judicial and of the vigilante type.
Nailed it on the head Dan. What liberal leftist judges do is not due to ignorance nor ineptness. Leftist assert that there is only one group of people, Elitists—-Highly educated progressive utopian ideologs. Everyone else are not people, but instead liabilities which must be subverted and controlled by any means necessary to achieve the intended result, which is silence, compliance, while in various levels of servitude, i.e. slavery.
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“Because They Can”. Allow me to expound on that.
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The leftist judge embraces the basic premise that the US Constitution and Bill of Rights can be “The Tool” by which the ‘non-elitest’ are……maintained for their elitist benefit. The ‘Rights and Freedoms’ the founders created will be the very mechanism by which to collapse the founder’s vision for a government controlled by The People, from the ground up.
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Through hermeneutical progressive manipulations the leftist judge uses one constitutional freedom and right, after another, to subvert The People and empower the government. And immigration was the key upon which modern progressivism gained strength, touting a utopian vision of the expansion of American Virtues. Liberty and Freedom for All. People from various cultures and societies and governments arrived here mainly under indentured servitude or some variation of it. Everyone’s idea of what a constitutional word meant, in various settings across the heartland had to be considered. The erosion of language ensued.
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Dan you’re correct, the judges are the trojan horse built by the elite who know, because it commonsense, that personal freedom is in and of itself, nothing but a utopian dream because nowhere in human history has any nation ever been built from the citizens’ front yards and upward to form a government entity. The trojan horse reverses this and turns upside down the original meaning of the founding legal documents, it’s a gift of peace because the alternative is far worse, i.e. global war with ground zero in Kansas.
The other problem is that judges, and other politicians for that matter, overwhelmingly despise the Constitution. Very few, on very few occasions, actually obey the plain English words of that document.
For example, when you hear “balancing”, what you’re hearing is a judge pretending that it’s ok to ignore the plain words of the Constitution because he thinks the State has produced a semi-plausible excuse for doing so. (“Strict scrutiny” is the same thing, just a different phrase describing the same insubordination.)
“In nothing did the founders of this country so demonstrate their essential naivete than in attempting to constrain government from all its favorite abuses, and entrusting the enforcement of those protections to judges; that is to say, men who had been lawyers; that is to say, men professionally trained in finding plausible excuses for dishonest and dishonorable acts.” — H. L. Mencken
“Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should therefore be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense; and their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure” — Thomas Jefferson
The other problem is that judges, and other politicians for that matter, overwhelmingly despise the Constitution.
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Bingo. And it makes perfect sense: When the set of rules limits what you can do, why wouldn’t you despise it, and — whenever you can get away with it — ignore and/or violate it?