Obama to Palin: 'Don't Mock the Constitution'

It is encouraging to see contenders introducing the issue of constitutional compliance into the campaign. However, none of them appear to yet have a firm grasp on the subject, including the two, Obama and Biden, who taught constitutional law in law schools.

The Founders did not, in general, use dictionary definitions of their terms. Dictionaries as we know them today were only just beginning to be written, and meanings of words were acquired by doing a lot of reading of works in which the words were used, and their meaning extracted by context, but seldom if ever defined.

It is therefore not surprising that Founder James Wilson, attempting to come up with a definition of "piracy", proposed "robbery and depredation on the high seas". However, from a more thorough examination of actual usages of the term, we can get something like this:

Piracy is a warlike act committed by a non-state actor, either a foreign actor against this country, or a domestic actor against another country.

But this covers what we are today calling "terrorism", and the Constitution, Art. I Sec. 8 Cl. 10, "The Congress shall have Power ... To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas...", and we have a well-developed body of law on piracy.

We can then also see that the Constitution covers all possibilities, partitioning the set of warlike actions into those committed by state or non-state actors, those within the country by a domestic non-state actor (treason), and those committed between nations by a non-state actor (piracy).

That also makes a warlike act committed by an official without a declaration of war or letters of marque and reprisal an act of piracy.

From Sarah who? to Sarah wow! in one day

I predict history will conclude the Election of 2008 was decided when Obama unwisely chose Biden as his running mate and McCain brilliantly chose Palin. There are few more revealing tests of a candidate's judgment than his personnel choices, and for a presidential candidate the main such choice is the vice-presidential candidate.

Palin has much to learn on constitutional construction, but she is a quick study and we can work on trying to get her to attend to that.

I am not yet prepared to vote Republican myself, partly because there is still a need to move public policy in a constitutionalist direction and there is no better way to do that than by having the Libertarian Party get a lot of votes, but also because I vote in Texas which is safely Republican, so a Libertarian vote here will help libertarians, such as our friends in the Republican Liberty Caucus, take control of the Texas Republican Party, and even move the Texas Democratic Party our way.

Palin is being groomed as an eventual president, and while we might like a president to be a constitutional scholar of world repute, it is more important to be an inspiring leader, choose good advisers, and make appropriate nominations to the Supreme Court.

Sarah Palin may have an "ordinary" middle-class background and chosen lifestyle (until her selection for VP Friday), but she obviously has a natural talent for leadership and good judgment that is worth more than years in public office. That talent has now brought her to the center of power, and as she learns and grows, she will be doing things that are well beyond the capabilities of ordinary people. We can hope that she will not be corrupted by power the way so many others have, and I suspect she won't be. Whether that will cripple her prospects for ascending to the presidency, because the Establishment doesn't like people they can't corrupt, will remain to be seen.

During the weeks until the election, and afterwards if her ticket wins, she will be coached in policy issues to prepare her for campaigning and debate. We can hope that part of that will be on constitutional compliance. Now if she will break away from the Republican Convention to speak to the Campaign for Liberty rally nearby, she can solidify hopes for her as an emerging libertarian constitutionalist. We can speculate whether one of the factors causing McCain to pick her may not have been the growing strength of the Libertarian Party in the polls. If so, then the Libertarians will have moved public policy in their direction before the election even takes place.

The most encouraging sign that Palin may be a constitutionalist, or at least one in an early stage of development, is this quote:

[The Alaska Constitution is] my bible in governing. I try to keep it so simple by reading the thing and believing in it and living it. It's providential. Some of the crafters of the Constitution are still alive. They're my mentors, my advisers. I get to meet with these folks and ask, 'What did you mean by this?' And it makes so much sense.

• Interview by Dimitri Vassilaros for the Pittsburgh Review-Tribune, conducted July 12, 2007, published July 16, 2007

As several have noted, I think we see the first female president, and it is likely the lineup in 2012 will be Palin/Jindal, which will be as close to a libertarian, if not constitutionalist, dream ticket as we are likely to see in this generation.

Now if we can just get more libertarian constitutionalists elected to Congress....

Columnist Robert Novak: What is "Constitutional Compliance"?

Columnist Robert Novak was one of the two keynote speakers, along with former U.S. Rep. Barry Goldwater, Jr., at the evening dinner of the Austin conference of the Americans for Prosperity, Friday, July 18, the first of a two-day Defending the American Dream conference at the Renaissance Hotel.

After concluding his talk, he opened the floor for questions, and recognized Jon Roland, of the Constitution Society, who asked, "What will it take to make constitutional compliance the leading issue in these campaigns?"

Novak stumbled for a few seconds, then said (paraphrasing somewhat), "What do you mean by "constitutional compliance"? It may be difficult to make it an issue if [someone like me] has to ask what it means."

Roland then explained that the Constitution is presently being substantially violated, and that we need to return to compliance with it as originally understood.

Then Novak seemed to catch on somewhat that Roland was raising the issues being raised by Ron Paul. He said "I love Ron Paul, but not as a candidate for president. I want him to stay right where he is." He then went on to comment that we need the Federal Reserve.

After the meeting broke up, Roland handed Novak a card for the Constitution Society and invited him to visit its site to find out what "constitutional compliance" means. Novak laughed and said he would.

For someone in Novak's position to fail to even recognize the phrase "constitutional compliance" is revealing about the state of our civic culture and awareness of opinion leaders at the top of it. He is at the confluence of information flows on civic topics of all kinds. I have gotten similar deer-in-the-headlights reactions from congressmen and other decisionmakers.

I urge all recipients of this message to flood decisionmakers and opinion leaders with messages that use the phrase "constitutional compliance", that explain how the Constitution is being violated, what has to be done to bring officials into compliance, and the importance of doing that. Pick your own favorite areas of noncompliance.

I realize it may seem incredible to most people that such people don't even recognize the concept when they are confronted with it. We need to realize that those of us who are determined to bring this country back into compliance are a subculture that has not yet reached key countrymen with even the language of our concerns, much less the concepts. We have to make sure they can't escape being confronted with them, or having to answer questions about them.

Individual Rights View of the Second Amendment

Rather than searching for evidence of courts taking an individual rights view, it might make more sense to seek evidence from near the Founding of anyone taking the "collective rights" view. I confidently predict you will find none, because it was first introduced in the late 20th century to rationalize gun control, and would have been thought bizarre by the Founders, for whom all rights were inherently individual. For them, rights, which would be called "immunities" by the framers of the 14th Amendment, were restrictions on the power of officials to act against individuals. ("Privileges" were created by government, by contrast to "immunities", which preceded government.) Even something like voting (a privilege), which can only meaningfully be exercised on a collective occasion, is still individual, not collective.

It is not likely to be productive, after an issue has been misframed by partisans, to seek historical evidence of it being otherwise framed in the past, because anyone can always invent some new way to misframe an issue that previous generations would never have thought of and would produce no evidence on the matter one way or another.

