Quote of the day—UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

As the Court explained in Turner II, the deferential principle outlined in Turner I applies mainly in “cases . . . involving congressional judgments concerning regulatory schemes of inherent complexity and assessments about the likely interaction of industries undergoing rapid economic and technological change. Though different in degree, the deference to Congress is in one respect akin to deference owed to administrative agencies because of their expertise.” Turner II, 520 U.S. at 196 (emphasis added). Not so here. While the issue of gun violence is important and emotionally charged, it does not involve highly technical or rapidly changing issues requiring such deference. The state cannot infringe on the people’s Second Amendment right, and then ask the courts to defer to its alleged “expertise” once its laws are challenged.

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
VIRGINIA DUNCAN; RICHARD LEWIS; PATRICK LOVETTE; DAVID MARGUGLIO; CHRISTOPHER WADDELL; CALIFORNIA RIFLE & PISTOL ASSOCIATION, INC., a California corporation, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. XAVIER BECERRA, in his official capacity as Attorney General of the State of California, Defendant-Appellant
August 14, 2020
[Another loophole closed by this decision!

California has been arguing that the legislature should be given deference when there is a conflict between what the courts say and what the legislature passes. This decision explains why that might sometimes be the case and why this is not the case in regards to the 2nd Amendment issues before the court.—Joe]

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5 thoughts on “Quote of the day—UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

  1. Fascinating. They just took away a piece of the left’s ever-so-precious “Complexity”.

    One wonders what their game is this time, for there’s always a game, surely. Maybe they’re beginning to realize that communist agitators, revolutionaries and street thugs need guns as much as their American patriot enemies need guns.

    • Everything is complex when you haven’t a f-ing clue as to the first principles upon which they work.

      In other words, the world is mysterious and unpredictable place when you’re determined to be ignorant (or simply congenitally predisposed to sub-optimal cognition).

      • I was thinking the same thing as I read the opinion. Since when are Congressmen EVER so knowledgeable about a topic that they should be given deference on technical issues. Time and again, as a body, they prove their ignorance – firearms laws, health care, economics, climatology, power generation…. The list goes on.

        • Your point extends beyond that. Just about every lawyer, and therefore every judge, is similarly ignorant outside of their expertise in the law. Unless you’re getting lucky and have twelve high-functioning autistic obsessive-compulsive engineers on your jury, yes, the jury pool is similarly ignorant. The lawyers like it that way, which is why if you’re in the jury pool and you know anything about, say, material science, or computing, or any other technical subject that may bear on the case, one or the other will try to boot you off the jury.

          This is why “experts” during court proceedings are generally a wash. Prosecution gets an expert that says one thing, defense gets an expert that says the opposite, neither lawyer has enough depth of knowledge to effectively cross-examine, and if they do, the jury doesn’t know enough to not be bamboozled by a Wookie defense.

  2. And that is the exact argument of, Do we live in a democracy? Or a republic? (If you can keep it.)
    The court as an equal body is never to consider legislation as correct just because it was wrote by an elected official.
    The 9th. slapped that one down because it was an affront to it’s own power.

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