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Recommended: Gun control measures
District of Columbia vs. Heller was a court case in which Dick Heller challenged the Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975. This Act was a law that prohibited the possession of handguns by any person who had not been previously licensed to carry one. If licensed to carry before the passing of the law, it was mandatory for those individuals to reregister the handgun, and to keep the firearms “unloaded and disassembled, or “bound by a trigger lock or similar device” unless the firearm was in a business or “being used for a lawful recreational activity.” After the statute was created, people were no longer allowed to register to carry any handguns, only shotguns or rifles attained through a licensed merchant. Even those who had their handguns registered before the law, therefore grandfathered in, were required to keep their firearm incapable of discharging, which would render them unhelpful in sudden life-threatening situations. This caused some chaos, and even a significant court case.
Dick Heller is a police officer who was allowed to carry a firearm while on duty. The reason he brought the case forward was due to the fact that he was denied when applying for registration to carry a handgun inside of his home for personal protection of himself and his family. Under the Firearms Control Regulations Act, citizens were not allowed to be licensed a handgun for personal protection within the District of Columbia. After being denied, Heller file a suit in the Federal District Court of the District of Columbia in order to either revise the laws in place in the District of Columbia due to the Second Amendment granting citizens the right to bear arms, or to eliminate the statute in its entirety. After many cases within the local courts ...
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...eme Court was strictly using what was written in the Constitution to defend their ruling. As described above, using this procedure constitutes judicial restraint within the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court has an enormous amount of discretion when deciding cases that effect the entire population within the United States. It is amazing to think that the opinion of a miniscule sample of just nine justices have such great power, which can be used to make key decisions in how America will be governed. Due to their responsibility of judicial review, laws and statutes put in to place can eventually be challenged in the Supreme Court and changed through judicial activism, or strengthened through judicial restraint. Citizens of America trust that these justices will choose which technique to use in a way that reflects what is considered as good for the entirety of America.
In the controversial court case, McCulloch v. Maryland, Chief Justice John Marshall’s verdict gave Congress the implied powers to carry out any laws they deemed to be “necessary and proper” to the state of the Union. In this 1819 court case, the state of Maryland tried to sue James McCulloch, a cashier at the Second Bank of the United States, for opening a branch in Baltimore. McCulloch refused to pay the tax and therefore the issue was brought before the courts; the decision would therefore change the way Americans viewed the Constitution to this day.
When the rights of the American citizen are on the line than the judiciary should utilize the powers invested in them to protect and enforce what is constitutional. However, in times of controversy, where personal preference or aspects of religious or personal nature are at hand, the judiciary should exercise their power with finesse, thereby acting out judicial restraint. An example of such is in the case of Engel v. Vitale where Mr. Justice Black delivered the opinion of the court directing the School District’s principal to read a prayer at the commencement of each school day. In cases that do not regard whether an action is constitutional or not, the judiciary should suppress their power of judicial review.
Korematsu v. United States (1944) actually began December 7, 1941 with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The attack on Pearl Harbor then began the conquering of Wake, Guam, Philippines, Malaya, Singapore, Dutch East Indies, New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Burma. With the attack on Pearl Harbor, racism, which was hardly unfamiliar, became an even greater problem. The Japanese Government's attacks on Americans including; torturing, raping, and murdering was an excuse for Americans aversion towards the Japanese. Public officials began to lock up the Japanese people simply for their own good, for protection against the hate crimes.
...ntegrity of the American government and follows the Constitution which is what our nation is structured after. Had these Justices not made such remarkable decisions many others would suffer. It would be difficult to fathom a nation where women could not vote, races lived separately and immigrants were unable to create a life of their own. The fact that the Supreme Court made radical movements to spread equality throughout the nation and was able to excel and continue to institute this idea is what separates America from the rest of the world.
“We live in the greatest nation on Planet Earth, but it is becoming more and more apparent that in order to keep it, the people must do something to stop the federal courts that are daily setting themselves above the law and dictating to us how we should live, and what we should think” (Sutherland M. et al p. 9, 2007) Those are the beginning words of the preface to the book Judicial Tyranny: The New Kings of America. The work expounds upon the idea that there is something fundamentally wrong with our country’s judicial system, especially when it comes to the Supreme Court. The main idea behind the book is that an unelected judicial branch has taken upon itself new powers and is legislating from the court bench without regard to the general consent of the people and our Constitutional process. The entire book comes from very Christian world vi...