This is perhaps negatively illustrated by the absence of attempts to exhaustively list ("enumerate") all rights ("privileges and immunities"), an effort which Justice Bushrod Washington found to be "more tedious than difficult" in Corfield v. Coryell (6 Fed. Cas. 546, no. 3,230 C.C.E.D.Pa. 1823) , before making an effort to broadly list a few of them. Even the state ratifying conventions in their proposed amendments did not attempt to list them exhaustively. I have tried to do that in Presumption of Nonauthority and Unenumerated Rights. It can be done by proceeding from a higher level of abstraction and then working down to more specific levels, but people in the Founding Era were more accustomed to thinking in terms of more specific rights arising from particular disputes, without getting around to abstracting them systematically. We have made some philosophic progress in 232 years.

The Case against Thierry & Nugent for Libels and Contempt of Court illustrates something else: the original standard of due process according to which issues of law were supposed to be argued in the presence of the jury. See Stettinius v. United States, 22 F. Cas. 1322 (1839); 5 Cranch C.C. 573.

The term "states' rights" is a somewhat misleading abbreviation of "powers reserved to the states or to the people" from the Tenth Amendment, but even so it refers to the individual right not to have the central government exercise undelegated powers against either a state government or its citizens. We sometimes forget that the original idea was that individuals could privately prosecute a public right in court without having to have been personally injured first, a right that was not formally abridged until Frothingham v. Mellon, 262 U.S. 447 (1923). See "The Metaphor of Standing and the Problem of Self-Governance", by Steven L. Winter, 40 Stan. L. Rev. 1371, July, 1988.

The key point, as I have often stated, is that militia is primarily defense activity and only secondarily those engaged in it, as was common usage of many words in that era, and that there is no minimum number of those who may engage in it. An individual is always and at all times at least a militia of one. But 18th century English is a foreign language with respect to 20th century English.

The word "militia" is a polyseme, with multiple related meanings, either at the same time or depending on context. It is a type in which a noun meaning "those engaged in the activity" is derived from the noun meaning "activity" without losing the original meaning.

There is an important distinction between the legal duty to respond to an official call-up, enforced by penalties such as fines or imprisonment, and the social duty to defend the community. The two kinds of duty, the first deriving from the constitution of government, the second from the constitution of society, define two different subsets of the population, which I call the mandatory militia and the general militia, using the term to refer to those engaged in defense activity. The first is a proper subset of the second. People in the Founding Era often loosely used the same word to sometimes refer to the first, sometimes to the second.

However, there is a social duty to respond to a not necessarily official call-up that is enforceable by exclusion from protection or ejection from the community. As a duty, militia is the duty that defines the social contract, and as such precedes government. The authority to issue a call-up is a threat, and the duty comes with awareness of that threat, no matter who might become aware.

As discussed in "The Jury and Consensus Government in Mid-Eighteenth-Century America", William E. Nelson, communities in the 18th century were managed by juries and militia (and a jury was seen as a kind of specialized militia), with little government other than perhaps one part-time sheriff and judge. Militia was often called up not just for defense, law enforcement, or disaster response, but to perform community services such as repairing roads and bridges, erecting schools and town meeting halls, etc. These things were seen as defense activities. One was asked to care for those with smallpox because the disease was a defense threat. (And it is interesting that the understanding of disease as caused by an infectious agent was widespread long before Pasteur.) In an age when everyone was needed for defense, it made sense to make sure everyone could make a living and provide for his family. Care for the elderly was care for veterans who had done their part when they were younger.

DC v. Heller: Mixed Bag

DC v. Heller is an important win for the right to keep and bear arms. It's holdings are narrow: that two provisions of the DC statute, one banning possession of handguns, and the other requiring long guns to be kept in a non-functional state, are unconstitutional. The majority decision, by Justice Antonin Scalia, based that holding on the finding that the Second Amendment protects a pre-existing individual right to keep and bear arms apart from participation in militia. Much of his opinion consists of an etymological and historical analysis of the words in the Second Amendment. It seems likely that this decision will at least settle the issues of whether the right is individual, and whether participation in state-organized militia is necessary to assert the right.

The problem with this opinion is in the dicta that indicate the Court would accept as reasonable restrictions on the exercise of the right that could render it meaningless in too many situations. It is possible that these dicta are concessions that Justices Scalia, Roberts, Alito, and Thomas felt they had to make to win the swing vote of Justice Kennedy. However, it would have been better to omit them, since they are dicta and thus not necessary to reach the decision.

One thing missing from the decision is a holding on the level of scrutiny to be applied to any restrictions. Heller had moved for scrict scrutiny, which would bar most of the restrictions, federal, state, and local, that are presently enacted. The Court, as indicated by Justice Roberts, did not decide on the motion since it was not necessary to reach the decision on the DC statute.

In what follows I will be examining the points made in some detail, and expect to revise and extend this article over the days ahead, so readers may want to revisit it from time to time to get the latest version.

Troubling indications of what restrictions might be held reasonable

While in oral argument Justice Scalia indicated that only restrictions at the time the amendment was adopted might be reasonable, in this opinion he went far beyond that.

The only restrictions that existed at the time of ratification included:

1. Local militia commanders, but not state governments, could require militia participants to declare the numbers and kinds of weapons each could bring to a muster. There were no serial numbers in that era, but it is not too much of a stretch to require serial numbers for the limited purpose of making sure weapons could be returned to their owners if they got misplaced during operations.
2. Local militia commanders, but not state governments, could require militia participants to sign a roster and thus disclose their names.
3. Local militia commanders, but not state governments, could require militia participants to drill and practice with their weapons unloaded to prevent accidental discharges.
4. Local militia commanders, but not state governments, could require militia participants to use one kind of weapon in an operation rather than another, as best suited for the mission of each.

But then Scalia mentions that states began to assert a power to prohibit the carrying of concealed firearms without a license, and that such a restriction might be reasonable. However, it was not a restriction that appeared prior to about 1840, so does not meet the standard he stated in oral argument. It does indicate, however, that application to the states under the 14th Amendment is contemplated, since there are no federal concealed carry statutes.

Misreading of Miller

Although the decision in U.S. v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939), was not examined in depth, what was said about it missed what it was about.

The National Firearms Act (NFA) was a tax statute. The government was asserting a power to make it a crime to possess an object on which a tax had not been paid (unconstitutional), while refusing to accept payment of the tax if it were tendered (voiding the obligation). The Court had to decide whether the weapon in question was tax-exempt, as militia firearms were under the precedent of the Militia Act of 1792. It couldn't just find that anything useful for militia was tax-exempt, because almost anything can be used in militia under some scenario. The Court wanted a closer connection to militia than, say, a pair of combat boots or a canteen. Otherwise it would be creating a precedent that could be used to find all taxes void on everything.

About the only thing in the opinion that offers hope of incorporation under the 14th Amendment is Footnote 23:

With respect to Cruikshank’s continuing validity on incorporation, a question not presented by this case, we note that Cruikshank also said that the First Amendment did not apply against the States and did not engage in the sort of Fourteenth Amendment inquiry required by our later cases. Our later decisions in Presser v. Illinois, 116 U. S. 252, 265 (1886) and Miller v. Texas, 153 U. S. 535, 538 (1894), reaffirmed that the Second Amendment applies only to the Federal Government.

