Jim notes that the opinions in Heller are very scholarly, especially with reference to historical sources. This marks a vast improvement in Supreme Court opinion writing. Consider, by contrast, the Supreme Court’s use of history when it was issuing some of the most consequential decisions in its history, those requiring that every state reapportion each legislative house on one person, one vote principles. In Gray v. Sanders (1963), Justice William O. Douglas wrote, without further elaboration, that the political philosophy of “the Gettysburg Address, Declaration of Independence, 15th, 17th, and 19th Amendments ‘can mean only one thing–one person, one vote.'” Never mind that a close reading of all or any of those writings suggests that they don’t have anything at all to say about whether one-person, one-vote is a required, or even the best, way to apportion legislatures. This casual misuse of history not only failed to offend the Court, it was quoted favorably by Chief Justice Earl Warren the following year in Reynolds v. Sims.
One can level many criticisms at the modern Court, especially its self-aggrandizing tendency to think that it is not only the last word, but the only word, on constitutional interpretation. But the scholarly quality of the opinions has never been higher.