McDonald v. City of Chicago (08-1521) Transcript

[Clinotus]

The transcript of today's oral arguments is now available, 77 pages.
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/08-1521.pdf

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Be sure to check out the Podcasts from Scotsblog.com (http://www.scotusblog.com)



Continuing our series of five-minute podcasts on oral argument days, we have two new podcasts below with counsel in McDonald v. City of Chicago (08-1521), in which the Court will consider whether the Second Amendment’s individual right to keep and bear arms should be incorporated against state and local government through either the Privileges or Immunities Clause or the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Because the approaches to incorporation are so different, and more than fifty amicus briefs were filed in the case, we are including five podcasts to capture the full scope of argument.

Scotus blog coverage (http://www.scotusblog.com/2010/03/podcasts-mcdonald-v-city-of-chicago/)

Well worth the clicks and links.

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Some opinion pieces and pre-stories:

Message to Supreme Court: Eliminating Chicago's Handgun Ban Will Result In More...
(http://230grain.com/showthread.php?t=67755)


Supreme Court to take up landmark gun-control case (http://230grain.com/showthread.php?t=67753)

High noon for high court on gun-rights case (http://230grain.com/showthread.php?t=67754)

Gun-rights case likely to be landmark Supreme Court ruling (http://230grain.com/showthread.php?t=67736)

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Stay tuned!

[Danube]

MR. FELDMAN: The right to keep and bear arms that was recognized-- I don't actually think the right to keep and bear arms itself is. Perhaps the right to self-defense is, and then like other rights, similar rights, if the Court were to hold that that is constitutionally protected, the question would be is the State now giving you sufficient means to exercise that right? Not whatever means you want but sufficient means so that you reasonably can exercise for that right. I would think that would be the only way that that kind of analysis could go if you start off from self-defense.

JUSTICE SCALIA: Mr. Feldman, let me take your argument at -- at its face value. Let's assume that the only reason it is there and the only purpose it 1 serves is the militia purpose. Isn't that militia purpose just as much defeated by allowing the States to take away the militia's arms as it would be by allowing the Federal Government to take away the militia's arms?

MR. FELDMAN: Yes, but I -- that -

JUSTICE SCALIA: Then so -

MR. FELDMAN: But that -

JUSTICE SCALIA: -- even if you assume that the whole thing turns around the militia prologue, that prologue is just as -- just as important with respect to the State's depriving the people of arms.

MR. FELDMAN: But I don't think the argument -- the primary argument that is being made today, that this is implicit in the concept of ordered liberty or sufficiently fundamental or whichever other formulas -

JUSTICE SCALIA: You are switching horses now.

MR. FELDMAN: No, I'm not.

JUSTICE SCALIA: Let's just focus on your argued that -- that -- that deals with the prologue. You say this is different because of that prologue. But that prologue has just as much force if the States take
away the militia's arms as if the Federal Government does.


AWESOME exhange! This pdf reads better and better everytime I read it.

[Cyrano 4747]

AWESOME exhange! This pdf reads better and better everytime I read it.

Wait until you get to the part where he basically says "your argument sounds strangely like the argument we found unconvincing in the Heller case."

[Fang]

This is even more awesome than the arguments in Heller.