After reading Norm Silber’s piece, A Small Victory for Liberty, I want to make sure I’ve got this straight. Previously, the judiciary ruled that its ability to control its internal procedures allowed it to violate the fundamental constitutional right to keep and bear arms by forbidding people from bringing guns into courtrooms.
The Speaker argued that what one branch (the judiciary) could do, another (the legislature) could do.
Now the judiciary says that the legislature can’t use the ‘control over internal procedures’ argument to justify violating that same fundamental constitutional right.
Wouldn’t it follow, then, that the judiciary can no longer keep people from bringing guns into courtrooms?
If it does, that would be an actual victory for liberty.
But if it doesn’t, then this isn’t a victory for liberty at all, but just another incremental accumulation of arbitrary power by the judiciary — which, like Humpty Dumpty, claims that it can make words mean whatever it wants, without any requirement for consistency.
