In Re: Footnote 23

Chicago attorney Dave von Ebers is a fine legal writer. As proof I offer The Meaning of Footnote 23: http://journalplagueyear.blogspot.com/2008/06/meaning-of-footnote-23.html 

In The Meaning of Footnote 23, von Ebers suggests that individual States may not be bound by the recent Supreme Court decision on the 2nd Amendment and, moreover, that the Court acknowledges this to be the case in Footnote 23 (talk about "burying the lead, eh?) of the Majority Opinion written by Justice Scalia (who I saw called "Scaligula" in a post somewhere a couple of days ago and which I will be stealing for my own personal use from now on).

I found The Meaning of Footnote 23 to be Interesting as Hell so I passed it on to someone else I know who happens to have a first-rate legal mind and he apparently thought it was Interesting as Hell, too, posting the following comment at Dave's Blog, Journal of the Plague Year:

 (I have bolded the best parts so you don't have to.)

I agree with you and I think the footnote is very important; your analysis is pretty much on the mark. Scalia has consistently raised the shibboleth of original intent against more egalitarian/pro social doctrines that have evolved from Constitutional interpretation over the last forty years because in most cases on a very simple intellectual level it works.

What the proponents of this tact fail to take into account is that the world at the end of the 1700s and before slavery's demise was not one of actual equality or one we would particularly want to live in. However Scalia and the remainder of his unholy four also know that if that cry of WWTDD (What would the drafters do) is to be their Excalibur-like sword cutting away the vines of social justice that grew out of the Warren years their analysis must be consistent with that doctrine. They must tie up the loose ends and your interpretation of the footnote is one fine example of this. Without consistency to their mantra their bold political agenda will be shown for what it is, nothing more than intellectually dishonest right wing hackery.

The footnote is there because it has to be.  Otherwise their orignialist claims would be a sham. However the import of the main decision is designed to be a hit to our national solar plexus so as to scare the states from ever realizing what leeway in dealing with gun violence is left to them in the footnote. The stun factor is the political component of the decision; it scares and puts the states off the track for awhile. The Unholy Four thus continue to pray that some operative of the GOP finds/manufactures an Al Sharpton/Obama gay sex tape and thus insures that they get their fifth justice so we can return to the good ole’ days of women in the kitchen, blacks tending our lawns and the one true cross governing our thoughts.

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So, I think my friend is a fine legal writer also.  Everybody is impressed, to say the least.

What we have got here is two (2) outstanding legal minds in accord.  Everybody says, "Nuff said."

Meanwhile, wasting no time, the NRA has filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn a local handgun ban based on this            SC(r)OTUS ruling.  Everybody wonders, will Footnote 23 come up when the case goes to court?