Reading through the unanimous, 69-page decision of the Iowa Supreme Court striking down the state’s 10-year-old ban on same-sex marriage, reads more as an advocacy for same-sex marriage than constitutional fact finding. While I do not have much time to Blog on this case now, I will quickly point out deliberate and obvious factual errors the court used to invalidate Iowa’s same-sex ban.

The court declares the “primary constitutional principle at the heart of this case is the doctrine of equal protection.” The court assumes this doctrine of equal protection is found under Section VI of the Iowa Constitution that reads: “All laws of a general nature shall have a uniform operation; the general assembly shall not grant to any citizen, or class of citizens, privileges or immunities, which, upon the same terms shall not equally belong to all citizens.”

The constitutional provision that all laws shall be general and of uniform operation does not require them to operate uniformly on all the people of the State, nor, when relating to cities, on all the cities of the State, but if a law is made to operate upon a particular condition as to persons or property, and is operative whenever and wherever the same conditions exist, affixing the same consequences, it is a general law in its operation even though it only operates in one of the conditions or classes specified. State ex rel. West v. Des Moines, 31 L.R.A. 186, 96 Iowa, 521. 65 N.W. 818.

The second section of the clause that reads, “the general assembly shall not grant to any citizen, or class of citizens, privileges or immunities, which, upon the same terms shall not equally belong to all citizens,” has a specific and well understood meaning and was borrowed from the Indiana State Constitution of 1851, which had adopted the language with the following understanding during the State constitutional convention:

The section which declares that the Legislature shall not bestow any title of nobility, nor confer hereditary distinctions, nor grant extraordinary privileges, was read a second time.

Mr. READ of Monroe moved to amend by striking out the words, “grant extraordinary privileges,” and inserting the following: “Nor grant to any citizen or class of citizens privileges and immunities which, upon the same terms, shall not belong equally to all citizens.”

Mr. READ said that his object in offering this amendment was to render the section more distinct and definite in its signification. It was not designed to Interfere with the rights of corporations, and had no reference whatever to a State Bank, nor would it affect any of the institutions of the State. He was convinced that such a principle as that embraced in the amendment should find a place in the Constitution. He had consulted a number of legal gentlemen on the subject, and they all agreed it was a sound principle. It was merely intended to prevent that which had been much complained of in this country, and which might be called class legislation.

Class legislation is one of those terms that today can generally mean whatever a person presents it to mean, but really never had anything to do with discrimination based on race, sex, age or religion. Essentially it meant giving a privilege to one or a few named individuals or companies while ignoring everyone else. It was namely in response to the outcry of granting the right of eminent domain to railroad companies. The granting of a exclusive liquor license only to a certain wealthy liquor magnet and no one else would also be considered class legislation because it excludes everyone else.

On the other hand, requiring $50,000 or more land ownership as a condition for granting a liquor license would not be class legislation because it is merely a condition and not a privilege being exclusively granted to one individual or company. Justice John Pettit, a delegate to the convention at the time, explained the proposed Indiana provision this way during the constitutional convention of 1851:

This section applies to the future action of the Legislature. It declares that the Legislature shall not hereafter place one class of citizens upon a pedestal of fame and wealth, and trample another in the dust of ignominy and poverty. That is what this section provides for. … Well, sir, the section before us provides that no rights shall be given to one class of the community that are not given, upon the same terms, the same conditions, and under the same circumstances, to all.

Same purpose was sought for the language during the Iowa constitutional convention of 1857. Future speaker of the Iowa House, John Edwards, who advocated for the insertion of the words from the Indiana Constitution, explained the meaning of the words this way during the Iowa convention:

[I]ts object is contained in a nut shell, and is merely this: It is to prevent the General Assembly from granting any privileges or immunities to any citizen or class of citizens that it would not be willing to grant to any other citizen or class of citizens upon the same terms. It is to prevent the Legislature from granting exclusive privileges to any class of citizens.

George Ells provided for the benefit of members of the Iowa Convention Webster’s difinition that “embraces all we claim for the word ‘privilege’”:

A particular and peculiar benefit or advantage enjoyed by a person, company or society, beyond the common advantages of other citizens. A privilege may be a particular right granted by law or held by custom, or it may be an exemption from some burden to which others are subject. The nobles of Great Britain have the privilege of being triable by their peers only. Members of Parliament and of our Legislatures have the privilege of exemption from arrests in certain cases. The powers of a banking company are privileges granted by the Legislature.

During the 1866 Nevada Constitutional Convention, identical language was proposed to be inserted into the Constitution that would have the following effect:

Mr. Nourse: I understand that the object of the section is to prevent such disgraceful proceedings as occurred in the last Legislature. … a prohibition of special legislation—that you shall not grant to John Smith and his associates, a charter to build a road here or there, but you may pass a general act, providing that persons who wish, may incorporate so and so, and thereupon, if you choose, may have the right of way across private property—may have the power to have it condemned to their own use by such course as may be prescribed by the Legislature; leaving the whole thing open to public competition, and not tied up to any right given specially, and irrevocably, to any favored corporation, like, for example, the Camden and Amboy Railroad in New Jersey.

In Strange v. Board, etc., 173 Ind. 640, the Indiana Supreme Court confirmed the above:

As we have shown, there may be classifications, and rights may be conferred upon some classes and not upon others. A familiar example is the conferring upon corporations and upon individuals, the right of eminent domain, and all that is required is that the privileges or rights conferred or liabilities imposed shall be the same to all who fall within the same class or are similarly situated, and that is an express recognition of the clause of our own Constitution (Section 23 which is identical to Iowa’s Section 6).

The Indiana Supreme Court in Morrison v. Sadler, 821 N.E.2d 15 (Ind. App. 2005) has already tackled the same issues (DOMA) as presented before the Iowa Supreme Court under identical constitutional language and held limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples does not violate the State Equal Privileges and Immunities Clause. The Indiana appellate court also pointed out that there “is binding United States Supreme Court precedent indicating that state bans on same-sex marriage do not violate the United States Constitution.”

Thomas Cooley says: “Many states prohibit the intermarriage of white persons and negroes; and since the fourteenth amendment this regulation has been contested as the offspring of race prejudice, as establishing an unreasonable discrimination, and as depriving one class of the equal protection of the laws. Strictly, however, the regulation discriminates no more against one race than against another; it merely forbids marriage between the two. Nor can it be said to so narrow the privilege of marriage as practically to impede and prevent it. Race prejudice, no doubt, has had something to do with establishing this law, but it cannot be said to be so entirely without reason in its support as to be purely arbitrary. The general current of judicial decision is, that it deprives a citizen of nothing that he can claim as a legal right, privilege or exemption.”

The court demonstrated their incompetence in interpreting constitutional law when they wrote: “Thus, the right of a gay or lesbian person under the marriage statute to enter into a civil marriage only with a person of the opposite sex is no right at all.’” Would disallowing marriage to “one man and one woman,” who are closely related also render marriage “no right at all”? Put a different way, would marriage be “no right at all” if closely related (brother and sister) gay or lesbian couples were disallowed by law?

If the answer is no (and this is the well-established answer), then neither can disallowing marriage between the same sexes would have no material effect on any right by law to marriage between opposite-sex partners. The court is simply grasping at straws here.

CONCLUSION

Why did I devote attention to the debates of both the Indiana and Iowa constitutional conventions? Because the Iowa Supreme Court uses textual and historical arguments when interpreting the Iowa Constitution. The court says the purpose of any constitutional inquiry is “to ascertain the intent of the framers.” Redmond v. Ray, 268 N.W.2d 849, 853 (Iowa 1978).

The court relies on plain text that “give[s] the words used by the framers their natural and commonly understood meaning.” Howard v. Schildberg Constr. Co., 528 N.W.2d 550, 553 (Iowa 1995). The court will “also examine the constitutional history and consider ‘the object to be attained or the evil to be remedied as disclosed by circumstances at the time of adoption.’” Id.

When the constitutionality of a statute is merely doubtful, the Iowa Supreme Court will not interfere, as it must be shown that legislative enactments clearly, palpably and without doubt infringe upon constitutional rights before an attack will be upheld. State v. Jaeger, 249 NW2d 688 (Iowa, 1977).

Therefore, Iowa laws of marriage are neither class legislation nor does the law grant exclusive privileges or immunities to any one class at the exclusion of all other classes of citizens who meet the conditions of law for entering into marriage. Likewise, denial of SSM also operates equally on all couples who meet the condition of being same-sex and places no new burdens or special obligations upon them.

And finally: “If all laws were held unconstitutional because they did not embrace all persons few would stand the test.” City of Clinton v. Wilson, 257 Ill. 580; Hawthorn v. People, 109 id. 302.

UPDATE: I found some time today to update this on my way out the door, and also removed a few lines that could be misunderstood.

Related: Historical Meaning Behind ‘Equal Protection of the Laws’

Text Comparisons:

Initial Proposed Second Amendment: The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well-armed and well-regulated militia being the best security of a free country.

Massachusetts Constitution Art. XVII: The people have a right to keep and to bear arms for the common defence. And as, in time of peace, armies are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be maintained without the consent of the legislature; and the military power shall always be held in an exact subordination to the civil authority and be governed by it.

U.S. Senate Second Amendment Proposal: A well regulated militia, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms for the common defense, shall not be infringed.

