On March 2, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in McDonald v. Chicago, a challenge to the handgun bans in Chicago and Oak Park. The Question Presented by the Court asked if the bans should be considered unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process clause, or under the Privileges or Immunities clause. There’s been plenty of interesting scholarship recently on Privileges or Immunities. Here’s a guide to some of the most important articles:
Gerard N. Magliocca, Why Did the Incorporation of the Bill of Rights Fail in the Late Nineteenth Century? 94 Minn. L. Rev. 102 (2009). Today, the conventional wisdom is that The Slaughter-House cases asserted that the Privileges or Immunities clause does not protect the Bill of Rights. But until 1900, the conventional reading–including in Supreme Court opinions–was that the case only rejected application of procedural rights to the states. The idea that SH rejects the application of substantive rights (e.g., freedom of speech, right to keep and bear arms) came during the progressive era, as the Court and the rest of the legal elites panicked about labor unrest, and decided that states should have wide latitude to suppress dissent. The historical evidence supports using PI to make the Second Amendment apply to the states.
Timothy Sandefur, Privileges, Immunities, and Substantive Due Process, 5 NYU J.L. & Liberty (forthcoming). SH’s most egregious error was in nullifying the principle of “paramount national citizenship” which lay at the heart of the ideology of the 14th Amendment’s advocates. Revitalizing the PI clause should not lead to the abandonment of “substantive due process.” This article provides the best collection of citations and sources in defense of the theory that, long before the 14th Amendment was written, it was widely understood that the principle of “due process” substantively prohibited certain arbitrary acts by legislatures (e.g., giving A’s property to B) even if the proper procedures were followed.
Kenneth A. Klukowski, Citizen Gun Rights: Incorporating the Second Amendment Through the Privileges or Immunities Clause, 39 N.M. L. Rev. 195 (2009). Argues that SH should be affirmed, and that the Second Amendment can be protected against state/local infringement by the PI clause, because the Amendment fits under SH’s restrictive definition of rights of national citizenship which are created by the Constitution. Makes policy arguments that PI is superior to Due Process for protection of 2d Amendment rights, since the former applies only to citizens. Warns that overruling SH could provide a future Court with too many opportunities to fabricate novel “rights” out of PI.
Ilya Shapiro & Joshua Blackman. Opening Pandora’s Box? Privileges or Immunities, The Constitution in 2020, and Properly Incorporating the Second Amendment, Georgetown J.L. & Pol’y (forthcoming). Addresses the concerns raised about a revived PI clause–in particular that the “Constitution in 2020″ professors are eager to use PI to create positive rights to various forms of government spending, and to use PI to import the p.c. “norms” which are supposedly found in international law. Shapiro and Blackman argue that the current Court should be proactive, and should use McDonald to write a strong opinion which declares that PI protects the same set of rights as are protected in Washington v. Glucksberg (traditional rights deeply embedded in American history). Under the Glucksberg standard, the right to arms and the right to self-defense would clearly be protected by PI. Notably, the authors contend that the term “incorporation” is incorrect. The PI clause directly protects various rights, whether or not those rights are enumerated in the Bill of Rights. Thus, a proper reading of PI would require states to respect the arms rights and self-defense rights of citizens (even if the Second Amendment had never been written) because those rights meet the Glucksberg test.
Klukowski and his colleague Ken Blackwell have been carrying on a lively op-ed and Internet debate with Shapiro/Blackman. A long blog post today by Shapiro, on Cato@Liberty, contains links to both sides of the discussion.
In McDonald v. Chicago, the brief of the American Civil Rights Union presents the Klukowski approach, while the joint brief of Cato and the Pacific Legal Foundation presents the Shapiro/Blackman/Sandefur theory. (All McDonald briefs can be read here.)
In early January, I will be doing a podcast interview of Shapiro. As many readers know, Shapiro is Cato’s Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies, and is Editor-in-Chief of annual Cato Supreme Court Review; I am an Associate Policy Analyst with Cato. Commenters are welcome to suggest questions for the podcast. It would be appreciated if every would-be commenter read at least one of the aforesaid articles before commenting. This will help the comments section advance the discussion, rather than merely retreading familiar arguments.
loki13 says:
But until 1900, the conventional reading–including in Supreme Court opinions–was that the case only rejected application of procedural rights to the states. The idea that SH rejects the application of substantive rights (e.g., freedom of speech, right to keep and bear arms) came during the progressive era, as the Court and the rest of the legal elites panicked about labor unrest, and decided that states should have wide latitude to suppress dissent. The historical evidence supports using PI to make the Second Amendment apply to the states.