But that is a slim reed.

Fatal concessions in DC v. Heller?

The oral argument yesterday in DC v. Heller, the Second Amendment case before the U.S. Supreme Court, involved what I regard, and have regarded in the brief as well, as fatal concessions, even if Heller wins a complete affirmation of the DC Circuit decision to hold the DC ordinance totally unconstitutional. The most important came during this exchange during the argument made by Alan Gura, representing respondant Heller:

JUSTICE STEVENS: Let me ask a question are you, in effect, reading the amendment to say that the right shall not be unreasonably infringed instead of shall not be infringed?

MR. GURA: There is that inherent aspect to every right in the Constitution.

JUSTICE STEVENS: So we can -- consistent with your view, we can simply read this: "It shall not be reasonably infringed"?

MR. GURA: Well, yes, Your Honor, to some extent, except the word "unreasonable" is the one that troubles us, because we don't know what this unreasonable standard looks like.

JUSTICE SCALIA: You wouldn't put it that way. You would just say it is not being infringed if reasonable limitations are being placed upon it.

MR. GURA: That's another way to look at it, Your Honor. Certainly --

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: -- you would define reasonable in light of the restrictions that existed at the time the amendment was adopted.

MR. GURA: Those restrictions.

The problem with this concession is that it opens the door to the legislative violation of rights if the violation is "reasonable", shifting the question from a binary, either-or decision, to a slippery slope that can render all our rights protections meaningless. As may be seen in my previous article on this case, I argued that this would become the central issue in the case, and it was important to proactively define in the briefs what is and what is not "reasonable", rather than letting the opposition define it. Alan Gura, and for that matter, the supporting amici curiae, failed to do that. They might still win this case in a narrow decision, but at the cost of allowing an opinion that will cripple future cases that need to broaden Second Amendment jurisprudence. Lawyers have an unfortunate tendency to focus on winning their present cases at the cost of the cases to come. The opposition has put us in this position by pursuing a longer-term strategy, and we need to do that as well.

Another flaw was in allowing the opposition to frame the issue by not addressing the definition of militia. The term militia had more than one meaning, either at the same time or depending on context:

a. Defense activity (the original Latin meaning, and the leading Founders were Latin-literate).
b. Those engaged in defense activity (a common idiom of the era).
c. Those with a potential of engaging in defense activity.
d. Those who have a moral duty to respond to a militia call-up.
e. Those who have a legal duty to respond to militia call-up (with penalties for failing to do so).

The Second Amendment uses the term in the sense of (a) or (b). During the oral argument the participants were using the term in the sense of (c), (d), or (e), and as a plural or collective noun rather than as an activity that can involve a single individual as well as many of them. This can also be seen in the exchange about the distinction between "self" defense and "common" defense, forgetting that in law the plural contains the singular so that common defense includes self defense and self defense is part of common defense.

The word "militia" is a polyseme, with multiple related meanings, either at the same time or depending on context. It is also a type of noun called an actronym in which the word for an activity acquired the meaning of those engaged in it. It is most often used by the Founders as an outiseme, a polyseme with at least two meanings at the same time, the basic meaning of "defense activity" and a secondary meaning of those who engage in the activity or are obligated to do so.

Gura also left unchallenged the point made by Justice Alito that the power delegated to Congress in Art. I Sec. 8 Cl. 15 and 16 to regulate militia was "plenary", so that the power to organize the militia could include the power to disband it. Gura did briefly dispute this, but should have anticipated it in his brief with the argument that no delegations of power are plenary, because there are only certain directions in which power may be exercised that are constitutional.

The brief endorsed by the White House, which conflicted with that of the Solicitor General, Paul Clement, made the beginning of a good point by drawing an analogy to the preemptive power to regulate the time, place, and manner of congressional elections (except the place of senate elections). But it failed to go on to make the point that it is only constitutional to regulate elections to make them more convenient, fair, and accurate. It is no more constitutional for Congress to prescribe the disbanding of militia than it would be to cancel elections (especially if they didn't go the way Congress wants).

There are several important distinctions that cannot be overemphasized. They are very basic, and one might expect trained, professional lawyers to make them in the normal course of their profession. It is alarming to see members of the U.S. Supreme Court and lawyers arguing before them failing to make them.

The first such distinction is the proper meaning of the term constitutional right. In the U.S. Constitution this means an immunity, that is, a right against the exercise of a power by government officials, what is sometimes called a "negative right" by some commentators. To be such an immunity, it must not be legislatively disabled or restricted. The exercise of an immunity may be disabled or restricted by judicial due process, to resolve a conflict among parties, or if it is proved in court that if not disabled or restricted there will be harm to the subject or to others, or as punishment for a crime defined by a constitutional criminal statute. But that is not the same as a legislative disablement or restriction, which would be a constitutionally prohibited bill of attainder. See my article, Public Safety or Bills of Attainder?

Now it may happen that the exercise of some power happens, incidentally, to put a burden on the exercise of a right. This most often occurs with the exercise of a taxing power. The question then becomes whether the burden is undue, or excessive. For example, a court may reasonably find that it is not an undue burden on the right to a free press to impose the same 7% sales tax on the sale of newspapers or newsprint that is imposed on almost all other commodities. However, a 100% tax just on newsprint, especially that sold to a disfavored newspaper, would indeed be an undue burden. But that is not the same as a direct or indirect legislative restriction, regulation or prohibition of the exercise of a right, such as by doing what was done in the district of Columbia, by passing a criminal ordinance requiring firearms to be registered, then, beginning in 1976, refusing to accept further registrations.

Also confused in the oral argument was the question of what is the authority for any legislative restriction or regulation. Would it be the exercise of a municipal police power, of the alleged power of Congress under the Commerce Clause as extended by modern (incorrect) interpretations of the Necessary and Proper Clause, or of the Militia Clauses of Art. I Sec. 8 Cl. 15 and 16 and Article II. It should be clear that with militia involved, whether active and organized or not, the power of Congress and the derivative authority of the District of Columbia, considered as akin to a state, that power is limited to the Militia Clauses. That means that while the U.S. or DC government may require citizens not in a called-up status to keep certain weapons and equipment, they may only regulate or restrict such weapons or equipment for persons in a called-up status, and it would be unconstitutional to keep everyone, or some disfavored group, in a called-up status indefinitely as a way to authorize the regulation or restriction.