Final Second Amendment Edit: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The principal variation between the Second Amendment and the Massachusetts provision is the Federal Constitution speaks of a well-regulated militia as a “security of a Free State” while the Massachusetts provision refers to a “common defense” through an armed populace. It would not be a stretch to say “common defense” and “security of a free State” structurally speak of the same thing. James Madison in 1813 spoke of well-armed militias in terms of both security and defense as “the great bulwark of defense and security for free states.” Hamilton had said the militia was “the most natural defense of a free country,” and “the guardian of the national security.”

Thomas Jefferson remarked in his 1808 message, “For a people who are free, and mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.”

On December 13, 1859, the governor of Massachusetts requested the opinion of the State Supreme Court on questions relating to the militia, and in response to the governor, the justices said the United States Second Amendment and Article XVII of the Massachusetts Constitution were both “similar provisions.” Would had been difficult to refer to these two constitutional provisions as similar if the Second Amendment was viewed as an individual right to privately own and use weapons for personal defense while the State Constitution was viewed strictly as a right of the people to maintain armed militias for their common defense in contrast to entrusting their security to a standing army in times of peace.

Prominent Massachusetts politican, Francis Bird, said of the Massachusetts “right to bear arms for the common defence” on October 29, 1853:

Not for self-defence, Mr. Attorney-General and Messrs. Justices, for that is a natural right, and needs no constitutional guarantee; but for the “common defence.” The Attorney-General graciously admits “the right of individuals peaceably to organize themselves into armed bodies, at their own expense, for military instruction or defence against lawless violence.”

Speaking of the Federal Second Amendment, he says:

“To keep and bear arms,” not for self-defence, not for “military instruction,” not for “special service in keeping guard;” but as members of a “well regulated ” [State] militia. This was the very purpose of adopting this second amendment to the federal constitution—to put this matter of the independence of the State militia beyond the domain of controversy; and this is the right guaranteed by this amendment, the right of the people to bear arms, not for “making defence under special exigencies,” which could in no possible manner come under the control of Congress, and needed no guarantee, but to bear them as a part of the military power of the State.

As I have said here, the Massachusetts provision to keep and bear arms can only be understood through events of the revolutionary war. Massachusetts Governor Gage was ordered by the King to confiscate public arms from the Charlestown arsenal, invoking public outrage, and the King made sure no arms shipments could be delivered to the colonies. This forced the Massachusetts Committee of Safety to secretly collect muskets and gunpowder and keep at a secret location where they could later be used to arm local militia members.

Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts confirmed this during his remarks on the Second Amendment on August 17, 1789:

What, sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty. Now, it must be evident, that under this provision, together with their other powers, Congress could take such measures with respect to a militia, as to make a standing army necessary. Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins. This was actually done by Great Britain at the commencement of the late Revolution. They used every means in their power to prevent the establishment of an effective militia to the Eastward. The Assembly of Massachusetts, seeing the rapid progress that administration were making to divest them of their inherent privileges, endeavored to counteract them by the organization of the militia; but they were always defeated by the influence of the Crown.

Both National and Massachusetts constitutions recognize this plight of the people of the colonies during the war in arming themselves to combat British forces by forbidding government to do what the King had done in disarming their ability to organize and bear arms against a common enemy. Otherwise, a national standing army would exist locally to replace local militia forces under the pretense of providing for security and defense of the State. As Pomeroy explained, the object of the Second Amendment is “to secure a well-armed militia” so that no national standing army would be required during time of peace.

The reason the Second Amendment or Article XVII of the Massachusetts Constitution does not imply an individual right to possess arms is because armed individuals acting under their own right would be useless in providing security or any kind of meaningful defense without proper organization and training. Judge Story drove this point home in his commentaries when he remarked, “[h]ow it is practicable to keep the people duly armed without some organization it is difficult to see.”

C.J. Marshal said, “In almost every convention by which the Constitution was adopted, amendments to guard against the abuse of power were recommended. These amendments demanded security against the apprehended encroachments of the General Government — not against those of the local governments.”

The Second Amendment neither is a right nor does it recognize a right, but merely puts Congress on notice that no power exists that allows them to encroach and disarm the State militias or replace them with a standing army. There never was any need for a constitutional amendment for personal self-defense using a gun no more than there was ever a need for a constitutional amendment to eat food, or seek warmth.

What might the phrase “natural-born citizen” of the United States imply under the U.S. Constitution? The phrase has always been obscure due to the lack of any single authoritative source to confer in order to understand the condition of citizenship the phrase recognizes. Learning what the phrase might have meant following the Declaration of Independence, and the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, requires detective work. As with all detective work, eliminating the usual suspects from the beginning goes a long way in quickly solving a case.

What Natural-Born Citizen Could Not Mean

Could a natural-born citizen simply mean citizenship due to place of birth?

Unlikely in the strict sense because we know one can be native born and yet not a native born citizen of this country. There were even disputes whether anyone born within the District of Columbia or in the territories were born citizens of the United States (they were generally referred to as “inhabitants” instead.) National Government could make no “territorial allegiance” demands within the several States because as Madison explained it, the “powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.”

Jurisdiction over citizenship via birth within the several States was part of the “ordinary course of affairs” of the States that only local laws could affect. Early acts of Naturalization recognized the individual State Legislatures as the only authority who could make anyone a citizen of a State. Framer James Wilson said, “a citizen of the United States is he, who is a citizen of at least some one state in the Union.” These citizens of each State were united together through Article IV, Sec. II of the U.S. Constitution, and thus, no act of Congress was required to make citizens of the individual States citizens of the United States.

Prior to the Revolutionary War place of birth within the dominions of the crown was the principle criterion for establishing perpetual allegiance and citizenship. After independence each State was free to establish their own maxims on the subject. James Madison’s own State of Virginia adopted a birthright law authored by Thomas Jefferson in 1779 that recognized parentage (citizenship of father) in determining citizenship of the child:

[A]ll infants, wheresoever born, whose father, if living, or otherwise, whose mother was a citizen at the time of their birth, or who migrate hither, their father, if living, or otherwise, their mother becoming a citizen, or who migrate hither without father or mother, shall be deemed citizens of this Commonwealth until they relinquish that character, in manner as hereinafter expressed; and all others not being citizens of any, of the United States of America, shall be deemed aliens.

Some States made citizenship conditional on either parent in terms of their citizenship, such as Kentucky: “[E]very child, wherever born, whose father or mother was or shall be a citizen of Kentucky at the birth of such child, shall be deemed citizens of that State.” One common law found in a number of States that defined those born as citizens read, “All persons born in this state, and resident within it, except the children of transient aliens, and of alien public ministers and consuls, etc.”

The State of Connecticut adopted a law that read, “All persons born in this State … except aliens, paupers, and fugitives from justice or service, are and shall be deemed to be citizens of this State, owing it allegiance and entitled to receive its protection, until they shall have voluntarily withdrawn from its limits and become incorporated into some other State or sovereignty as members thereof.” States that were slow in enacting laws over acquiring citizenship through birth forced courts to adjudicate citizenship disputes under common law rules.

It is very doubtful the framers adopted the doctrine found under the old English doctrine of “natural-born subject.” The British doctrine allowed for double allegiances, something the founders considered improper and dangerous. The American naturalization process required all males to twice renounce all allegiances with other governments and pledge their allegiance to this one before finally becoming a citizen.

Framer Rufus King said allegiance to the United States depended on whether a person is a “member of the body politic.” King says no nation should adopt or naturalize a person of another society without the consent of that person. The reason? Because “he ought not silently to be embarrassed with a double allegiance.” House Report No. 784, dated June 22, 1874, stated, “The United States have not recognized a ‘double allegiance.’ By our law a citizen is bound to be ‘true and faithful’ alone to our government.”

Under the old English common law doctrine of natural-born subject, birth itself was an act of naturalization that required no prior consent or demanded allegiance to the nation in advance. Furthermore, birth was viewed as enjoining a “perpetual allegiance” upon all that could never be severed or altered by any change of time or act of anyone. England’s “perpetual allegiance” due from birth was extremely unpopular in this country; often referred to as absurd barbarism, or simply perpetual nonsense. America went to war with England over the doctrine behind “natural-born subject” in June of 1812.

Because Britain considered all who were born within the dominions of the crown to be its natural-born subjects even after becoming naturalized citizens of the United States, led to British vessels blockading American ports. Under the British blockade, every American ship entering or leaving was boarded by soldiers in search of British born subjects. At least 6,000 American citizens who were found to be British natural-born subjects were pressed into military service on behalf of the British Empire, and thus, the reason we went to war.

Fourteenth Amendment

Whatever might had been the correct understanding of “natural-born citizen” prior to 1866, the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment certainly changes the view because for the first time we have a written national rule declaring who are citizens through birth or naturalization. Who may be born citizens is conditional upon being born “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States - a condition not required under the common law. The legislative definition of “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” was defined as “Not owing allegiance to anybody else.”

This national rule prevents us from interpreting natural-born citizen under common law rules because it eliminates the possibility of a child being born with more than one allegiance.

The primary author of the citizenship clause, Sen. Jacob M. Howard, said the “word jurisdiction, as here employed, ought to be construed so as to imply a full and complete jurisdiction on the part of the United States, coextensive in all respects with the constitutional power of the United States, whether exercised by Congress, by the executive, or by the judicial department; that is to say, the same jurisdiction in extent and quality as applies to every citizen of the United States now.”