Well, of course! As everyone knows, all things were perfect until the evil progressives ruined things and then re-wrote history to cover their tracks.
Her’s a perfect example. There was SH (and Cuikshank et al), cases which had nothing to do with a coservative court trying to undo Reconstruction. So after those cases, which had nothing to do with Reconstruction and clearly did not limit incorporation (nor were viewed as such by legal contemporaries), incorporation was universally accepted! Right?
And then the evil progressives sought to limit free speech by, um, incorporating. But only so they could limit rights! Rights which we already had because of all the great incorporation jurisprudence after 1890! But they incorporated it all special-like, in a way that meant you had no rights, and far fewer than you did before. Because before you had all these great BoR arguments against state governments, and now you didn’t!
Right?
*sigh*
Quote
December 21, 2009, 4:03 pmloki13 says:
And by the way, I think PI is the correct avenue of incorporation. But revisionist history isn’t the most persuasive argument.
Quote
December 21, 2009, 4:04 pmOff Kilter says:
Thanks to loki, a very fast reader, for advancing the discussion and not simply retreading familiar arguments.
David, I don’t have to read any of the linked articles to thank you for an informative summary of what’s going on contemporaneously in a very interesting and potentially revolutionary aspect of Constitutional interpretation.
Quote
December 21, 2009, 4:26 pmLegalCookie says:
Kurt Lash’s forthcoming piece (Georgetown Law Journal) is also interesting, arguing that Slaughter-House was right b/c “privileges or immunities” constitutes an antebellum term of art.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1457360
Quote
December 21, 2009, 4:27 pmJ. Aldridge says:
State jurisdiction does not recognize national citizenship of its own state citizens. Only when a citizen of one state removes outside of his state of residence does a national citizenship follow. SH was a correct ruling.
Bingham, House Report No. 22, January 30, 1871: “The words ‘citizens of the United States,’ and ‘citizens of the States,’ as employed in the Fourteenth Amendment, did not change or modify the relations of citizens of the State and the nation as they existed under the original Constitution.”
Quote
December 21, 2009, 10:23 pmJ_A says:
A legal question:
J. Aldrigge said
“State jurisdiction does not recognize national citizenship of its own state citizens. Only when a citizen of one state removes outside of his state of residence does a national citizenship follow.”
What does –today– being a citizen of a state mean? I am now a resident in TX, subject to the laws of TX. I understand that the only thing I need to do to sever my ties with TX and become a citizen of any of the other 49 states is to pack my stuff and move, rent a house and apply for a new drivers license.
If state citizenship ends and starts with just moving across state lines, then there is no such thing as state citizenship per se. If I cannot claim the privileges and duties of a citizen of TX (for instance, it’s nice not to have to pay state income tax) just because I happen to live yards accross the border, in LA or NM, but become instead automatically a citizen of LA or NM (and start paying those pesky taxes), then the states are nothing more than convenient arrangements to handle certain local issues, just like a very very big city spanning a lot of space, and there is only one national citizenship and one national law.
I am probably wrong, but for the life of me, I don´t know why
(FD: I am not a US citizen, but a permanent resident. This might be a stupid question that is taught in high school civics. If so, apologies)
Quote
December 21, 2009, 10:39 pmJ. Aldridge says:
It means the great liberty of self-government. To be able write and administer the laws as a collective body of fellow citizens see fit (although this horrifies liberals). It means independence from a central tyrannical government like Parliament and today’s Congress.
Quote
December 21, 2009, 11:29 pmAnon says:
Drink!
Quote
December 22, 2009, 12:06 amGene Hoffman says:
Torts is a realm I’ve attempted to steer clear of. As such I’d love some advice on whether my liver failure for the J. Aldridge drinking game creates a claim for J. Aldridge to at least be honest when he mentions Bingham...
Kidding but sheesh it’s sad to see the retread misdirection of Bingham from a speech in which Bingham stated that the first 8 amendments are included in the Privileges or Immunities upon which he then read them. It’s also up to the reader to notice that the speech in question is 5 years after passage of the 14th...
