[Whilom]

You're misinformed, ill-informed, and probably chloroformed.

[tpaine]

"The Supreme Court can decide that citizens have the right to keep and bear arms only as part of the militia; in other words, the judges decide what the Constitution means."


Misinformed? -- The above is MORE than 'misinformed', it is sheer autocratic idiocy from an erstwhile supporter of a free republic. - It violates every precept of our inalienable individual rights.

[tpaine]

Marshall, from Marbury v Madison seems to think that a constitutional principle, if it is deemed 'fundamental' enough, is 'designed to be permanent'.

- Individual rights to life, liberty and property seem pretty fundamental to me.
If they were violated by amendment, would not the constitutional contract be void?

Marshall:

"The question, whether an act, repugnant to the constitution, can become the law of the land, is a question deeply interesting to the United States; but happily, not of an intricacy proportioned to its interest. It seems only necessary to recognize certain principles, supposed to have been long and well established, to decide it."
"That the people have an original right to establish, for their future govern-ment, such principles as, in their opinion, shall most conduce to their own happiness, is the basis on which the whole American fabric has been erected. The exercise of this original right is a very great exertion; nor can it, nor ought it, to be frequently repeated. The principles, therefore, so established, are deemed fundamental. And as the authority from which they proceed is supreme, and can seldom act, they are designed to be permanent."