United States Attorney General, George Williams, whom was a U.S. Senator aligned with Radical Republicans during the drafting of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1866, ruled in 1873 the word “jurisdiction” under the Fourteenth Amendment “must be understood to mean absolute and complete jurisdiction, such as the United States had over its citizens before the adoption of this amendment.” He added, “Political and military rights and duties do not pertain to anyone else.”

Essentially then, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” means the same jurisdiction the United States exercises over its own citizens, i.e., only citizens of the United States come within its operation since citizens of the United States do not owe allegiance to some other nation at the same time they do the United States. This makes a great deal of sense for the time because there was a great deal of controversy over conflicts arising from double allegiances.

Just as a person cannot be naturalized and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States while owing allegiance to another nation - neither can anyone born. Why would “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” be any different with persons born since this jurisdiction equally applies to persons born or naturalized? If allegiance simply meant location on American soil, then what was the purpose of having aliens renounce their allegiance to other countries and pledge their allegiance to this one for purposes of becoming naturalized? Perhaps because locality itself was never enough to confer allegiance and citizenship?

It is worth noting that wives and children were never naturalized separately but became naturalized through the father/husband. Because “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” requires not owing allegiance to any other nation, and because the nation does not recognize double allegiances that can be created at common law, narrows the possibilities to what “natural-born citizen” can mean.

Natural-Born Citizen Defined

One universal point most all early publicists agreed on was natural-born citizen must mean one who is a citizen by no act of law. If a person owes their citizenship to some act of law (naturalization for example), they cannot be considered a natural-born citizen. This leads us to defining natural-born citizen under the laws of nature - laws the founders recognized and embraced.

Under the laws of nature, every child born requires no act of law to establish the fact the child inherits through nature his/her father’s citizenship as well as his name (or even his property) through birth. This law of nature is also recognized by law of nations. Sen. Howard said the citizenship clause under the Fourteenth Amendment was by virtue of “natural law and national law.”

The advantages of Natural Law is competing allegiances between nations are avoided, or at least with those nations whose custom is to not make citizens of other countries citizens without their consent. Any alternations or conflicts due to a child’s natural citizenship are strictly a creature of local municipal law. In the year 1866, the United States for the first time adopted a local municipal law under Sec. 1992 of U.S. Revised Statutes that read: “All persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are declared to be citizens of the United States.”

Rep. John A. Bingham commenting on Section 1992 said it means “every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen.” (Cong. Globe, 39th, 1st Sess., 1291 (1866))

Bingham had asserted the same thing in 1862 as well:

Does the gentleman mean that any person, born within the limits of the Republic, and who has offended against no law, can rightfully be exiled from any State or from any rood of the Republic? Does the gentleman undertake to say that here, in the face of the provision in the Constitution, that persons born within the limits of the Republic, of parents who are not the subjects of any other sovereignty, are native-born citizens, whether they be black or white? There is not a textbook referred to in any court which does not recognise the principle that I assert. (Cong. Globe, 37th, 2nd Sess., 407 (1862))

Bingham subscribed to the same view as most everyone in Congress at the time that in order to be born a citizen of the United States one must be born within the allegiance of the Nation. Bingham had explained years earlier that to be born within the allegiance of the United States the parents, or more precisely, the father, must not owe allegiance to some other foreign sovereignty (remember the U.S. abandoned England’s “natural allegiance” doctrine). This of course, explains why emphasis of not owing allegiance to anyone else was the affect of being subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.

It should be noted this allegiance due under England’s common law and American law are of two different species. Under the common law one owed a personal allegiance to the King as an individual upon birth. Under the American system there was no individual ruler to owe a personal allegiance to.

The constitutional requirement for the President of the United States to be a natural-born citizen had one purpose according to St. George Tucker:

That provision in the constitution which requires that the president shall be a native-born citizen (unless he were a citizen of the United States when the constitution was adopted,) is a happy means of security against foreign influence, which, wherever it is capable of being exerted, is to he dreaded more than the plague. The admission of foreigners into our councils, consequently, cannot be too much guarded against; their total exclusion from a station to which foreign nations have been accustomed to, attach ideas of sovereign power, sacredness of character, and hereditary right, is a measure of the most consummate policy and wisdom. …The title of king, prince, emperor, or czar, without the smallest addition to his powers, would have rendered him a member of the fraternity of crowned heads: their common cause has more than once threatened the desolation of Europe. To have added a member to this sacred family in America, would have invited and perpetuated among us all the evils of Pandora’s Box.

Charles Pinckney in 1800 said the presidential eligibility clause was designed “to insure … attachment to the country.” President Washington warned a “passionate attachment of one nation for another, produces a variety of evils,” and goes on to say:

Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest, in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter, without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation, of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained; and by exciting jealousy, ill- will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld.

And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens, (who devote themselves to the favorite nation,) facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearance of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.

What better way to insure attachment to the country then to require the President to have inherited his American citizenship through his American father and not through a foreign father. Any child can be born anywhere in the country and removed by their father to be raised in his native country. The risks would be for the child to return in later life to reside in this country bringing with him foreign influences and intrigues, and thus, making such a citizen indistinguishable from a naturalized citizen.

Therefore, we can say with confidence that a natural-born citizen of the United States means those persons born whose father the United States already has an established jurisdiction over, i.e., born to father’s who are themselves citizens of the United States. A person who had been born under a double allegiance cannot be said to be a natural-born citizen of the United States because such status is not recognized (only in fiction of law). A child born to an American mother and alien father might be said to be a citizen of the United States by some affirmative act of law (if there was one) but never entitled to be a natural-born citizen because through laws of nature the child inherits the condition of their father.

UPDATE:

I came across this interesting speech by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Langdon Cheves, in February of 1814:

The children have a natural attachment to the society in which they are born: being obliged to acknowledge the protection it has granted to their fathers, they are obliged to it in a great measure for their birth and education. … We have just observed that they have a right to enter into the society of which their fathers were members. But every man born free, the son of a citizen, arrived at years of discretion, may examine whether it be convenient for him to join in the society for which he was destined by his birth.

Cheves is obviously drawing on the works of Emmerich Vattel, Law of Nations. Not something you would expect from the Speaker of the House of a Nation that supposedly adopted England’s common law.

UPDATE II:

Rep. A. Smyth (VA), House of Representatives, December 1820:

When we apply the term “citizens” to the inhabitants of States, it means those who are members of the political community. The civil law determined the condition of the son by that of the father. A man whose father was not a citizen was allowed to be a perpetual inhabitant, but not a citizen, unless citizenship was conferred on him.

Related:

What “Subject to the Jurisdiction Thereof” Really Means

Why does the State of Georgia need approval by the Justice Department? The answer, according to the Department of Justice, is because Georgia is one of several states with a history of discriminatory voting practices. Well guess what; all States North or South can be said to have had a history of “discriminatory voting practices.” Why are Georgia and several other southern States being singled out - and more importantly - under what authority delegated to Congress to do so?

In a June 24, 1870 speech, Fourteenth Amendment framer, John Bingham, said, “I deny that you can rightfully impose upon Georgia any conditions whatever that you cannot impose upon Ohio and New York. The States are equal.” Later he added, “When Georgia’s representation is officially restored by the very letter of your reconstruction acts, all colorable excuses for imposing any civil or political conditions upon her shall no longer exist.”

Speaking of another former rebel State, Virginia, Bingham scolds fellow Radical Republicans over an attempt to impose unequal conditions upon that State on January 14, 1870:

You, the party of liberty and justice, attempt to fasten fetters upon one State which you dare not impose and have no authority to impose upon other States; you attempt to provide that a State admitted to representation in the Congress of the United States shall be governed not by those elected by its citizens under their own laws, but by such officials as may be appointed by act of Congress! It is your right and your duty to govern Virginia until she is reorganized under a republican form of government satisfactory to the Congress of the United States, with just such officials as you deem right and proper; but your right to do so passes away the moment you restore the State to its representation in the Congress of the United States and approve its reorganization under your acts of reconstruction.

Senator Jacob M. Howard (member of the Committee of Reconstruction) like most members of the Senate had no illusions over whether the exclusive authority to regulate “the qualifications of electors, both in the choice of State officers and in the election of Representatives to Congress and electors of President and Vice President” belonged with the States. The “manner” spoken of under the U.S. Constitution means determining the outcome of an election by either voice or ballot; having absolutely nothing to do with qualifications of voters to vote. Mr. Howard bluntly illustrates where the exclusive right to determine voter qualifications resides:

As far as a State Legislature or a State convention should trench upon the rule expressed in the Fifteenth Amendment relating to race, color, and previous condition of servitude, and to those subjects only, its legislation would be void, and Congress could interfere under the second clause of the amendment to correct that legislation. To that, I agree; but suppose the State affixes as a qualification of a voter the necessity of being the owner of, say, two hundred dollars’ worth of property. Suppose the State should alter its Constitution so as to require from the colored man the possession in his own right of two hundred dollars’ worth of property, which is the old rule in the State of New York, does the Senator from Nevada hold it to be in the power of Congress to alter in any way by congressional enactment that qualification of the State?

No, sir. Why not? Because the qualification does not relate to color, race, or slavery, but only to property, the subjects being as distinct from each other as the sun is from the moon. No, sir; Congress in such a case as that would have no authority whatever to interfere to correct the evil… .