Another point of confusion was in discussion of United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939), in which the discussants took from it that the weapons that could not be properly prohibited were those that were in common use by the people (when not in called-up status), rather than, as the opinion states, suitable for militia use, which is quite a different thing. The issue in the case was whether the weapon in question could be taxed, because if it was suitable for militia use, it would be properly tax exempt, on the grounds that a tax on it would be an undue burden on the exercise of a right. Neglected in that case was the question of whether it was constitutional to make it a criminal offense to possess something on which a tax had not been paid, which, given the limited delegations of powers in the U.S. Constitution, is itself unconstitutional. But that point was not argued in that case, perhaps in part because the party, Miller, was dead, and no one appeared to represent him in court. That fact makes the entire case infirm. The Court did signal that it had to make the distinction between items suitable for militia use and those that are not because if everything was suitable for militia then nothing could be taxed. However, since almost any working item might potentially be used for militia in some scenario, the real distinction that has to be made is whether that item was so used for some significant period of time, or would be likely used for militia at least some of the time. The issue arises because while the materiel of regular military forces are normally acquired through a formal acquisition process, in which the items are clearly identified, with purchasing being tax exempt, for irregular forces where militia materiel is acquired informally by individuals, the taxability of each item becomes ambiguous.

Apparently, the respondants were trying to avoid arousing fears that their legal position might threaten restrictions on the possession of such things as fully-automatic firearms, armor-piercing ammunition, rocket-propelled grenades, or plastic handguns, or possession of firearms by various classes of persons administrative deemed to be "dangerous" (see my article above), which were not issues in this case anyway. The members of the U.S. Supreme Court seemed to want to explore that area, and none of the litigants seemed as prepared for that as they should have been. It is difficult to tell a justice of the Supreme Court that his question is not on point to an issue in the case, but that should have been done. What should not have been done was to concede that there were weapons suitable for militia that could nevertheless be prohibited as not protected by the Second Amendment. The remedies for misuse of such weapons are to organize and train people as militia, and if someone is not fit to have or use one responsibly, to disable his right in an individual due process proceeding.

Another annoying error made in reporting on this case is to treat the word "General" as a title or rank of the Solicitor General, Paul Clement. It is not a title or rank. It is just a way to distinguish the official as not a "Special" solicitor. Similarly, the term "Attorney General" only means the person holds a general power of attorney, instead of only a special power of attorney, and it is similarly incorrect to call an attorney general by the title "General". The proper term of address is only "Mister".

From my viewpoint all the briefs of the parties and amici were deficient in various ways. I find the arguments shallow, lacking in a deep, philosophic understanding of the issues, as well as failing to anticipate the course of future litigation. It will mean more work for the lawyers, and a continuing ability of the gun rights organizations to recruit members and solicit donations, but it does not move us to where we need to be. Gura, the respondant's team, and supporting amici were too willing to concede many ways that firearms might be "reasonably" restricted, ignoring the fact that there is no constitutional authority to do so even if the Second Amendment allowed it, which it does not.

Ron Paul 2008 Campaign Postmortem

As a veteran of many election campaigns and movements, going back to 1960, and as having spoken to a lot of voters in this campaign season, I have a somewhat different take on the Ron Paul campaign than Sean Scallon does.

Although there are still many voters who have never heard of Ron Paul and his message, there are also many who haven't heard much about the other candidates, either. I find that polling in single digits was not the result of not enough people knowing. This is best indicated by the results in his own congressional district, where 70% of Republicans voted to return him to Congress, but only 12% voted to nominate him as the Republican presidential candidate, not enough to pass the 20% threshold for getting delegates. Those results don't come from not knowing, or even accepting, him or his message. Voters in his district know him fairly well. They like and trust him, and more people vote for him for that than agree with his positions, most of which they don't understand and prefer to trust him to think about.

The 5% of the vote he got in the Republican primary in Texas, normalized by multiplying by .6 to project it to the results that might be expected in a general election, yields 3%. That is the same percentage I received in the 2006 election when I was the Libertarian candidate for Texas Attorney General, and I got and spent far less money and had far fewer campaign workers. In other words, when it came to the final test, we both only got a hard core of libertarian voters who are more concerned about sending a message to policymakers to move toward libertarian constitutionalist positions than they are about nominating a candidate that they think can win in the general election. They perceive that, even if they are ready for a president who takes such positions, most of the rest of the country is not. It is not unlike the perception that the country is not ready for a black or female or Muslim or gay or openly agnostic president, even though oneself might be ready. Their perception is that the country is more ready for any of those than it is for a libertarian constitutionalist president.

I do not find any serious deficiencies in the efforts of the many campaign volunteers, other than there not being enough of them. I have been involved in campaigns in almost every election during the last 48 years and this was without doubt the best organized, most effective, and most enthusiastic I have seen. Everyone involved should be proud of his or her contributions to the effort, and I commend them all.

But we were up against a mindset we could not overcome: voters just did not perceive Ron Paul as someone who could win the general election, or, even if he won, be allowed by the Establishment to govern. I find that only about 10-15% of Republican voters tend to agree with his libertarian constitutionalist positions on domestic issues, and less than half of those agree with his strongly non-interventionist foreign policy positions. While he attracted many volunteers who opposed the Iraq war and foreign intervention, most of the voters with those views preferred to vote in the Democratic primaries or caucuses, largely out of habit and their herd affiliations.

There was also the problem of there being too many candidates competing for the same libertarian constitutionalist voters, especially, toward the end, Mike Huckabee. If the Establishment wanted to defeat our movement, they could not have found a better way to do it than by loading the field with multiple candidates to divide and conquer. If Brownback, Hunter, Tancredo, Huckabee, and Thomson had just stayed out of the race Paul might have gotten as much as 20% of the vote, not enough to win, but enough to shift the policy direction of this country toward libertarian constitutionalism. The Republican voters were gullible enough to fall for that.

The movement has its work cut out for it. Don't get discouraged by that. It took 200 years to get into this predicament and it may take a few generations, or perhaps a major catastrophe, to get us out of it. We are about changing the civic culture of a country, without the benefit of most parents or schools helping to transmit the traditions and habits of thought that founded it. As my grandfather, who used to teach in a one-room schoolhouse, predicted, we have become a nation of historyless adolescents, and growing out of that fast usually takes a lot of pain.

Now the movement needs to shift to electing libertarian constitutionalists to lower offices. It was never realistic to think that electing a president could change anything without first electing like-minded people to every other level and branch of government. Without the rest of the building, beginning with the foundation, the weathervane to be put on top will just lie in the ground, never showing which way the wind is blowing.

I am a candidate for the Texas Libertarian Party nomination for U.S. Senator. There are other such candidates, perhaps even a few within the Republican and Democratic parties, but mostly not. If you want to move the civic culture in the right direction, that will mostly mean supporting or becoming Libertarian candidates.

Let us challenge the voters to vote for the Constitution, because any vote not for the Constitution is a vote against it, and that means a vote for most Republicans or Democrats. Make it clear that to vote against the Constitution is to vote for letting government spy on you, destroy your reputation, assault you, imprison you, take all your property, kill you, molest your family, and force you to dishonor yourself, with no recourse but violence and none to come to your aid. If that's what you want, then volunteer for it, but don't vote for having that done to the rest of us.

The Genomic Contract

The concept of the social contract (or compact, as some prefer), developed by such political philosophers as John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, heavily influenced the Founders. It describes a society as the result of a kind of unwritten contract among its adult members to cooperate and not prey on one another, who pool their powers and jointly decide to delegate some of those powers to agents who function as a government.

