I was recently reading National Review’s May issue, and came across two interesting articles.
The first discusses the upcoming Supreme Court case D.C. v. Heller, regarding the constitutionality of the DC gun ban, expressing the belief that “the right to own guns is itself an important civil right”, an implicit support for striking down the ban. The very next article treats the recent case of Baze v. Rees, on the constitutionality of the death penalty. Here, National Review condemns the mere fact that the case was in the court system: “Reasonable people may differ on the merits and morality of capital punishment. The proper arena for their disputes, however, is not the Supreme Court, but the voting booth and state legislatures.”
National Review faces a choice: either matters of public policy are the strict domain of the legislature, not subject to court review, or the court system may interfere with legislative supremacy when the legislature violates the Constitution. But NR does neither. In arguing that the Supreme Court should strike down the DC gun ban, it argues that the court does have a duty to uphold the rights of the people against the acts of state and local legislatures; in arguing that the death penalty is the exclusive province of state legislatures it argues that the Supreme Court has no authority to override legislation that the voters deem constitutional. Which should it be?