The States have exercised the power of controlling, regulating, and restricting popular suffrage from the commencement of the State governments down to present time. It is one of the rights reserved to the States, and is to be exercised in its fullness and in its plenitude without any control on the part of Congress or any question being put by Congress to them; and that will be the case until the Fifteenth Amendment shall have been adopted, that amendment relating only to color, race, and slavery, not to property, not to educational qualifications, or anything except these three specific subjects.

Speaking of the Fifteenth Amendment before the House in May of 1870, Rep. Bingham said, “the general power of the States to “regulate,” in the language of the Constitution, the election of Representatives to Congress is conceded by all who have ever read that instrument.” In further driving this message home, he quotes a year later Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 59:

Suppose an article had been introduced into the Constitution, empowering the United States to regulate the elections for the particular States, would any man have hesitated to condemn it, both as an unwarrantable transposition of power, and as a premeditated engine for the destruction of the State governments?

If the people of the States had ever concluded their exclusive power over voter regulations (State or Federal) was best entrusted with Congress then there would have been lengthy public debates and a constitutional amendment to document this decision of surrender. Because there is no such record of such debates or any documented amendment to this affect, leaves neither the courts nor Congress any pretense to pretend that they have - unless of course this nation has long ceased to be a democracy.

Why for instance, should it be said, that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretence for claiming that power. They might urge with a semblance of reason, that the constitution ought not to be charged with the absurdity of providing against the abuse of an authority, which was not given, and that the provision against restraining the liberty of the press afforded a clear implication, that a power to prescribe proper regulations concerning it, was intended to be vested in the national government.

As one might suppose from the above, Congress would be just as powerless in abridging the freedom of speech or the press without the First Amendment; and the First Amendment served only as a declaration that no such power had been vested with Congress over speech or the press.

Now, under State jurisdiction it is an entirely different matter because unlike national government, States reserved for themselves broad general powers over all domestic concerns within their limits with very few exceptions. It would be alien to our form of government to say it is unconstitutional for a State to prohibit the burning of a flag or for school districts to prohibit what it deems offensive or contrary to norms of decency student clothing or behavior. Absolute regulatory powers over the press and speech was never surrendered by the States, and the U.S. Supreme Court has never found documented anywhere under the U.S. Constitution the surrender of this right.

The court instead has took upon themselves to “assume” that “the ‘liberty’ protected by the Fourteenth Amendment includes the liberty of speech and of the press.” The fatal problem with this assumption is John Bingham, the Fourteenth Amendments primary author, declared at least five times this “liberty” was an import of Chapter 39 of the Magna Carta. If the word “liberty” was to encompass broad personal rights of all descriptions under the Fourteenth Amendment, then the last thing in the world anyone would do is link the word to the 39th Chapter.

Thomas Jefferson remarked that “[t]here are certain principles in which all agree, and which all cherish as vitally essential to the protection of the life, liberty, property, and safety of the citizen … Freedom of person (liberty), securing everyone from imprisonment or other bodily restraint but by the laws of the land. This is effected by the well-know law of habeas corpus.” In other words, this “liberty” protects against arbitrary imprisonment or detention, and not the freedom to speak or write whatever.

Freedom of speech and of the press served one purpose in America: To remove the fear of the common law doctrine of seditious libel so citizens could freely speak or publish their grievances or concerns regarding public affairs or conduct of public officials. In England, it could be dangerous to criticize government, or peaceably assemble or petition government for redress of grievances because anything one might speak or write (or draw) could end up being used against them under the charge of seditious libel where truth would be of no defense.

In 1808 for example, the British newspaper publisher, John Drakard, was indicted over an article questioning military flogging, and the jury had been instructed that the military establishment had been injured and “it was not to be permitted to any man to make the people dissatisfied with the Government under which he lives.” Henry VIII once made it a high treason crime to suggest his marriage to Anne of Cleves was valid even though it was the truth.

How can we know for sure the freedom of speech or of the press means freedom from seditious libel? All early American laws over speech and the press dealt solely with breaches of the peace or public morality (blasphemy, obscenity, profanity, etc.), but never restraints against public discussion of public measures, grievances or criticism of public officials where truth was of no defense. In other words, the common law doctrine of seditious libel was absent from American laws.

Benjamin Franklin, writing in The Pennsylvania Gazette, April 8, 1736, wrote of the American doctrine behind freedom of speech and of the press:

Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins. Republics and limited monarchies derive their strength and vigor from a popular examination into the action of the magistrates.

James Madison in 1799 wrote, “In every State, probably, in the Union, the press has exerted a freedom in canvassing the merits and measures of public men of every description which has not been confined to the strict limits of the common law.”

The Democratic-Republican caucus included the following in their 1800 platform: “An inviolable preservation of the Federal constitution, according to the true sense in which it was adopted by the states. … Freedom of speech and the press; and opposition, therefore, to all violations of the Constitution, to silence, by force, and not by reason, the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their public agents.”

Generally speaking, all State constitutions or laws stipulated along the lines that the “press shall be free to every citizen who undertakes to examine the official conduct of men acting in a public capacity,” and “in prosecutions for publications investigating the proceedings of officers, or where the matter published is proper for public information, the truth thereof may he given in evidence.” Allowing juries to determine the facts and the law in such trials acted as a powerful deterrent against frivolous charges by government officials towards speech or publication over their public conduct.

Other common expressions of the freedom found were, “No law shall ever be passed to restrain or abridge the liberty of speech or of the press; but every person may freely speak, write, and publish his sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of such right.”

If freedom of speech or of the press alone was understood to mean the liberty to freely write or speak whatever one wishes then there can be no purpose for the additional declaration that says persons may also “freely speak, write, and publish his sentiments on all subjects.” It is too clear freedom of speech and of the press had specific meaning and that meaning could only have been freedom from seditious libel. Thomas Cooley hit the ball out of park when he wrote of the freedom found under American constitutions:

The mere exemption from previous restraints (Blackstonian theory) cannot be all that is secured by the constitutional provisions, inasmuch as of words to be uttered orally there can be no previous censorship, and the liberty of the press might be rendered a mockery and a delusion, and the phrase itself a byword, if, while every man was at liberty to publish what he pleased, the public authorities might nevertheless punish him for harmless publications, … Their purpose [of the free-speech clauses] has evidently been to protect parties in the free publication of matters of public concern, to secure their right to a free discussion of public events and public measures, and to enable every citizen at any time to bring the government and any person in authority to the bar of public opinion by any just criticism upon their conduct in the exercise of the authority which the people have conferred upon them. … The evils to be prevented were not the censorship of the press merely, but any action of the government by means of which it might prevent such free and general discussion of public matters as seems absolutely essential to prepare the people for an intelligent exercise of their rights as citizens.

It should be apparent now how States could prohibit “books or other publications of a sectarian infidel or immoral character” from being “distributed in any common school,” or prohibit public discussion of acts of sexual gratification, or even solicitation for donations on public property without permit. The great advantage of adhering to original meaning is that it does not act to force courts to read inventive “exceptions” into constitutional words to either sanction a law or rule the law unconstitutional.

It should be pointed out that activism, or points of view, is not protected against restrictions. No one has a right to be heard where they wish that can result in disturbing the peace, traffic disruption, or simply, become in anyway a public nuisance.

The liberty of speech and of the press in this country can be said to have been born in the year 1735 in the colony of New York. The story begins on November 5, 1733 when John Peter Zenger published his first issue of the Weekly Journal that included this criticism:

[T]he sheriff was deaf to all that could be alleged on that [the Quaker] side; and notwithstanding that he was told by both the late Chief Justice and James Alexander, one of His Majesty’s Council and counsellor-at-law, and by one William Smith, counsellor-at-law, that such a procedure [disqualifying the Quakers for affirming rather than swearing] was contrary to law and a violent attempt upon the liberties of the people, he still persisted in refusing the said Quakers to vote….

Governor Crosby wanted Zenger charged with seditious libel but found it difficult to obtain a grand jury indictment against him. To get around this obstacle Crosby instructed his attorney general to file a formal accusation of a criminal offense before two justices. This in return led to a bench warrant and arrest of Zenger.

The trial opened on August 4, 1735 on the main floor of New York’s City Hall with Attorney General Bradley’s reading of the information filed against Zenger. Bradley told jurors that Zenger, “being a seditious person and a frequent printer and publisher of false news and seditious libels” had “wickedly and maliciously” devised to “traduce, scandalize, and vilify” Governor Cosby and his ministers. Bradley said that “Libeling has always been discouraged as a thing that tends to create differences among men, ill blood among the people, and oftentimes great bloodshed between the party libeling and the party libeled.” (Linder, The Trial of John Peter Zenger (2001))

Additionally, Bradley explained truth was of no defense for seditious libel under state law while Zenger’s attorney argued the law should not be interpreted to prohibit “the just complaints of a number of men who suffer under a bad administration.” The judge instructed the jury the “law is clear that you cannot justify a libel,” and the “jury may find that Zenger printed and published those papers, and leave to the Court to judge whether they are libelous.”

With law and precedent squarely against him, the jury nonetheless found Zenger not guilty and the beginning of public opposition to trials of seditious libel had been established. Gouverneur Morris (served on the committee of five responsible for the final drafting of the Constitution) would write a half-century later: “The trial of Zenger in 1735 was the germ of American freedom, the morning star of that liberty which subsequently revolutionized America.” It is this liberty we find under the First Amendment and State constitutions today.

Mr. Bingham was a self-proclaimed “state rights” man; Marshall on the other hand was a Nationalist (Federalist) to the left of George Washington.