In 1976 Richard Dawkins wrote The Selfish Gene, in which he developed the concept that the fundamental unit selected for fitness in biological evolution is not the individual but the gene, and that it is a success strategy for genes to have their organisms sacrifice themselves to insure the survival not just of their own progeny, but of the genes they share with their relatives. This view of genetic evolution explains the advantage of individuals uniting in societies, because it is the society, more than the individual, that enables the survival of the genes shared by its members.

If we carry forward this gene-centric model of evolution, however, we see that it is not really "the gene" that is the fundamental unit. Genes mutate, and the mutations, if they make the organism more fit, tend to survive and yield "progeny" that are descended from them, but not the same. So it makes more sense to describe the fundamental unit not as a gene but as a genetic line of descent.

However, genes do not survive or propagate in isolation, any more than individual organisms do. It therefore makes sense to describe a genome as a kind of society of genes, united by a kind of contract, analogous to the social contract, which we may call the genomic contract. As a society, instances of genes cooperate to propagate the survival of a few copies of themselves, or mutated descendants. In multicellular organisms, especially those that reproduce sexually, most cells are nonreproductive and do not act to insure the survival of direct copies of their own genes, but the genes of cells differentiated to function as reproductive cells, in much the way that social species of organisms do.

Looking at genomes as societies of genes united by a genomic contract is not just a philosophic exercise. It can help us understand how genes are organized into genomes, how they adopt specialized roles, how they sacrifice themselves for the benefit of others, and even how they make collective "decisions". We may even be able to identify persistent transactions among them. We may be able to apply variations on economic, political, and anthropological models to help us understand them. We can speak of games with genes as players, and apply the methods of game theory.

This is only an introduction to the use of this concept. It is hoped that others will pick up on it and develop it further.

Arguments needed in D.C. v. Heller

The granting of certiorari by the U.S. Supreme court in D.C. v. Heller provides the first great opportunity we have had to get a decision on interpretation of the Second Amendment. Already a host of parties are preparing to file amicus briefs in the case, threatening to drown out two important arguments that need to be made and that it does not yet appear will be made by any of the amici:

1. The primary original meaning of "militia", from the Latin, is military service, or, because it includes law enforcement and disaster response, defense activity, and only secondarily those engaged in it, or the subset of those who may be required to engage in that that activity. It is a common idiom in English of the founding era to use the same word for an activity and those engaged in it. Understood in this way, the word is not a plural form, and a single individual, engaged in defense activity, is engaged in militia.

2. The only regulation that is "reasonable" is regulation that enhances the effectiveness of militia.

The lost meaning of "militia"

The right to keep and bear arms (RKBA) is asserted in the Second Amendment with the preamble of militia being a primary purpose of that right:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Previous attempts to get around the right to keep and bear arms has been to subject firearms to taxes. This was the issue in United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939) [HTML] which took the approach that if the firearm in question had had a militia use, it would not have been taxable, and therefore it would not have been illegal to possess it without having paid the tax. While one could question the constitutionality of making it a crime to possess something on which a tax has not been paid, we can understand the concern of the Court that if one cannot make a distinction between militia-related items that are tax exempt and non-militia-related items that are not, then, since almost anything could conceivably be used for militia under some circumstances, nothing would be taxable.

Therefore, it is not enough to establish the individual RKBA if we do not address the way Congress has been trying to do an end-run around it using its taxing power and the precedent of Wickard v. Filburn supporting criminal penalties for activities that have a 'substantial effect" on interestate commerce, under an expansive interpretation of the Necessary and Proper Clause to assert the power to not only "carry into execution" the expressed powers, but to do whatever might be convenient to try to attain the purposes for which a regulation of commerce might be enacted.

To make the proper determination of what is and what is not "militia-related" we therefore have to understand the original meaning of "militia", and do so better than most scholars have done heretofore.

Some confusion arises from the English idiom, which goes back to Anglo-Saxon and got carried over to the adoption of foreign words, of using the same word for an activity and for those engaged in it, with the meaning as activity originally being primary, but slipping into more frequent use of the word in its secondary sense of those engaged in it.

The term "militia" is derived from Latin roots:

• miles /miːles/ : soldier^[2]
• -itia /iːtia/ : a state, activity, quality or condition of being^[3][4]
• militia /mil:iːtia/: Military service^[5]

In English, the usage of "militia" to refer to those engaged in the activity dates back to at least 1590 when it was recorded in a book by Sir John Smythe, Certain Discourses Military with the meanings: a military force; a body of soldiers and military affairs; a body of military discipline^[6]

The original meaning of the Latin word is "military activity", or, since the ancient Romans had the same people fight crime or respond to disasters, "defense activity". In the idiom of English during the 18th century, the same word would often be used for an activity and for those who engage in it, so "militia" could mean either defense activity or those who engage in it, whether as individuals or in concert with others.^[7]

Most of the leading Founding Fathers were Latin-literate, so they would have known the original Latin meaning, and used it when they read or wrote in Latin or used a Latin word in English discourse.^[8][9]

The reason this distinction is important is because if the word means only those engaged in the activity, and is always plural, then militia can only consist of two or more persons, and never just one. However, understood as an activity, then is it clear that one individual can engage in militia, and it follows that self-defense is a militia call-up issued to oneself, to which oneself responds, to enforce the law. When all self-defense is cast into an act of law enforcement, then the legal framework is transformed into what the militia concept requires.

This meaning also comes up in discussing other countries with a militia tradition, especially Switzerland, which the Founders viewed as a model for the kind of militia system they wanted to establish. The militia clauses of the Swiss Federal Constitution are contained in Art. 59, where it is referred to as "military service" (English), "Militärdienst" (German), "service militaire" (French), "servizio militare" (Italian), "servetsch militar" (Romansch), and translated into "servicio militar" (Spanish and Portuguese), all synonyms for "militia" in Latin.

The key thing to understand is that "militia" is not a plural "group", with the implication of "two more more". We can see in the writings and speeches of the Founders that they often used the word prepended with an article, “a” or “the”, to refer to those engaged in the activity, but at other times they use it without the article. Modern readers are likely to understand that as using the word as its own plural, but the plural of militia is militiae, and if the Latin-literate Founders had meant it that way, they would have said militiae. They were, in that usage, meaning the activity, and sometimes, blending both meanings at the same time.

The meaning of the word is discussed in more detail in Militia v. Inimicitia.

What kind of "regulation" of militia is "reasonable"?

It won't be a victory for the original meaning of the Second Amendment if the holding of the Court is that the right to keep and bear arms is individual if it also holds that it is subject to "reasonable regulation" and that exception allows all the restrictions that are presently enacted.

