We Are the Supreme Court, and We Are Helpless Against the Onslaught of Our Own Judgements
As ardent defenders of a law written about 58 years before bullets were a thing, we’ve decided to turn a blind eye to how often they end up killing Americans.
Sure, the Founding Fathers had no idea about the deadly weaponry now being sold around the corner of every street in this country — even as the military itself deems some of it too excessive for use on the battlefield. And killing innocent people by the scores was probably not something a musket could do back when George Washington and his buddies sat down to write the Second Amendment. But then, the rumour’s that some of them also owned slaves. None of us are perfect.
It would be irresponsible to allow any personal inferences while interpreting the Sacred Law, set in stone back when none of the people it affects nowadays was even alive. Who knows what the people writing it were thinking exactly? The artist is dead. And so are the twenty-seven kids involved in three more primary school shootings since we started drafting this majority judgment an hour ago.
Critics might say Originalism is a clumsy excuse for defending the conservative morality of those appointed to this Supreme Court as a power play by Republicans, back when one of their own was the President. But doing so takes the context of our own times into the picture — a practice we discourage in the strictest terms.
It is irrefutable that white men who existed before sliced bread was ever invented must be the definitive authors of this country’s future — and not us, the ones actively making rulings in their name. Any criticism you might want to levy at us for this judgement would probably be better served towards the people from the eighteenth century we’re passive vessels for. Oh what, you say they’re all dead and buried in the ground? Too bad there isn’t a living soul you can redirect all of this anger towards, then.
There is no greater sin than letting one’s own personal morality alter the judgments we make for the land of the free — as long as the freedom is bound by the standards we set as upholders of our Constitution. For example, it would simply be indefensible for my Catholic upbringing to influence the striking down of laws such as the right for people to have abor — Oh, wait a minute now.
I lost myself for a minute there. Thank God this is just the first draft.