Mr. Bingham viewed the Alien and Sedition Act as unconstitutional while Marshall considered the Act constitutional under the latitudinarian position of “powers necessary for the attainment of all objects, which are general in their nature, which interest all America … would be naturally vested in the Government of the whole.”

Marshall denounced Madison’s Virginia resolutions as dangerous; Bingham embraced his resolutions. Bingham adored Thomas Jefferson; Marshall disliked him.

Bingham believed National government could not exist without States; Marshall believed the States could not exist without a powerful national government.

Bingham believed human beings were not articles of trade under the commerce clause (especially with slavery abolished) and head taxes was a reserved right belonging to each state; Marshall considered people to be part of commercial trade, and thus, State imposed taxes on persons arriving from another country to be illegal under the commerce clause.

Bingham believed the Constitution was more than words alone, it has a spirit born out of past events - and the Constitution can only be interpreted as a whole and not from isolated words. Marshall believed there is a spirit, but only words alone defined that spirit.

—Antoin Scalia, A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law (1997)

The recent Supreme Court ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller caught me by surprise by how far the majority, lead by Justice Antoin Scalia, were willing to go to make a case for a broad individual right under the Second Amendment. While plaintiff prevailed under a starkly divided court, the majority failed to provide any clear and convincing evidence to support their claim for a protected individual right. Instead, Scalia presents strained, forced constructions that often were self-contradicting, and seemingly, served only to favor the majorities’ own prejudicial ideal of what keeping and bearing arms should mean.

For example, Scalia writes like the “First and Fourth Amendments, codified a pre-existing right,” and the “very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it ‘shall not be infringed.’” Later, however, he declares “there seems to us no doubt” the Second Amendment “conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms.” Which is it, recognition of a pre-existing right or does it directly confer the right?

Clearly the majority subscribed to the view that yes, the right to keep and bear arms are words associated with military service, but these words can also be read to mean more than citizen soldiers keeping of arms to bear in the service of a militia.

One must wonder why, if the prefatory clause acts as a “clarifying function,” the court is adjudicating a District of Columbia gun regulation that does not directly cause any lawfully organized State militia to be disarmed. The prefatory clause remember, speaks only of a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State and not of any private right for individuals to privately keep or use firearms for any purpose.

According to the majority, the answer is because “Nowhere else in the Constitution does a ‘right’ attributed to ‘the people’ refer to anything other than an individual right.” Thus, the majority thinks reading the Second Amendment as “protecting only the right to ‘keep and bear Arms’ in an organized militia therefore fits poorly with the operative clause’s description of the holder of that right as ‘the people.’” Therefore, the majority begins with the “strong presumption that the Second Amendment right is exercised individually and belongs to all Americans.”

Would this mean no one could have ever been compelled to bear arms in the service of the militia because the right can only be exercised individually? Obviously, that prefatory clause is not so clarifying after all.

Perhaps this above so-called explanation is why Scalia felt it was necessary to speak of the Second Amendment as indeed directly conferring a right rather than simply recognizing a reserved right of the people under their State sovereignty to form armed militias. However, if the Second Amendment confers an individual right having nothing to do with service in the militia, one naturally might wonder why a republican form of government was chosen, complete with separate constitutions with their own bill of rights?

Furthermore, if the prefatory clause were to be viewed as dead letters, and limiting national powers ignored (as customary these days), the operative clause would have to be read as an absolute right because the right is unconditional with no exceptions. A law against carrying concealed weapons would be unconstitutional because the right to keep and bear arms alone says nothing about government authority to encroach on the right of people to keep or carry any type of arms.

And the majority did indeed treat the prefatory clause as dead letters when it wrote the “banning from the home ‘the most preferred firearm in the nation to ‘keep’ and use for protection of one’s home and family, would fail constitutional muster.” To keep guns at home by private choice and for private use has nothing to do with service in the militia under State militia laws. Perhaps if State law made it compulsory for citizens to keep certain arms and ammo at home for use when called to militia service as some once did, and local laws banned keeping those weapons, such a law could well be struck down under State armsbearing amendments.

Therefore, the amendment obviously does not itself confer anything to anybody except declaring Congress possesses no power to infringe a free people’s right to form and maintain armed militias for common security under lawful authority. Otherwise, there could be no regulation by law for the keeping or carrying of guns under most armsbearing language found in State constitutions.

The State of New York under clause three of its Bill of Rights, adopted nearly identical language as the Federal Second Amendment. However, under clause four, citizens could not on their own “find soldiers or men of arms, either horsemen or footmen, without the grant and assent of the people of this state, by their representatives in senate and assembly, except in the cases specially provided for by the constitution of the United States.” This clearly recognizes the keeping and bearing of arms to those arms used for the collective arming of bodies of men.

To show how poorly the operative clause fits with the prefatory clause, Scalia tries to convince us the right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment was understood to have broad meaning beyond arms of the militia: “In numerous instances, ‘bear arms’ was unambiguously used to refer to the carrying of weapons outside of an organized militia.”

The problem here, though, is the prefatory clause does not address other “numerous instances.” Citing the majorities own cited source, William Rawle, the right to bear arms is “corollary” to the proposition of a well-regulated militia as necessary to the security of a Free State. The majority accepts the meaning of a “well-regulated” militia to mean “nothing more than the imposition of proper discipline and training,” yet on the other hand, they suggest to bear arms can only be “exercised individually.”

The majority goes on to insult readers reading comprehension by quoting such legal scholar’s as J. Pomeroy, Story, Cooley, and others, in supporting their view that bearing arms was not understood to be connected to service in the militia. Scalia quotes Thomas Cooley as saying the “alternative to a standing army is ‘a well-regulated militia’; but this cannot exist unless the people are trained to bearing arms.”

Question: Was keeping a handgun for personal self-defense ever considered part of a training regime in bearing arms under a well-regulated militia?

The expressions Scalia quotes from legal scholars attest only to the long held principle of keeping and bearing arms found under the Second Amendment as those arms normally used by a well-regulated militia, and for which are necessary and suitable to a free people to aid them in resisting oppression, usurpation, repel invasion - not those arms used for purposes of committing bank robbery, shooting rabbits or home intruders.

Scalia quotes from J. Pomeroy, but omits his conclusion of the object behind the Second Amendment: “The object of this clause is to secure a well-armed militia.” 

The majority thinks their “interpretation is confirmed by analogous armsbearing rights in state constitutions that preceded and immediately followed adoption of the Second Amendment.” They count two (Pennsylvania and Vermont), and possibly two more, State Constitutions they feel might be analogues to the Federal Second Amendment. They allege Pennsylvania and Vermont “clearly adopted individual rights unconnected to militia service.”

The Pennsylvania Constitution read “The right of the citizens to bear arms in the defence of themselves shall not be questioned,” while the Vermont Constitution read: “That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the State—and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military should be kept under strict subordination to and governed by the civil power.”

The majority commits a significant error in ignoring other clauses in these constitutions that use the phrase “bear arms.” Under Article 9 of the Vermont Constitution no man “who is conscientiously scrupulous of bearing arms, be justly compelled thereto.” Article VI, Sec. II of the Pennsylvania Constitution read: “The freemen of this commonwealth shall be armed and disciplined for its defence. Those who conscientiously scruple to bear arms shall not be compelled to do so; but shall pay an equivalent for personal service.”

The fact these Constitutions attach a strong military association with bearing arms for defense leaves little doubt what the employed words mean. Scalia could respond by suggesting “bearing arms” meant several different things depending on the context the phrase is used - but this path would run into a thick wall.

Scalia suggests Justice James Wilson interpreted the Pennsylvania Constitution’s armsbearing right as recognition of the natural right of defense “of one’s person or house—what he called the law of ‘self preservation.’” But Wilson makes clear he is not advancing an individual right to keep and bear arms for personal defense under the Pennsylvania Constitution but only describing its historical meaning that is different from what the majority attempts to place on words alone.

Speaking of the constitutional right of the citizens to bear arms in the defense of themselves shall not be questioned, Wilson says, “This is one of our many renewals of the Saxon regulations,” and that “one may assemble people together in order to protect and defend his house.” No question Wilson was speaking from personal experience after having in the year 1779 to collectively defend his home along with 34 others from 200 angry protesters who opened fire, killing two who were inside.

Wilson and his fellow defenders were not only able to hold off the mob long enough for reinforcements to arrive through collective defense, but also through ammunition that had been gathered from a local public armory. Thus, Wilson is talking about the renewal of Assize of Arms as established under King Alfred, where his subjects were compelled to become united under sword for the common defense of their family, neighbors, parish and realm. Without such a united defense, no single man with a musket could have been able to defend either themselves or home against a mob of 200 people.

Judge Story remarked in his commentaries that it is impossible to keep the people duly armed without a disciplined and organized militia - and this is exactly the principle armsbearing provisions found in constitutions recognize.

During the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention of 1837, delegate John Fuller expressed this spirit of a common defense under an organized militia when he said every man “should be considered as a citizen-soldier, because it is consistent with the very spirit of our Government, that every man should feel such a deep personal interest in it, as that he would be willing to shoulder his musket, at any time, and not leave it to his neighbor to defend his possessions, or the country which has given him birth.”