Clearly, the concept of militia does contemplate regulation beyond the "self-regulation" that would satisfy the stipulation that militia be "well regulated". We have in U.S. Const. Art. I Sec. 15 and 16:

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

While militiamen are in called-up status, they are subject to miltia discipline, under which they can be directed what weapons to use and for what purposes. When not in called-up status, they can be required to keep certain kinds of weapons, ready for call-up. See the Militia Act of 1792. Although it may not be obvious to some, it would be unconstitutional to get around the RKBA by keeping the entire population in a permanent called-up status. Call-ups are supposed to endure only as long as an imminent threat exists for which only militia can meet it.

To understand what kind of regulation is reasonable for persons not in called-up status we can use the analogy to the preemptive authority to regulate the time, place and manner of congressional elections, it is unconstitutional to do so in a way that would make elections less fair, convenient, or accurate. Similarly, it is unconstitutional to regulate militia in ways that make them less effective in performing their functions "to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions", or at the state or local level, to respond to disasters. People may be required to be armed, but not forbidden to be armed, without a specific due process proceeding to disable the exercise of the right on proof the individual is a treat to himself or others, with a right to a jury.

Suppose, for example, Congress passed legislation to restrict all voting to a 1-second timeframe for all contests, or required that all polling places be on the moon, or that choices be limited to one or a few candidates approved by a government agency that screens out dissidents. Contrary to Justice Marshall in Gibbons v. Ogden, delegations of power to Congress are not "plenary" as to the "specified objects" of the delegation, but are constitutionally constrained to be reasonable and for constitutionally legitimate purposes. Restrictions like those listed above would be an abuse of discretion on the part of Congress. The only constitutionally legitimate ways that militia may be regulated is in ways that enable those engaged in militia to protect public safety, not in ways intended to protect public safety by disabling militia from doing so.

What is not reasonble or constitutional is prosecuting people on an administrative determination that they are "dangerous", even if there was a conviction of a "felony". without disablement of the RKBA being an explicit part of the sentence. See Public Safety or Bills of Attainder? — Written Jun. 14, 2000. Published in University of West Los Angeles Law Review, Vol. 34, 2002.

A case could be made for the constitutionality of regulating the quality of firearms, in much the way the U.S. DoD regulates the quality of the firearms it purchases for its own use, but not for prohibiting weapons that "do not have a sporting purpose". Militia is not about hunting. even thoug hunting may be a way to maintain militia skills.

The idiom of using the same word for an antivity and those engaged in it

There are many other examples of this idiom. From the Century Dictionary, the precursor of the Oxford English Dictionary, we have the following:

assembly (a-sem'bli), n.; pl. assemblies. [ME and OF assemblee] 1. The act of assembling, or the state of being assembled or gathered together. 2. A company of persons gathered together in the same place, and usually for the same purpose, whether religious, political, educational, or social; an assemblage.

congregation (king-gre-ga'shon), n. [F. congregation] 1. the act of congregating; aggregation. 2. Any collection or assemblage of persons or things.

delegation (del-e-ga'shon), n. [F. delegation] 1. A sending or deputing; the act of putting in commission, or investing with authority to act for another; the appointment of a delegate. 2. A person or body of persons deputed to act for another or for others....

ministry (min'is-tri), n.; pl. ministries. [F. ministere] 1. The act of ministering; the rendering of service; ministration. 2. The state of ministering or serving; agency; instrumentality. 3. The office or function of a minister, civil or ecclesiastical; the state of being a minister, in any sense; the discharge of a mionisterial office.... 4. The general or a particular body of ministers of religion; the ministerial or clerical class; the clergy or priesthood. 5. The body of ministers of state in a country; the heads of departments collectively; the executive administration.... 6. A ministerial department of government; the organization of functionaries administering a branch of public afffairs; a minister and his subordinates collectively....

hunt (hunt), n. 1. The act of seeking for or chasing game or other wild animals for the purpose of catching or killing them; a pursuit; a chase. 2. A pack of hounds engaged in the chase. 3. An association of huntsmen...

police (po-les'), n. [F. police] 1. Public order; the regulation of a country or district with reference to the maintenance of order.... 2. An organized civil force for maintaining order, preventing and detecting crime, and enforcing the laws; the body of men by whom the municipal laws and regulations of a city, incorporated town or borough, or rural district are enforced. 3. In the United States Army, the act or process of policing.

Other such words include service, movement, wedding, viking, aggregation, march, and court.

The word "militia" is a polyseme, with multiple related meanings, either at the same time or depending on context. It is a type in which a noun meaning "those engaged in the activity" is derived from the noun meaning "activity" without losing the original meaning.

How to achieve energy independence

Whenever the subject of excessive dependence on oil imports comes up, someone always calls for achieving energy independence, but then the discussion gets diverted into such remedies as energy conservation, wind farms, geothermal and ocean thermal sources, ground-based photovoltaic arrays, biofuels, coal, ocean deposits of methyl hydrate, and, of course, the big ones -- nuclear or fusion reactors.

However, there are problems will all of those. No reasonable amount of conservation is going to keep our economy going if energy supplies are cut off. Wind farms, and geothermal and ocean thermal sources, can help in some places, but one can't depend on them as a replacement for fossil fuels. Ground-based photovoltaic systems are still somewhat expensive, although the cost is coming down. Biofuels turn out to cost more energy and other resources than they save, at least if corn is used instead of sugar cane or switchgrass. Coal and methyl hydrate will just accelerate the global warming problem. Nuclear presents the problems of waste disposal and proliferation, and fusion reactors don't work yet.

The one alternative that is seldom mentioned is space solar power: putting photovoltaic arrays in orbit and beaming the power to receiving antennas on the Earth. It is not a new idea. It is estimated that about 40 satellites in geosynchronous orbit could meet the needs for energy of the entire world, and it it was the United States who puts them up and operates them, we would be the energy exporters to the world instead of importers. Once in operation, it is estimated the cost of energy from them would be less than half the cost from other sources, and that it could pay off the investment to put up the system in less than a decade. It requires little new technology, other than ways to bring down the costs for vary large systems. It has much support from leading engineers and scientists, including a team within NASA. And nations like Japan are moving ahead to do it without waiting for us.

So why aren't we doing it? The answer, as usual, is politics. The alternative is opposed by the proponents of nuclear power, who keep making the argument that Earth-to-orbit lift costs are too high, when the proposal has long been to use materials mined from the Moon or an asteroid rather than lifted from Earth. The real problem for them is that such a proposal doesn't make them a lot of money. It would be creating an industrial system in space that they would not control and from which they could not profit.

And of course, they don't hesitate to raise other objections:
1. It is too "Buck Rogers". Silly argument, considering what we have done in the last 50 years, but they make it.
2. It would be vulnerable to attack by space weapons. And oil tankers, refineries, pipelines, and nuclear power plants aren't?
3. It would be vulnerable to space radiation and coronal mass ejections. They can be hardened against that, as we already do with communications satellites.
4. They could become platforms for death rays. Yes, but all the more reason that we put them up instead of someone else.
5. The power beams would disrupt migrating wildlife. The heating effect would be less than sunbeams through clouds, negligible.
6. The satellites would brighten the night sky, impairing ground-based astronomy. But we could move the telescopes out into space, even putting them on the solar power satellites.
7. The space aliens might object. Okay, this is for humor. But since the satellites would support the effort to defend the Earth from impacts with asteroids and comets, one suspects the aliens wouldn't object to us doing that.