In the early years of the Constitution the legislative and executive branches held the power to establish and enforce any laws. This was prevalent up until the Marbury v. Madison case in 1803. John Marshall, as the Chief Justice during the case, declared that the Judicial Act of 1801, appointing numerous federalist “midnight judges” to judicial positions in the government, was unconstitutional. By overruling a law passed by Congress itself, Marshall was able to prove the Supreme Court as a center of power that can even have precedence over Congress, the President, and all other courts if it is necessary to determine constitutionality. Also known as Judicial Review, this power was the base on which John Marshall build up the Supreme Court to be respected and equal to the other branches. The power of the Supreme Court and federal law was continued into the next major case, Fletcher v. Peck. When Georgia wanted the land they gave to the Yazoo Company back after elections, their government brought it to court. John Marshall and the Supreme Court declared that land grant contracts cannot be repealed and made contracts “sacred”. Marshall utilized the power of the Supreme Court to overrule the decision made by Georgia. The establishment of Judicial Review is prevalent in the outcome of Fletcher v. Peck in that the federal judiciary
In William Hudson’s book, American Democracy in Peril, he writes about different “challenges” that play a vital role in shaping the future of the United States. One is the problem of the “imperial judiciary”. Hudson defines its as that the justice system in the United States has become so powerful that it is answering and deciding upon important policy questions, questions that probably should be answered by our democratic legislatures. Instead of having debates in which everyone’s voices are heard and are considered in final decision-making process, a democratic-like process; we have a single judge or a small group of judges making decisions that effect millions of citizens, an “undemocratic” process. Hudson personally believes the current state of judicialized politics is harming policy decisions in Americans. According to him, the judicial branch is the “least democratic branch”, and ...
By: Kristen Rand Summary / Analysis : This article discusses the amendment to gun control, specifically the right to bear arms. But it isn’t discussing it on the U.S. mainland, but instead on the District of Columbia. The controversy is whether or not the District is bound to the same laws and amendments that the rest of the United States is. The current law in Columbia is that there is a universal ban on guns. So should the U.S. Supreme Court vote to allow citizens to bear arms, or should the 30-year-old ban be erased?
Heller,” the United States Supreme Court revealed what the Second Amendment is really about. In June 2008, a S.W.A.T. officer with the Washington, D.C., Police Department sued in the District of Columbia District Court for the right to carry a handgun while off duty. The Supreme Court ruled that he had the right to carry a weapon for a lawful purpose, and the District Court's opinion was reversed from the decision in 1939 when the Second Amendment was last interpreted. It also ruled that two District of Columbia laws, one that banned handguns and the other one that required firearms kept in the home to be disassembled or trigger-locked, violated the Second Amendment
Such precedent setting decisions are usually derived from the social, economic, political, and legal philosophy of the majority of the Justices who make up the Court, and also represent a segment of the American population at a given time in history. Seldom has a Supreme Court decision sliced so deeply into the basic fabric that composes the tapestry and direction of American law or instigated such profound changes in cherished rights, values, and personal prerogatives of individuals: the right to privacy, the structure of the family, the status of medical technology and its impact upon law and life, and the authority of state governments to protect the lives of their citizens.(3-4)
With many recent incidents that involve guns between 2012 and 2013, gun control laws have become a hot topic in America. On one hand, after the horrific incident like the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting at Newtown in 2012, most people wanting to limit guns from getting into the wrong by setting up a rigorous system that control who can and cannot obtain a gun. On the other hand, we have the people who believe that with such rigorous system in place is violated the individual rights that granted and protected by the United States Constitution. They believe that the rigorous system will prevent people from defending themselves and could be a violation of their privacy. Regardless of which side is right, if we want to understand more about our current conflict, we have to look back on how this hold debate started. The District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court case in 2008 that found the Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975 unconstitutional, which influence the individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense by questioning the Second Amendment and laws that restrict a person from acquire guns.
Prior to this ruling, it was common practice to force and coerce confessions from criminal suspects who did not know they had the right not to incriminate themselves. Judicial restraint is loosely defined as decisions or judgements that take a narrow interpretation of the constitution. It reflects a respect for the law as it has been enacted by the Legislature. Rather than creating new laws from broad interpretations. For me, it is somewhat harder to distinguish what judicial restraint is.
The case of Columbia v. Heller, is a good example of how an interpretation of the 2nd Amendment can be misconstrued. Heller came...
views as to whether or not Judicial review, and the Supreme Court as a whole,
The significant impact Robert Dahl’s article, “Decision-Making in a Democracy: the Supreme Court as a National Policy-Maker” created for our thought on the Supreme Court it that it thoroughly paved the way towards exemplifying the relationship between public opinion and the United States Supreme Court. Dahl significantly was able to provide linkages between the Supreme Court and the environment that surrounds it in order for others to better understand the fundamental aspects that link the two together and explore possible reasoning and potential outcomes of the Court.