In his 1829 annual message to the Pennsylvania Assembly, Governor John Andrew Shulze said, “The right to bear arms is another important right guaranteed to all our citizens by the [Pennsylvania] constitution.” This right says he, imposes on the “legislature the duty of so organizing and disciplining the whole body of the citizens, that they shall be able, not only to bear arms, but to use them with confidence and skill, ‘in defense of themselves and the States, ’ if such a necessity shall arise.” In other words, for the common defense, meaning collectively defending themselves in an organized and trained manner.

Though unlike other similar armsbearing rights found in other State constitutions that used the phrase “common defense” and “bear arms,” the words “bear arms” alone meant the same principle of a common defense because the phrase was understood only to mean bearing arms in the service of the militia for purposes of common defense. Again, militias served as a collective organization of disciplined citizens in defending themselves collectively against other hostile armed bodies of people. Armed individuals alone would be of no use against any organized invasion or security against mass uprising.

There is strong doubt against Justice Scalia’s assertion the “right of the citizens to bear arms” found in these noted constitutions are analogues to the Second Amendment. For example, during the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention of 1837 there was an attempt to remove the conscientious-objector clause found under Article VI, Sec. II. Delegates who debated this issue found this clause of the State Constitution to be directly analogues to the Federal Second Amendment. For example, delegate John McCahen said:

In the amendments to the Constitution, article second, would be found the following words: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. It is there reserved to the people of every State the right to bear arms and organize a militia, and we do not entrench either upon the Constitution of the United States, or the laws of Congress, when we provide that the freemen of the State shall be enrolled and organized as militia.”

Scalia writes the phrase “keep arms” was not “prevalent in the written documents of the founding period that we have found.” Article XVII of the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 read: “The people have a right to keep and to bear arms for the common defence.” This may not be any different under the Second Amendment’s well regulated militia “being necessary to the security of a free State.” In other words, a well regulated militia is necessary to establish a common defense in order to bring about security for any State.

The meaning behind “to keep” is easy to understand through events experienced during the revolutionary war. Military supplies had been forbidden to be exported to any of the colonies by orders of the King, and Governor Gage of Mass. following orders of the King, raided the arsenal at Charlestown, which invoked outrage among the citizens. Because the country was deficient in munitions of war, the Massachusetts Committee of Safety set about secretly collecting muskets and gunpowder to keep at a secrete location where they could later be used to arm the local militia.

It should also be noted that under the old Articles of Confederation States were required to keep arms and ammunition for their well-regulated and disciplined militias in “public stores.”

Speaking of comparisons between the Second Amendment and the English Bill of Rights, Scalia claims “Protestants would never be disarmed” under the provision of the English Bill of Rights that read: “That the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defense, suitable to their conditions, and as allowed by law.” Scalia states this “right has long been understood to be the predecessor to our Second Amendment,” and that “it was clearly an individual right, having nothing whatever to do with service in a militia.”

It is difficult to read from this provision a right for Protestants to never be disarmed because this provision is dependent upon legislation allowing Protestants to have arms for their defense. A law that says Protestants may not have arms would not be infringing because the clause says only that Protestants may have arms for their defense as allowed by law, which provides no protection against banishment. Blackstone described this provision as merely a “public allowance under due restrictions.”

Also, there is no evidence to support the claim this English provision “was clearly an individual right, having nothing whatever to do with service in a militia.” Just the opposite is true as events surrounding the declaration had everything to do with service in the militia.

The Duke of Ormond had formed an all Irish Militia and provided Protestants who served in his militia with their arms. James II moved to selectively disarm Ormond’s militia under rumor of another rebellion similar to that of 1641. Meanwhile, Papists were allowed to remain armed and employed in militias contrary to the law of the time.

In 1678, there was an effort to provide defense of Protestants against Papists Militias bearing arms against them. A passage can be found in the Manuscripts of the Marquess of Ormonde, K.P. (December 7, 1678) that reads:

Yesterday and this day some progress was made in the House in those two points wherein all agree for the disbanding of the army, and for Bills that may secure the Protestant religion whatever happens. In this provision there arose a long debate to have either a distinct Bill or a clause in this to enable Protestants to withstand and defend themselves against any Papists whatsoever that should come with commission and bear arms in any military employment, and to dispense with those laws that at present made it rebellion so to do. (Note that in the year 1678 “bear arms” was considered military phraseology.)

As this passage makes clear, Protestants by law were unable to arm themselves under an organized and disciplined militia for defense against the Papists because such an act was considered a pretext to an organized rebellion. This passage leaves little doubt the words “Protestants may have arms for their defense suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law” speaks of arms for the common defense under the laws of an organized militia. This conclusion is further supported by the fact it was the disarming of the Irish Militia and the threat of armed Papist militias that lead to the passage of this provision in 1688, and the fact only Protestants were singled out.

When Lord Amherst ordered the disarming of all inhabitants of London in 1780, he made it clear those who were members of the militia were not to be disarmed along with persons authorized by the King to be armed. The reason is because that would had removed the right of the people to defend or restore order in their community (in this case defend against the riots of 1780).

Scalia appears to ridicule Justice Stevens for placing “great weight on James Madison’s inclusion of a conscientious-objector clause in his original draft of the Second Amendment.” Joseph Story wrote among the defects sought to be enumerated under the Second Amendment was for people to “have a right to bear arms,” and “persons conscientiously scrupulous should not be compelled to bear arms.”

Delegate Elias Boudinot asked during the Second Amendment debates what dependence can be placed on those who have scruples to bearing arms, and “what justice can there be in compelling them to bear arms, when, if they are honest men they would rather die than use them.” This isn’t the sort of statement anyone would bring up if to keep and bear arms simply means to pack a handgun for personal defense under the Second Amendment. Did Congress or any State ever advocate for the compelling of people to keep guns for their own personal defense at home?

Scalia goes on to quote an 1825 Massachusetts libel case (Commonwealth v. Blanding) as follows: “The liberty of the press was to be unrestrained, but he who used it was to be responsible in cases of its abuse; like the right to keep fire arms, which does not protect him who uses them for annoyance or destruction.”

To Scalia, this “analogy makes no sense if firearms could not be used for any individual purpose at all.” It does make a great deal of sense because people in fact had a right under Massachusetts law to make, sale, buy and use firearms provided they had been proved and stamped. Scalia’s mistake is he thinks these remarks might subjectively refer to the State constitutional provision on bearing arms. It does not.

The constitutional terms found under State Constitutions had no application toward the private keeping and use of firearms, and there were no laws preventing citizens from owning and using firearms for the same reason there was no known laws preventing people from owning or using a shovel or, even a tea kettle.

Where guns did come under scrutiny was when they were used to arm organized groups for either lawful or not so lawful purposes. It was not uncommon to find laws for the unlawful organizing of militias outside the laws of the State. It was also common to find laws on small arms that can be concealed or used in crime, and these kind of laws were outside the sphere of bearing arms in the service of a militia.

In Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Kreps, the court found pistols were not the kind of arms referred to under the State constitution:

The second amendment of the Constitution of the United States is a limitation of the power of Congress and of the national government only. The constitutionality of statutes relating to keeping and hearing arms must be determined by the constitutions of the respective states. …

A pocket revolver or pistol is not included in the term “arms,” as used in Article I, Section 21 of the Constitution of Pennsylvania, and therefore it was not the intention of the people to reserve the right to carry a pocket revolver or pistol without legislative interference or regulation. …

The Act of April 12, 1873, P. L. 735, which provides, “That any person who shall carry any pistol, dirk-knife, slung-shot or deadly weapon within the city limits of Harrisburg, except police officers, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor” does not violate Article I, Section 21, of the Constitution of Pennsylvania.

In Ex Parte Thomas, 21 Okla. 770 (1908), the court says:

The term “arms,” as used in the Oklahoma Constitution providing that the right of a citizen to carry and bear arms shall never be prohibited, when construed in connection with article 5, §40, declaring that the Legislature shall provide for organizing, disciplining, maintaining, and equipping the militia of the state, applies solely to such arms as are recognized in civilized warfare, to wit, guns, swords, bayonets, horsemen’s pistols, etc., and not those used by a ruffian, brawler, or assassin, such as pocket pistols, dirks, sword canes, bowie knives, etc.

All the laws I have encountered that deal with civilian gun regulations never used the term “bear arms” when addressing private ownership or lawful civilian use of weapons outside of military service. One example is Pennsylvania Game laws, which reads in part: “Provided, That nothing in this act shall be construed to prevent any citizen of the United States, residing within this Commonwealth, from having a gun in his home; or from using such gun in defense of either person or property; or from shooting at targets or from hunting for or shooting at, in any place in this Commonwealth, anything not protected by the laws of this Commonwealth…”

Another example is found under the Civil Articles of Limerick spell out the common civil use of a gun: “Every nobleman and gentleman comprised in the said second and third articles shall have liberty to ride with a sword and case of pistols, if they think fit; and keep a gun in their houses, for the defence of the same, or for fowling.”

You would think most all State statutes would follow the same universal terminology found in Federal and State constitutions if “bear arms” was widely understood to mean private use of weapons for personal self-defense or hunting. The fact this isn’t the case confirms “bear arms” had a specific military application attached.

Some recent additions to State constitutions addressing arms fall into the same trap the majority finds itself arguing, mainly construing the keeping and bearing of arms as meaning an individual right to privately own and use firearms. For example, the State of Nebraska adopted this language in 1988: “the right to keep and bear arms for security or defense of self, family, home, and others, and for lawful common defense, hunting, recreational use, and all other lawful purposes, and such rights shall not be denied or infringed by the state or any subdivision thereof.”

