Last time I heard about the "Dred Scott" case I was in high school and the poor American history teacher was trying to explain slavery and the Civil War to me. Now a conservative Appeals Judge in Washington, D.C. has resurrected it to use as a precedent in a gun-control case. The Wall Street Journal provides the story.
Briefly, the City of Washington, D.C. passed a law banning handguns and got sued by individuals who believe that they have a Constitutional Right to keep and bear firearms, which the ban on handguns violated. The original Federal Judge applied the Supreme Court Decision from United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939)which established that the Right to bear arms in the second amendment to the Constitution is a group right, allowing teh states to operate an armed militia, and not a Right for each individual to own any firearm he or she wished to own.
Then, by a 2 to 1 decision, the Washington, D.C. Federal appeals Court overturned that lower court decision, using language from the Dred Scott case to establish that the ownership of firearms described in the Second Amendmebnt was realy an indivicual Right, thus making the ban of handguns inWashington D.C. Unconstitutional.
Since the Ninth Circuit Court in San Francisco ruled that the Right to bear arms was a group Right rather than an individual one when the Second Amendment was used to attempt to overturn a California Law banning the sale of assault weapons after an individual used assault weapons to randomly kill a bunch of people, there are now two circuit courts with conflicting decisions. This will (probably)* mean that the now conservative Supreme Court will again address the issue for the first time since 1939.
Among other things, this will mean that the Supreme Court will once again be looking at the Dred Scott decision to see what kind of precedent it established for the Second Amendment. The echo of history is there, if not a real repeat.
It ought to be interesting.
* [I try to never firmly predict what either Congress or the Supreme Court will do. I have been wrong way too frequently.]
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