In an age of activists judges, it doesn’t matter what the Constitution says. It matters what the Supreme Court says. The Court allowed slavery for 100 years, Jim Crow for another. The Court can not only ban private ownership of guns, they can ban speech supporting gun rights. There is no higher authority.
” The Court can not only ban private ownership of guns, they can ban speech supporting gun rights. There is no higher authority.”
To quote President Andrew Jackson: “The Supreme Court has made their ruling, now let them enforce it.”
To say that the enforcement of such a ruling would be “interesting” is quite probably the understatement of the century - as the Founders clearly intended, and would be glad to know if they were alive.
Justice Scalia mentioned that in his dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges.
Yes, the Supreme Court has assumed far greater authority than was assumed by Hamilton in Federalist 78, and about as much as the Antifederalists feared in Essays 15-19. You mentioned that the Court permitted Jim Crow for a century, which is true. I would point out that the Supreme Court was the entity that ended Jim Crow in Brown v. Board of Education, but they had to create the doctrine of Judicial Supremacy in Cooper v. Aaron to effectuate it. And while the Court may have had to make its ruling in Cooper v. Aaron to end Jim Crow, in conjunction with Roe v. Wade, it created the monster we have to deal with today.
In Cooper v. Aaron the Court said, in effect: "We are the supreme and final authority on the Constitution. Period." Then, when the Court made its ruling in Roe v. Wade, it did several things that have very bad consequences. First, in making this decision, it essentially made law. This is different from the normal political process where candidates politically campaign, get elected to carry out a policy, go to DC and pass a law, that the executive then carries out. If the law needs to be changed or repealed, it is done through the process described. The PUBLIC policy debate continues through the political and legislative process.
However, when the Supreme Court makes law, it doesn't just make law, it makes CONSTITUTIONAL law. It's chiseled in granite into the Constitution; every decision such as Roe v. Wade, in effect, is a judicial amendment to the Constitution. It doesn't change what it says, but it certainly changes what it means. When it does that, because of judicial supremacy, the public policy debate is OVER. In fact, a huge legal/political/philosophical flaw from Roe v. Wade is that the public policy debate was never allowed to happen.
So by having the Court make law, and by extension, making policy, it transformed itself from a legal body into a political organ of government. Since the Senate's assassination of Robert Bork, every presidential nomination has become politically contentious. It's not about law anymore, which is what Hamilton thought it would be in Federalist 78, its just an extension of politics by judicial means. The presidential nominations since Roe v. Wade were about overturning or upholding that decision. The political term "litmus test" was coined as a result. Now, the 2nd Amendment is on the table, too.
I don't want to gloss over the evils of the murders of millions of innocents that came from Roe v. Wade. My point is that there were other evils that came out of that case as well, and now has undermined the integrity of our legal and Constitutional systems.