Apart from the misunderstanding the framers of this provision display over the historical meaning of bearing arms, it is a wonderful provision that should be adopted by every State of the Union with a slight change of removing “to keep and bear arms” and inserting more relevant terminology: “to keep firearms.”

The majority thinks Section 14 of the Freedmen’s Bureau Act is proof that during the reconstruction period the Second Amendment was understood to give freed blacks the right to keep and bear arms for personal self-defense:

Sec. 14. That in every State or district where the ordinary course of judicial proceedings has been interrupted by the rebellion, and until the same shall be fully restored, and in every State or district whose constitutional relations to the Government have been practically discontinued by the rebellion, and until such State shall have been restored in such relations and shall be duly represented in the Congress of the United States, the right to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property, and to have full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings concerning personal liberty, personal security, and the acquisition, enjoyment, and disposition of estate, real and personal, including the constitutional right to bear arms, shall be secured to and enjoyed by all the citizens of such State or district, without respect to race or color or previous condition of slavery.

One fatal flaw with interpreting Section 14 as recognizing a right of individual persons within States to keep and bear arms is that former rebel States were under the sole administration of Congress, divided into military districts, and were not considered organized States. Therefore, it is easy to understand the justification for including the “constitutional right to bear arms” since Congress had sole jurisdiction. Another flaw the majority committed was ignoring why the “constitutional right to bear arms” language was included in the first place.

It was General Fisk’s letter to the Commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau that was the basis for the Act to highlight the bearing of arms:

More than twenty-five thousand colored men of Kentucky have been soldiers in the Army of the Union …. Their arms are taken from them by the civil authorities and confiscated for the benefit of the Commonwealth. The Union soldier is fined for bearing arms. Thus the right of the people to keep and bear arms as provided in the Constitution is infringed, and the Government for whose protection and preservation these soldiers have fought is denounced as meddlesome and despotic when through its agents it undertakes to protect its citizens in a constitutional right.

The infringement turns out not to have anything to do with arms of private citizens at home, but with some 25,000 Union soldiers and their government issued muskets. On the other hand, the city of Opelousas, Louisiana was very careful, unlike Kentucky, not to disarm Freedmen who were in the service of the military:

SEC. 7. No freedman who is not in the military service shall bo allowed to carry fire-arms, or any kind of weapons, within the limits of the town of Opelousas without the special permission of his employer, in writing, and approved by the mayor or president of the board of police. Any one thus offending shall forfeit his weapons, and shall be imprisoned and made to work five days on the public streets, or pay a fine of five dollars in lieu of said work.

Scalia selectively quotes a report from the Commission of the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1866 to buttress the majority’s claim Kentucky’s prohibition of blacks from bearing arms were not in fact “being prohibited from carrying arms in an organized state militia.” In essence, the majority wants us to believe Kentucky’s prohibition against blacks bearing arms had nothing to do with service in the militia, but everything to do with disarming private citizens of their private guns that is said to infringe the Second Amendment. This is a deliberate mischaracterization of the truth.

The law in question specifically was directed at an estimated 25,000 returning black Union soldiers who were returning with their government issued arms - not the banning of private firearms belonging to the public. This attempt to disarm Union soldiers was easily seen as infringing the Second Amendment because they were members of the military - not private civilians. In addition, there were questions over whether Kentucky was acting improper because national law specifically required enlisted militia members to be “white.” In 1867, a bill was presented to remove the word “white” from the militia laws of the United States.

There is no evidence to support the majorities’ suggestion that both the Federal Government and States viewed the Second Amendment as an individual right to keep and use weapons outside of the militia as demonstrated below.

In May of 1680, Massachusetts Governor Bradstreet clearly stated what bear arms signified: “We account all generally from fifteen to fifty that are healthful and strong body’s, both Householders and Servants fit to bear Arms, except Negros and Slaves, whom we arme not.” In other words, it is the arming and training of the citizenry who possess this right to “bear arms” who are the sole military power of the colony.

Soon after Alaska had been acquired from Russia, Congress in 1868 empowered the President of the United States to not only ban the importation of firearms into Alaska, but also forbid the use of all firearms within all of Alaska. This law was not considered to be infringing the Second Amendment.

Gov. John Page of NH, speaking of the Second Amendment on June 3, 1841, clearly viewed the amendment as having everything to do with bearing arms in the service of a militia:

The General Government is authorized “to provide for organizing, arming and disciplining the militia;” — and it is very desirable that a new organization should be made. It is believed that we have one and a half million of soldiers enrolled in the militia throughout the Union; of this number we have about thirty thousand in this State, who are called out thrice in each year for inspection, drill and review. This mode of training so numerous a body of soldiers, is attended with a very great aggregate expense, of both time and money, unaccompanied in the estimation of very many of our citizens by an equivalent advantage. The “right of the people to keep and bear arms,” is a right dear to every freeman; arms should be in the hands of every citizen of the Republic, who is able to wield them, and it is the duty of Government to prescribe such rules of organization and discipline, as will give those arms the greatest possible efficiency.

Missouri Governor, Claiborne F. Jackson, declared in 1863 the citizens of Missouri had the right to “keep and bear arms in conformity to the State laws and to form a well regulated militia necessary to the security of a free State.”

St. George Tucker, Lectures on Constitutional Law (1843), said to bear arms is a duty of citizenship like a duty to pay taxes: “There was no one right which the citizen could exercise, and no one duty which he could be called on to perform, except as a citizen of some particular state. In that character alone could he own real estate, vote at elections, sue or be sued; and in that character alone could he be called on to bear arms, or to pay taxes.”

Victoria C. Woodhull wrote in 1890: “A citizen possesses all his rights of citizenship from birth, else he can never possess them legally as I have shown; but some of these rights, like the right to bear arms, he does not exercise till the military age.”

Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, November 1874 issue: “The reason of the feudal inability of women to hold property was that they could not bear arms to defend and maintain it. If, then, women should not have the suffrage because they can not bear arms to enforce the laws, ought they to have property which they can not bear arms to protect?”

The Act of March 2, 1867, was truly found to infringe the Second Amendment, however, radical Republicans danced around the subject by insisting the rebel States were not legal States (seems rebel States were only considered legal when it came to being forced to ratify the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.) This Act read in part:

SEC. 6. And be it further enacted, That all militia forces now organized or in service in either of the States of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, be forthwith disbanded, and that the further organization, arming, or calling into service of the said militia forces, or any part thereof, is hereby prohibited under any circumstances whatever, until the same shall be authorized by Congress.

Why would this Act be universally condemned as violating the Second Amendment, if we are to believe the court majority, the phrase “bear arms” was “unambiguously used to refer to the carrying of weapons outside of an organized militia”?

Patrick Henry proclaimed: ”The great object is that every man be armed. … But we have learned, by experience, that, necessary as it is to have arms, and though our Assembly has, by a succession of laws for many years, endeavored to have the militia completely armed, it is still far from being the case. When this power is given up to Congress without limitation or bounds, how will your militia be armed?”

George Mason said: ”Who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people. … the militia of the future day may not consist of all classes, high and low, and rich and poor; but they may be confined to the lower and middle classes of the people, granting exclusion to the higher classes of the people. … Under the present government, all ranks of people are subject to militia duty.”

Duke of York’s Laws (1676): “No man shall be Compeld to bear Armes or wage war by sea or Land, without the bounds and limits of this Government, But from Defensive wars noe man shall be exempted.”

Speaking of the Federal Second Amendment, prominent Massachusetts politician, Francis Bird, said of the Massachusetts “right to bear arms for the common defence” in October of 1853:

“To keep and bear arms,”—not for self-defence, not for “military instruction,” not for “special service in keeping guard;” but as members of a “well regulated ” [State] militia. This was the very purpose of adopting this second amendment to the federal constitution—to put this matter of the independence of the State militia beyond the domain of controversy; and this is the right guaranteed by this amendment,—the right of the people to bear arms, not for “making defence under special exigencies,” which could in no possible manner come under the control of Congress, and needed no guarantee, but to bear them as a part of the military power of the State.

On July 2, 1863, U.S. issued orders forbidding citizens of the city of Baltimore and County to keep arms except those with the constitutional right to keep arms being members of a militia. Under the Fifty-first Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, assisted by the provost marshal and the chief of police, soldiers in concert with the police went house to house searching for weapons. Muskets, carbines, rifles and revolvers were gathered in considerable quantities.

George S. Boutwell, a significant player in the framing and adoption of both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, did not dispute the conclusion the Second Amendment was not applicable towards the States in Presser v. Illinois:

The claim that the statute was in violation of the Second Amendment to the Constitution was disposed of by the declaration by the Court, that the Second Amendment was a guarantee that nothing should be done by the United States in restraint of the right of the people to keep and bear arms, but that the amendment could not be appealed to as limiting the power of the States.

The teaching in this case seems to justify the following conclusion namely: that as long as a State in the exercise of its power does not interfere with the ability of the United States government to command the military resources of the State, it may exercise jurisdiction over its citizens in the enjoyment of the right of freedom in the matter of keeping and bearing arms.