–Gene
Quote
December 22, 2009, 1:13 amJ. Aldridge says:
He suggested once in March of 1871 that the first 8 amendments were a limitation against the states in relation to only citizens of the United States. But two months earlier he said they were not. Which is the truth? Obviously it is his House Report that is the truth because the 14A doesn’t say a thing about any of the first eight amendments. Plus, Congress attempted (at the urging of Grant) to amend the constitution to disable the states from violating the Establishment Clause. SH had nothing to do with this attempt and never even came up in the debates.
Still, even if there are idiots who takes Bingham’s remarks at face value can’t get past the fact he pointed out they belong to United States citizens and not citizens of a state. Senator Howard argued the same thing. A citizen within their own state of residence is a citizen of that state and becomes a citizen of the United States when they remove to some other state. Only little children could be confused over this well known fact.
Quote
December 22, 2009, 1:56 amTweets that mention The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Privileges or Immunities Extravaganza -- Topsy.com says:
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Billy McKee, Josh Blackman. Josh Blackman said: Check out this post on Privileges or Immunities on Volokh citing Pandora http://bit.ly/7fR6XR [...]
Tuesday round-up | SCOTUSblog says:
[...] anticipation of oral argument in the gun rights case McDonald v. Chicago in March, David Kopel at The Volokh Conspiracy recommends a list of articles on revitalizing the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities [...]
Instapundit » Blog Archive » LOOKING FORWARD TO A SUPREME COURT Privileges Or Immunities Extravaganza…. says:
[...] LOOKING FORWARD TO A SUPREME COURT Privileges Or Immunities Extravaganza. [...]
PubliusFL says:
The 14A doesn’t say anything about a state’s own citizens not being protected by the PorI clause, either. So you can’t claim any high ground for your interpretation on the basis of what’s explicitly spelled out in the amendment. Both interpretations stand or fall on the proper understanding of “privileges or immunities.”
Quote
December 22, 2009, 11:01 amLegalCookie says:
The best thing about the word “obviously” is that it almost always indicates a conclusion has been reached that is something less than obvious, and very rarely necessary.
Quote
December 22, 2009, 11:16 amMike M. says:
No, it’s a legitimate question. The Civil War pretty well established the primacy of the national government, and the 14th Amendment was intended to place the state governments under the same constraints as the National government. But the full implications of this subordination have never been worked out.
Quote
December 22, 2009, 11:22 amken in sc says:
J_A, State citizen status depends on why a person relocates outside the state. A Texas resident who joins the military or attends an out-of-state college remains a Texas citizen, even though they may live outside the state for several years.
Quote
December 22, 2009, 11:22 amWilliamP says:
Just a quick disclaimer: I’m a psychologist, not a lawyer, so I’ll admit that there might be some ignorance or significant view-point differences behind my question. Given that the Heller decision was mainly about a restriction on mere ownership, and the McDonald case is also about a restriction on mere ownership, what are the implications for carry (either open or concealed) rights of a P&I theory versus a Due Process theory? Does the fact that there exists a pretty clear majority (38 with “shall issue” schemes and 10 with more restrictive schemes) of states recognizing a right to carry particularly contribute to one theory or the other?
Quote
December 22, 2009, 11:47 amKevin says:
So, how would P or I work? Does it only cover traditional rights, like self-defense or speech? If new “rights” can be included, at what point?
Example: Could Loving have been decided as a P or I case, based on the large majority of states that viewed the marriage right being unlimited by race?
Quote
December 22, 2009, 11:58 amJIMV says:
I do not believe this is the reason the courts ignored the 14th Amendment. I believe they ignored it because it overnight made the very legal precedent the courts and judges themselves had made obsolete. It said their previous acts were now wrong and a ‘new legal order’ applied.
The court was not going to sit and take it, so they ignored the amendment. Only when those judges were dead and gone and the new courts had no vested interest in past bad legal precedent, did ‘incorporation’ begin...
There is not an American alive today that believes speech, or assembly rights are not guaranteed everywhere, regardless of what a state might pass. The question of the 2nd amendment is simply academic, with some folk believing more in philosophy that law or the Constitution.
Quote
December 22, 2009, 1:22 pmMikee says:
I know at least one example of living in a state not equating with state citizenship (also called residency).
College students from out of state typically pay out of state tuition for all their years at college.