Check out some of these links:
Space Studies Institute http://ssi.org/
Sunsat Energy Council http://www.sunsat.org/
NASA
http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/ABSTRACTS/GPN-2003-00108.html
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/legaff/solar.html
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast23mar_1.htm
http://space-power.grc.nasa.gov/ppo/projects/sdp/
Solar Power Satellites http://www.freemars.org/history/sps.html
Wikipedia articles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_satellite
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_power_transmission
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_energy_development
Space.com
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/solar_power_sats_011017-1.html
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/space_solar_000908.html
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/solar_power_satellite_000421.html
Space Daily http://www.spacedaily.com/news/ssp-01a.html
Reinventing the Solar Power Satellite http://gltrs.grc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/GLTRS/browse.pl?2004/TM-2004-212743.html
Solar Power Satellite Place http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/solarpowersatelliteplace/
Space Solar Power Library http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/library/index.htm
Space Based Weather Control http://www.borderlands.com/spacewea.htm
Resources for the Future http://www.rff.org/rff/News/Releases/2000/Satellite-Solar-Power-Faces-Considerable-Economic-Challenges.cfm
Access to Energy http://www.accesstoenergy.com/view/atearchive/s76a4466.htm
Lift Elevators to Space http://www.liftport.com/forums/index.php?topic=619.0
MSNBC http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/09/07/350320.aspx

What you can do is spread this message with the suggestion that everyone write to their favorite media urging them to provide more coverage of this alternative. The time for replacement of fossil fuels is already very late.

Thoughts on Iraq

The last two elections were not referenda on Iraq, because they were not framed as a change in direction toward any particular policy alternative, not even immediate withdrawal. There was and is dissatisfaction, but no clear alternatives offered other than "to do something" differently. That can cause people to vote against incumbents, but it doesn't count as a referendum in any meaningful sense.
Yes, with the advantage of hindsight, we should have done certain things differently, including perhaps not going in at all, but it is important to understand what we missed, and when I say "we", I mean almost all of us, because most of us who had much of an opinion did think it seemed like a good idea at the time to get rid of Saddam. (A few of us opposed going in without a constitutional declaration of war, but the odds are that Congress would have voted for one.)
One of the things we didn't miss was the now common view that the people of Iraq are not ready for republican self government. The fact is that 94% of the Iraqi people of all sects are no less ready to govern themselves in peace than most of the people in every other country. They might not have enough sense to vote for "seculars" instead of for "sectarians", but that was something they could eventually have learned. No, what we missed, and it is important, was that remaining 6%.
Or to put it another way, Saddam did indeed have weapons of mass destruction, just not the kind we were looking for. They were that 6%, who Saddam had reduced to a state of barbarism that he very likely calculated would destroy the country when he was no longer around to keep them under restraint. What is happening in Iraq now followed our deposing of him, but would have happened anyway when he eventually died. We were destined to go in to clean up the situation, sooner or later. We just moved up the date by invading.
What perhaps we most missed is the fact that it only takes a small minority of determined barbarians to destroy a civilized society, and it doesn't matter how civilized the rest of the society might be. It is easier to destroy than to create, and no society is really ready to withstand that kind of destructive force. It is worse than most natural disasters. Historically, most societies that have faced similar internal barbarism have either descended into brutal despotism, the barbarians usually becoming the despots, or the barbarians were wiped out, usually along with a lot more innocents. Some of these "burnouts" have reduced the populations of countries by as much as 90%, and destroyed the entire civilized infrastructure.
The trouble is that most Westerners don't really understand bad guys like Saddam. He was expertly playing a "Samson" or "apres moi" gambit. He made Iraq a monument to himself that would self-destruct when he was gone, and trigger a chain of events he expected, with some good reason, would sweep the Middle East, deny oil from that region to the world, trigger a world war for oil and other resources, and bring down the industrialized nations and Western Civilization. We can argue that it would not get that far, but that it was what he tried to set up to happen is all too plausible.

So when it comes to considering our options, let us remember the answer Chinese Premier Chou En-Lai gave to the question, sometimes reported as being asked by Henry Kissinger, "What were the consequences of the French Revolution?" He is reported to have replied, "It's too soon to tell." We won't know whether there is anything else we could do or how it might turn out. History is not a game like chess where we can evaluate the state of the game at any given point. We are flying blind, and while we can try to do the right things, we can never be sure we may not be doing the wrong things, whatever we do.

Constitutional views on abortion

The abortion issue was misframed in the badly-argued Roe v. Wade case, which could not have been decided otherwise given the way it was argued.

The Supreme Court was hearing on appeal a case decided for the plaintiff (Roe), on the grounds that she had a Ninth Amendment right, incorporated on the states, to decide whether and how many children to have. That decision was correct, and the reasoning was correct. The Supreme Court should have just affirmed the decision, and the opinion, of the Fifth Circuit. Instead they took the case, and then struggled to find another way than the Ninth Amendment, to reach the same conclusion. The result was an exercise in sophistry. There is no good way to avoid the Ninth Amendment, to which there is intense opposition in the legal mainstream.

Part of the problem for opponents of abortion with the Fifth Circuit holding was that it "incorporated" the Ninth Amendment over the states, making it a federally justiciable everywhere.

Note however that the Fifth Circuit holding was only that a woman could terminate,the pregnancy, not that she could kill the fetus, unless she had no alternative. In principle, if the fetus could be removed from her body without killing it. that would be compliant with the holding. That is similar to the right to evict a trespasser, while taking care not to kill him. However, there is not presently a way to do that for a fetus. Should medicine eventually find a way to save the fetus, a state could require that be done. But there is also a Ninth Amendment right not to pay for rearing a child, so the state would have to bear all costs.

A person has rights, and a non-person doesn't, so if the issue is framed only as a contest between the rights of a person and a non-person, the person wins. However, (state) law may protect things that are not persons, essentially as a kind of public property. It may also restrain the ways a person with superior rights may exercise those rights against another entity, person or non-person. Thus, the owner of a piece of property who has consented to another person visiting him there, then orders him to leave, does not thereby immediately acquire the right to shoot him. He does not have the duty to allow the visitor to stay if the visitor will die of exposure if evicted, but he should still be alive when he is evicted. Thus, without violating the rights of the pregnant person, a state could require that the abortion be conducted, if possible, in a way that would leave the fetus alive at the point it is ejected, presumably into the care of others. However, this requirement could not constitutionally "burden" the right of the person to eject. It would have to be at least as easy as killing the fetus, and any additional expense would have to be borne by the party seeking live termination. Now, admittedly, there is presently no way to do that in most cases, but as a theoretical proposition, it is constitutionally permissible.

