Saturday, June 28, 2008

Anchors aweigh (er, away)?

The media braintrusts are all abuzz over the gun rights ruling by the Supreme Court. Most add the comment that Justice Roberts isn’t as moderate as he led people to believe.

Everyone agrees he’s been pretty quiet on this particular ruling, but he did vote with the conservatives.

Which brings up the writer of the opinion, Justice Scalia. His work was brilliant. He used a nice balance of amicus input, original language, and (here’s the most impressive part) original public meaning.

Now, if this had been the issue of citizenship at birth instead of gun control we could have had a change in the anchor baby ruling.

In order for this to work there will need to be a strong case brought before the court. They won’t take it just to stir the pot.

I’ve tried to think of what that case would look like. Perhaps a parental deportation/separation case. Or a death row situation where suddenly the inmate claims the rights of a Mexican citizen to prevent execution.

Or, like the Ark decision of 1898, simply someone who left the United States and tried to return as a citizen.

Surely the same quality reasoning we saw displayed this week would overturn the nonsense of anchor baby citizenship. The current Court does offer a glimmer of hope.

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