Just living in a state sometimes does not get one residency or citizenship in that state; specific actions have to be taken to achieve state residency, under specific conditions. Then one can obtain benefits of state residence & citizenship, such as in-state tuition or government services (in some states).
So J. Aldrigge had a very good question, there.
Quote
December 22, 2009, 1:25 pmAndy Freeman says:
> I understand that the only thing I need to do to sever my ties with TX and become a citizen of any of the other 49 states is to pack my stuff and move
You understand incorrectly.
If you move to CA, you will be charged “non-resident” tuition by the CA university system. If Texas has similar policies, you’ll retain the right to attend the Texas university system at “in-state” rates.
You can also retain your voting rights in Texas while residing elsewhere for a variety of reasons.
States with income tax reserve the right to collect it from residents who have left the state as a result of being stationed elsewhere by the US military. (I think that most such states currently choose to have an exemption, which is good because it’s really hard to change your “resident state” as far as this is concerned. I know folks who were considered CA residents for tax purposes even though they’d been stationed outside CA for 10+ years and hadn’t even visited.)
Quote
December 22, 2009, 1:38 pmJIMV says:
“this immortal bill of rights embodied in the Constitution, rested for its execution and enforcement hitherto upon the fidelity of the States.” — Bingham 27 Feb 1866
In arguing why the Amendment was needed...to “arm the Congress ... with the power to enforce this bill of rights as it stands in the Constitution today.”
Power over who? The states.
Note he did not say some of the bill of rights, or specific rights, but ‘this bill of rights’...all of it. Incorporation is a construct of the courts.
Quote
December 22, 2009, 1:40 pmDrew Kelley says:
Let me try to get my arms around this:
If I live my entire life in CA, never leaving it, I AM NOT a “citizen” of the United States?
But, I am allowed to vote for candidates for national office of a government that I owe no allegiance to (since I am not a citizen of the U.S.A. — even though, in school, I had to daily Pledge Allegiance to the Flag of that country that I am not a citizen of?); and I have to pay taxes to the government of that country I am not a citizen of (unless I happen to drive to Las Vegas to do whatever, whereupon I will become a citizen of the U.S.A. just by the act of crossing over an imaginary line in the desert)?
Have I got this right?
Who was it who said that to believe something this stupid you have to go to college?
Quote
December 22, 2009, 3:17 pmChris says:
FWIW, here’s my article on the original sense of “of” in the Privileges or Immunities Claue–that is, what relationship a right has to bear to “citizens of the United States” to be protected.
Quote
December 22, 2009, 5:59 pmEscapee says:
Have any of you considered that there could be a difference between a resident and a citizen?
Let’s take an example of Ben Franklin, who was a Pennsylvania Citizen both before and after the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. When he went to France as our ambassador, his national status was as a U.S. Citizen, yet his French status was that of a French resident.
Why would that principle be any different today? A citizen of the United States is not the same thing as a Pennsylvania Citizen; the state Citizen owes allegiance to and is protected by his state. The citizen of the U.S. has no state, and owes the state no loyalty. This is why the citizen of the U.S. is termed a ‘resident’ in relation to the several states, and this is also why the citizen of the U.S./state resident has no recourse to the first ten Ammendments–he is not one of We the People.
Quote
December 22, 2009, 9:36 pmJ. Aldridge says:
No need to spell out who the P&I’s apply to under the 14A because the legal understanding was so well established and understood that they only apply to a citizen who temporarily removes himself from his state of residence to another state. That is why when Bingham brought up the subject he always made clear these are not any P&I’s a citizen under his/her own state can claim.
Quote
December 22, 2009, 9:39 pmJ. Aldridge says:
He (Bingham) did just before he made those comments, and the 14A only speaks of some, not all of the bill of rights.
Quote
December 22, 2009, 9:43 pmEscapee says:
Drew Kelley — CA is not a state, it is the designation of a federal area, as is ‘90240’. You can be a citizen of the United States without ever living in one of the compact states. But you can certainly be taxed for the privilege of being a resident of both.
Quote
December 22, 2009, 9:43 pmRKV says:
Justice Taney at least minimally defined P&Is in Dredd Scott; to wit...
” It would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognised as citizens in any one State of the Union, the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, singly or in companies, without pass or passport, and without obstruction, to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased at every hour of the day or night without molestation, unless they committed some violation of law for which a white man would be punished; and it would give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went.”