Significantly, Boutwell says Presser v. Illinois is the “only case of importance which has arisen under” the Second Amendment. This is significant because there was no right of the citizen to keep and bear arms under the Illinois constitution, only provisions for “all free male able-bodied persons (negroes, mulattoes and Indians excepted,) residents of the state, between the ages of 18 and 45 years, except such persons as now are or hereafter may be exempted by the laws of the United States or of this state, and shall be armed, equipped and trained as the general assembly may provide by law.”

Sen. Reverdy Johnson, considered one of the most ablest constitutional lawyers among congressional members involved in the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, said as a lawyer during South Carolina’s Ku Klux Klan trials (1871-1872):

What does the Constitution of the United States say about bearing arms? Nothing. What does the fourteenth amendment say upon the same subject? Nothing. The latter is as silent upon the topic as the former, and if the former cause for silence does not cover such a case as this, the latter, for the same reason, does not embrace it. … Has not the State in a case like that the right to take arms from the militia company? I think there can be no doubt of that. And if the right exists to take the arms out of their hands in such a case as that, then it is because the right to bear arms is not a right given by the Constitution of the United States; but exists under the local law of the State.

There perhaps can be no better in-depth analysis by any State Supreme Court on the meaning of the Second Amendment as found in the West Virginia case of State v. Workman:

The second amendment of our Federal Constitution should be construed with reference to the provisions of the common law upon this subject as they then existed, and in consonance with the reason and spirit of the amendment itself, as defined in what may be called its ‘preamble.’ As early as the second year of Edward III., a statute was passed prohibiting all persons, whatever their condition, “to go or ride armed by night or by day.” And so also at common law the “going around with unusual and dangerous weapons to the terror of the people” was a criminal offence.

The keeping and bearing of arms, therefore, which at the date of the amendment was intended to be protected as a popular right, was not such as the common law condemned, but was such a keeping and bearing as the public liberty and its preservation commended as lawful, and worthy of protection. So, also, in regard to the kind of arms referred to in the amendment, it must be held to refer to the weapons of warfare to be used by the militia, such as swords, guns, rifles, and muskets—arms to be used in defending the State and civil liberty—and not to pistols, etc.

Judge Advocate General of the Army (C. 1169, May 27, 1910) held the word “arms” under the Second Amendment “refers to the arms of the militia or soldier and does not authorize the carrying of weapons not adapted to use for military purposes.”

In Alabama the court found Section 4 of the Bill of Rights, “which provides that ‘the people have the right to ‘bear’ arms for their defense and security,’ is a limitation on legislative power to enact laws prohibiting the bearing of arms in the militia or any other military organization provided for by law. (Nichols v. State, 4 Ala. App. 115, 58 So. 681 (1912))

Refusal to take the “oath to bear arms” always resulted in denial of citizenship in naturalization court. This remained the rule until 1946 when a 5-3 Supreme Court decision struck down the administering of the Arms-Bearing Pledge. Did anyone ever believe new citizens were required to purchase firearms for self-defense at home?

Bishop, Statutory Crimes, §793: “In reason the keeping and bearing of arms has reference to war and possibly also to insurrections where the forms of war are so far as possible observed. The phrase itself, ‘to bear arms,’ indicates as much. The single individual or the unorganized crowd, in carrying weapons, is not spoken of or thought of as ‘bearing arms.’ The use of the phrase suggests ideas of a military nature.”

A.G. Riddle before the House Judiciary Committee, January 11, 1871, remarked:

Apply the gentleman’s idea to other provisions of the Constitution; for instance, to this: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Would he contend that therefore every new-born baby might at once grasp a musket? This might be constitutional, but it would put the infantry on a war-footing before the commissariat could be mobilized, I fear. (Laughter and applause.)

Delegate William Barnes remarked during the Constitutional Convention of the State of California in 1878:

[I] find in article two a declaration that a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of free States, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Now, we know that this question was considered a very important one in the early organization of the government, and it is no less important now than it was then, because the people had their choice then as they have now between a well organized State militia in the several States and a standing army maintained by the central government, which, under our system of republican institutions, has always been considered an enemy to liberty, and when the people had their choice between maintaining a large standing army, maintained by the General Government as the great armies of Europe arc maintained, at a vast cost to the General Government and to the people, they determined upon the plan which now exists, that is to say, to provide for the organization and equipment of a militia force.

And finally, Scalia writes, “It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service—M-16 rifles and the like—may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty.”

This is an absurd thing to say because it goes against the majorities central holding that reads, in part: “The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.” Here Scalia says, owning an M-16 is useful in service of the military, and therefore, may be banned, while also saying “arms” under the Second Amendment is “unconnected” with service in the military.”

Allow me to add that it is irrelevant whether militia members might had been required to own their own arms or were provided public arms because all able bodied men were compelled to possess these specific arms by State militia laws.

I will quickly close by saying the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms means only the right of the people under their own State governments shall never be infringed from organizing and maintaining armed militias for the purpose of a collective security for themselves. The word “arms” had the universal understanding to mean arms of the militia and not general firearms used in civil society.

For NRA pundits, Heller will be held in the same esteem as Roe v. Wade is to Pro-Choice advocates, and like Roe, deserve to be overturned because neither deserves to be called law. The personal right to keep and use firearms remains where it has always remained - under permissible laws demanded by the people themselves under their own State and local governments.

This after all, is what our Republican form of government is all about.

Final Thoughts

It is worth considering the purpose behind the Second Amendment along with the nine other amendments adopted. These amendments, in the words of Madison, were “restrictive & explanatory amendments.” Madison says, all of these amendments indicated a “jealousy of the federal powers, and an anxiety to multiply securities against a constructive enlargement of them.” C.J. Marshal said, “In almost every convention by which the Constitution was adopted, amendments to guard against the abuse of power were recommended. These amendments demanded security against the apprehended encroachments of the General Government — not against those of the local governments.”

Speaking of defending oneself or, ourselves and property, through an armed citizenry is no different then saying the national government defends citizens and property through the military power of the entire member States of the Union in situations of armed invasion by the military establishment of another country. Armed citizens at home are of little use for defending people and property of a State against violence because arms require training, tactics, discipline, communication, etc., to be of any use.

Finally, armed militia’s can easily exist where firearms at home are outlawed because such weapons can be kept in armories for use by members of the militias, or special militia provisions for members to keep arms at home. I am not advocating gun restrictions no more than I would for laws outlawing owning food; I am just saying public laws over private firearms would have no effect on maintaining an armed militia for the defense of citizens of a State.

Related: Was the Second Amendment Borrowed from the Massachusetts Constitution?

The brief asserts Indiana State law is inconsistent with, and preempted by, the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002. The Federal statute mandates certain identification requirements only for first-time voters who register to vote by mail. The Federal identification requirements can be satisfied by a number of alternative documents enumerated in the law.

“The Indiana statute subjects voters to multiple and inconsistent requirements to exercise the right to vote,” Senator Feinstein said. “The federal law allows flexibility in establishing voter identification. Indiana’s statute improperly attempts to trump federal law by restricting that flexibility. As a result, some Indiana voters may be required to show multiple forms of identification in order to comply with the state laws.”

Rep. Brady fired off the catch-all code word “disenfranchise” as the basis for challenging the law.

I fail to see any supported constitutional issues involved with such arguments that could warrant a Supreme Court challenge over a proper exercise of State sovereignty - and where the U.S. Constitution gives Congress no authority to touch. In short, States can trump Dianne and the Federal government all they want when it comes to exercising reserved powers that are neither prohibited to them nor delegated to Congress to legislate on.

Requiring photo ID to vote is simply a voter qualification requirement to exercise the right to vote granted under State law. One will look in vain to find the slightest federal authority over State voter qualifications anywhere in the U.S Constitution. If Congress had magical powers to pass any law they please, under any pretense, then they could had easily passed a law banning “poll taxes” without the fuss of amending the Federal Constitution (Amendment XXIV - 1964).

John A. Bingham, primary author of the fourteenth amendments first section said, “The qualification of electors and the manner of holding or conducting elections are as distinct from each other as light and darkness.” In other words, the manner of holding elections has nothing to do with the manner of determining who may vote under what qualifications.

The framers of the 15th amendment recognized Congress was powerless over such things as religious tests or property requirements when it came to voter qualifications. There was an attempt to remove State property and educational qualifications under the fifteenth amendment but failed to gain the needed support to pass.

Sen. Jacob M. Howard made the following comments on the right of the States to exercise their full and complete authority over regulating suffrage:

The State of Virginia the moment she is admitted into the Union can by her Legislature, and in perfect consistence with her constitution, propose such an amendment to her local constitution as shall in effect disfranchise nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand of the colored population of that State, by imposing a property qualification upon them, and it would be no violation of the Fifteenth Amendment…

The States have exercised the power of controlling, regulating, and restricting popular suffrage from the commencement of the State governments down to the present time. It is one of the rights reserved to the States, and is to be exercised in its fullness and in its plenitude without any control on the part of Congress or any question being put by Congress to them.

Justice Story said, “It cannot be said with any correctness that Congress can in any way alter the rights or qualifications of voters.”

James Madison, Jr. said, “The right of suffrage is certainly one of the fundamental articles of republican government, and ought not to be left to be regulated by the [Federal] Legislature.”

Indiana’s voter photo ID requirement cannot be said to be preempted by federal law because 1) there is no constitutional authority for Congress to pass such a law, and 2) there is no prohibition against the States in passing voter qualifications. In short, unless there is a specific State law involved that says only whites, or males, or folks over the age of 60 may cast a ballot, then there is no U.S. constitutional issue involved.