William O. Douglas Quotes
The Second Amendment reveals a profound principle of American government - the principle of civilian ascendency over the military.
Douglas, William O. Dissenting opinion. Laird v. Tatum, 408 U.S. 1, Supreme Court of the US, 26 June 1972, p. 23.
President James Madison expressed a similar sentiment in his first inaugural address.
The first clause is exactly that used by the state of Pennsylvania in its constitution. These had no reference to the militia as did the Virginia Bill of Rights and later the Federal Constitution.
He wrote it under the pseudonym of “The Pennsylvanian”.
It would be more than a decade before the phrase “well regulated militia” would be added into the Constitution as the 2nd Amendment of the Bill of Rights. This resolution was the last of several passed at this meeting by which Maryland endorsed resistance to the British. So these resolations would have been widely distributed throughout the colonies and known by the leaders. In 1788 Alexander Hamilton Published Federalist 29 which also used the phrase. (See {588393}.) Then on September 25, 1789, the Congress proposed the Bill of Rights and the 2nd Amendment using the same key phrase, “well regulated militia.” Whether the drafters of the 2nd Amendment got the phrase from Hamilton’s Federalist 29 or from the Maryland Resolutions is not known but Hamilton’s was much more current. Did he get the phrase from Maryland? Did Congress get it from him? Did Maryland originate the phrase or was there an earlier use that influenced the Maryland drafters? At this point no one is sure, but the phrase is critical to the meaning of the 2nd Amendment because the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the Second Amandment does not apply to individuals but only to the State’s right to bear arms within the “well regulated militia” and not as individual citizens. The right is that of the State government and that is why a state can control guns including banning them if they choose. So an individual in America does not have the constitutional right to bear arms. He may have a state constitutional right but in other states he may not use a gun in certain places and may not possess certain types of guns like hand guns which are illegal in New York, Washington DC and some other places.
In 1776 General Charles Lee imposed a loyalty test on inhabitants of New York in the name of the new government. Four distinguished public men wrote this letter.
She lost by a wide margin. Her Democratic opponent was not for gun control and yet she campaigned heavily on it but it was no issue in Nevada at that time.
William Orville Douglas was an American jurist and politician who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Nominated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Douglas was confirmed at the age of 40, one of the youngest justices appointed to the court. His term, lasting 36 years and 211 days (1939–75), is the longest in the history of the Supreme Court. In 1975, Time magazine called Douglas "the most doctrinaire and committed civil libertarian ever to sit on the court."