And the 14th Amendment includes all of the BOR, JA’s repeated (and false, by being half true) contentions not withstanding. That our judiciary would not enforce the 14th Amendment was an error then, and an remains an error now. The Supremes should correct that misjudgement.
Quote
December 22, 2009, 10:48 pmFat Man says:
One of Madison’s original proposals for inclusion in the Bill of Rights* was: “The equal rights of conscience, the freedom of speech or of the press, and the right of trial by jury in criminal cases shall not be infringed by any State.” It was, not approved by the Senate, and was not among the proposals sent to the states for ratification. Thereafter the proposition that the BoR bound the states was not accepted by SCOTUS, even after the adoption of Am 14.
However, Am. 14 contained the magic phrase “due process”, and the Justices of the late 19th century, having declined P&I as a tool, used that opening to create the doctrine of substantive due process. Because SCOTUS used SDP to void state legislation intended to regulate labor relations and other commercial topics, the doctrine soon acquired a bad odor among so called “Progressives”.
After the New Deal revolution, the Court forswore SDP. One of the leading Rooseveltians on the Court, former Klansman, Hugo Black, proposed using the doctrine of incorporation of the BoR into Am 14 through the magic and mystery of the due process clause in order to harmonize the Courts jurisprudence on many subjects, and to retain much of its power, whilst casting the most inconvenient SDP cases into the outer darkness.
The Black approach won a great deal of academic approbation, as it allowed SCOTUS to side with the angels during the toughest years of the second reconstruction, while continuing the New Deal drive to bring Socialism to America.
However the most important cases to reach the court in the 1960s and 70s were the ones protecting the rights of genital friction so lovingly presented in Section 987654321 of the BoR. By the beginning of the 21st century the Court found it impossible not to recognize that SDP was alive and well protecting Section 987654321, and the sweet mystery of life along with unicorns and rainbows. Honestly, folks it is hard not to be sarcastic about the dung hill that is SCOTUS jurisprudence.
SDP had the infinite advantage over incorporation that the words due process are actually in Am 14. However SDP is at best, as Nino says, an oxymoron. Incorporation is not in the words of Am 14, and it is those words alone, and not anybody’s intentions or floor speeches, that were ratified by the States. Incorporation is a recent invention that has the fatal problem of not being expressed in the constitution.
P&I suffers from the same problems, and perhaps worse than those of due process, because those words do not put in an appearance anywhere in the BoR.
It is my hope and expectation that SCOTUS will decide that the second amendment does not trammel the states, just as I hope that they will one day recognize that there is no Section 987654321.
This does not mean that I oppose gun rights, I firmly believe that the right to bear arms is the right to be free. I also believe that rights are only meaningful if they are in the hearts of involved and informed citizens, not on pieces of paper. I think that Chicago’s gun laws like the rest of the toxic waste of that sick political system, like Obama, Emmanuel, and Axelrod need to be brought down and replaced.
*see:
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/constitution/pdf2002/018.pdf
Quote
December 23, 2009, 1:12 amJ. Aldridge says:
That must explain why Congress, at the urging of Grant, attempted to make the Establishment Clause a limitation against the states. No amount of spin can hide the fact the 14A makes no mention of the entire first 8 amendments.
Also, you should pay more attention to what Taney is saying there. He is talking about a state ignoring their citizenship status by placing them on an unequal footing with white citizens in absence of never having been convicted of a crime.
Quote
December 23, 2009, 1:16 amRKV says:
JA you’re wrong on so many levels it’s near useless to attempt to communicate with you, and particularly so since you can’t seem to stick to the standard definition of words. Let’s take your last assertion first. He’s talking about the first and second amendments, among other things, as being attributes of national citizenship which a state may not limit. Taney CLEARLY enumerates several privileges and immunities. Your assertion about his focus on the status of black “citizenship” is irrelevant. As to your first statement, no amount of your spin can hide the broad meaning of “privileges and immunities” as the phrase had been in legal use in the Americas since the early 1600s. The phrase is NOT as some have stated “an ink blot” but rather is left less defined in the 14th Amendment than some positive law types would like because said privileges and immunities are large in number and broad in scope rather than narrow, or as in your case, non-existent. The plain reading of Dredd Scott is that the first and second amendments ARE P&Is. Period. If you can’t get that out of the text above, its because you don’t want to, not because its not in the text. There are many other examples of similar, you’ve heard them before here, and yet you persist in your
unfounded assertionsignorance. Now I’m going to stop feeding the troll.Quote
December 23, 2009, 8:42 amWhat’s that Smell? « Conservative Libertarian Outpost says:
[...] David Kopel The Volokh Conspiracy December 21, 2009 http://volokh.com/2009/12/21/privileges-or-immunities-extravaganza/ [...]
