It would also be strange to find in the midst of a catalog of the rights of individuals a provision securing to the states the right to maintain a designated "Militia." Dispassionate scholarship suggests quite strongly that the right of the people to keep and bear arms meant just that.

The principal purpose of stare decisis is to protect reliance interest and further stability in the law.

What is a moderate interpretation of the text? Halfway between what it really means and what you'd like it to mean?

The death penalty? Give me a break. It's easy. Abortion? Absolutely easy. Nobody ever thought the constitution prevented restrictions on abortion. Homosexual sodomy? Come on. For 200 years, it was criminal in every state.

Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is "established by the State".

More importantly, the Court forgets that ours is a government of laws and not of men. That means we are governed by the terms of our laws, not by the unenacted will of our lawmakers. 'If Congress enacted into law something different from what it intended, then it should amend the statute to conform to its intent.' In the meantime, this Court 'has no roving license ... to disregard clear language simply on the view that ... Congress 'must have intended' something broader.

[International law] doesn't show what the Constitution originally meant, and it doesn't show what is fundamentally important to Americans today. It shows what's fundamentally important to somebody else today.