J. Aldridge says:
Well, what do you think they meant back in 1787? There was no 8 amendments you could argue that defined them. No one ever argued the newly added amendments added anything to the P&I’s of U.S. citizens. Bingham strongly asserted and made clear many times the P&I’s under the 14A were identical to Article 4, Section 2. He even referred to Article 4, Section 2 as “privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States” before he even added such words to the 14A.
Quote
December 23, 2009, 11:02 amDan Goodman says:
The Slaughterhouse Cases is best known for reading the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment out of the Constitution. However, the case is also known for deciding that citizenship of a State was to be separate and distinct from citizenship of the United States. This, of course, has a direct bearing on citizenship under the Constitution. As before this case, citizenship of a State and citizenship of the United States were considered one in the same.
In addition, “[t]he Supreme Court, however, adopted a narrower view when it first interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment in 1873 in the Slaughter-House Cases. These consolidated cases addressed several butchers’ constitutional challenges under the Reconstruction Amendments to a Louisiana statute granting a monopoly on the butchering of animals in New Orleans to a single slaughtering company. Justice Miller, writing for the five Justices in the majority, rejected each of the butchers’ constitutional claims, holding that the statute did not violate the guarantees of the Thirteenth Amendment or the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause, (fn 86) Equal Protection Clause, or Due Process Clause, all of which he believed were concerned predominantly with the protection of the recently freed slaves. . . .
————
fn 86: Id. at 72–80 The Court divined a purported distinction in the text of the Fourteenth Amendment between the ‘privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States’ and those ‘of citizens of the several states.’ Id. at 74. The Court then expressed that the clause only protected ‘the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States,’ which it limited to those owing ‘there existence to the Federal government, its National character, its Constitution, or its laws.’ Id. at 79. . . .”
Source: Rhodes, Charles W. (Rocky), “Liberty, Substantive Due Process, and Personal Jurisdiction”, Tulane Law Review, Vol. 82, No. 2, 2007. This paper can be downloaded at the Social Science Research Network at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1004112 .
————
There is a desire, by many, to overturn the Slaughterhouse Cases, using the McDonald case as the means. The reason centers on the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Those who wish to overturn Slaughterhouse Cases believe: a) that there is only one citizen under the Constitution since the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Slaughterhouse Cases, b) that the privileges and immunities of this citizenship; that is citizenship of the United States, should be those described in Corfield v. Coryell. They do not know that there is a second citizenship now under the Constitution (and not the Fourteenth Amendment), and that this citizenship has those privileges and immunities described in Corfield v. Coryell. This citizenship is citizenship of the several States.
The fact there is a citizen of the several States in law is settled!
http://www.australia.to/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=16289 . [Footnote]
The 14th Amendment states “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” Whether it includes the Second Amendment is what the Supreme Court will determined. If it is a privilege or immunity of a citizen of the United States, then it will have to be one which owes it “existence to the Federal government, its National character, its Constitution, or its laws.” Slaughterhouse Cases, page 79.
________________________
Footnote
So there are now two citizens under the Constitution of the United States. One needs to find out information on both. For a citizen of the United States that is easy. Just about anywhere. For a citizen of the several States one will have to begin here:
http://citizenoftheseveralstates.webs.com/index.htm
—
Quote
December 31, 2009, 2:08 amDan Goodman says:
To everyone,
I am writing to inform you that the link I provided in my prior comment (Dan Goodman December 31, 2009 2:08am) no longer works. The new location for it is:
The fact there is a citizen of the several States in law is settled1
http://www.australia.to/2010/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=329
____________
There is also the following which I think would be appropriate.
Comment on Petitioner’s Brief: McDonald v. City of Chicago
http://www.australia.to/2010/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=91&Itemid=126
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/136777
____________
Quote
January 26, 2010, 11:50 pm