One problem with the debate on abortion is that it tends to gloss over the real issue: do we really want to criminally prosecute someone, the pregnant female, her abortionist, or perhaps even the guy who got her pregnant, with deprivation of liberty, or even life (as first-degree murder), for terminating a pregnancy (even if the fetus is left alive)? If a pregnant female hints to someone she is considering having an abortion, do we really want to lock her up or appoint a guardian to supervise her to prevent her from aborting? Can we really get a jury, if it is not stacked with anti-abortionists, to convict? Who is going to pay for the prosecutions, the incarcerations, the executions, and perhaps for the unwanted children who will be born if the measures to prevent abortion happen to be successful? How is any law enforcement agency even going to be able to investigate or prove cases if having an abortion becomes as easy as taking a pill that will be available either over the counter or on the black market?

Those who oppose abortion seem to try to avoid answering those questions. I have tried to find out why, and my conclusion is that for most of the stronger proponents of criminalizing abortion, the real motive is to punish women for having extramarital sex, by forcing them to either rear an unwanted child, watch it suffer and even die because she is inadequate for the task, or suffer the pain of first bonding to it and then having the state take the child away from her (and perhaps deliver it into to the clutches of pedophile "foster parents". (Does any of this resemble Prohibition or the War on Drugs?)

The proper libertarian position on this issue is that government is incompetent to intervene without making a bad situation worse, and that the way to prevent abortions is to encourage birth control, or abstention, at least for minors and mental incompetents. It is not a problem within the competence of government. It is a problem for social pressure and moral suasion.

There are no reliable statistics on the question of how the legality or illegality of abortion impacts abortion practices, so it is largely a matter of conjecture. However, anecdotal evidence from those involved in the field indicates that the impact of Roe v. Wade, making abortions "legal", and therefore presumably easier, was to shift the date of abortions back to an earlier stage of pregnancy, especially to the first trimester. It has also shifted the practice away from lay abortionists to physicians and clinics, reducing the mortality of the women. There is also evidence that the increased rate of abortion has had a significant impact on the crime rate and psychotropic dependency, as the reduction of juvenile crime and drug addiction has tracked the reduction in unwanted births, to the extent we can get reliable data. Although abortion may not be beneficial for the fetus, it appears to be beneficial, on balance, for almost everyone else and on society as a whole.

I have made a good-faith effort to find any ways that government intervention has or could make the situation better. I have found some theoretical ways, but none that work in practice, other than providing contraceptives and training in their use, or putting young people under 24-hour supervision, such as keeping them in gender-segregated boarding schools. Even government suasion, such as waiting periods, counseling, etc., appears to be counterproductive. Reduced funding tends to shift terminations toward later stages of pregnancy, and increases the rate of mortality and morbidity among the women. Any responsible policy analysis of this or any other issue must consider all the costs and benefits, not just those that support a particular position. It is easy in this field for emotion to distort judgment, and we must always be on guard against this.

As for leaving the matter to the states, it does not work to allow each state to have a different definition of personhood, given that all the rights recognized, explicitly or implicitly, in the Constitution, attach to persons, other than the rights of citizenship (voting, holding office). All that any state would have to do to deny someone any right would be to change their definition of personhood to exclude that individual, as was done (inconsistently) to justify slavery. Now, as I have pointed out in previous posts, a state may protect things without declaring them to be persons, but not to the extent that it imposes an undue burden on the exercise of a right by a person. That only leaves the possibility of legislation requiring abortions to leave the fetus alive if not unduly burdensome on the woman, but as yet this is infeasible in practice.

People who come to the abortion issue from a religious standpoint have trouble accepting that "personhood" is a matter of convention. It is not something that is somehow defined by nature or scripture. It is defined by law and legal practice, and has to be, because it is only "persons" (legal roles) that can meaningfully be deemed to have legal rights, powers, and duties. Too many people try to confuse the issue by framing it in terms of "human life" or other such term, but that is not a proper legal term.

"Personhood" is a constitutional issue because the Constitution associates rights with "persons", as it would have to do. Not with "human life". For purpose of law, a "person" is a bundle of competences, including the competence to have interests and assert them as judicial questions in a court of law.

At the time the Constitution was ratified, the beginning of personhood was conventionally defined by birth, not conception, and the end by the cessation of signs of life, such as a heartbeat. That was done, in large part, because those were the ways that the bundle of competences could be ascertained, as a practical matter. Today medical science makes the points of beginning and ending less definite, but we are bound by the definition at the time of ratification of all legal terms in the Constitution, because if we allow subsequent opinions about meaning to be the basis for legal decisionmaking, there is no longer a "law" that can constrain government. To understand this problem, just consider that what the slave states were doing to maintain slavery was to redefine personhood to exclude blacks. They expressed it as a redefinition of "citizenship", ignoring that constitutional rights are attached to persons and not citizens, except for rights like the right to vote and hold public office. To change the definition of a constitutional term we have to formally amend the Constitution.

What the issue comes down to is that not every instance of something that can be called "human life" is a person, and a "person" is not necessarily a human. If a human female gave birth to an individual that had the DNA of a human but managed to express that DNA as a cocker spaniel, with all the capabilities and limitations of a cocker, and therefore not the competences of a person, the law would have to treat it as a nonperson. On the other hand, we already find corporate entities to exhibit the competences of personhood and treat it as a person. At some time in the future, we could have a robot, a space alien, or a chimpanzee genetically enhanced to be able to speak and reason like the average human, appear in court with a legal claim and the expectation of receiving redress of its grievances. A judge might dismiss the claim of a robot or a chimp, but if the space alien has a saucer hovering overhead with its beam weapons directed at the courthouse, one suspects he would find its personhood apparent.

So what it really comes down to is whether a being has a gun or the support of something with a gun, to defend its rights. Law and politics, in the end, respects power and the willingness to use it. That comes down to money and votes.

A constitutionally principled and competent position on abortion is that rights belong to legal persons, that in a court contest between a person and a nonperson the decision must favor the person, that at the time the Constitution was ratified personhood was defined by convention to begin at birth and not earlier, and that there is no consensus or sufficient support to amend the Constitution to change the definition, therefore we hold that while a state may encourage pregnant a woman to terminate a pregnancy in a way that allows the fetus to survive, this must not be done in a way that unduly burdens her right to do so.

A few points need to be emphasized:

Congress has no authority under the Constitution to define when or how personhood begins or ends. That was done by the ratifiers of the Constitution when they froze the prevailing definition as of the time of ratification, which was that it begins at birth (or even somewhat after birth, such as baptism, entry into the family Bible, or registration with the county recorder). If Congress had such a power the majority party could define members of the minority party as "unpersons" not entitled to rights or the protection of the law. As much as some people might like to legislate against abortion, violating the Constitution is not the way to act against it.

Denying funding is certainly constitutional, but removing jurisdiction from federal courts is not. This approach is based on the wrongful decision in Ex Parte McCardle, 74 U.S. 506 (Wall.) (1868). See the decision at http://www.constitution.org/ussc/074-506.htm and my commentary at http://www.constitution.org/ussc/074-506jr.htm . The Constitution only grants Congress authority to reassign jurisdiction between original and appellate, not to remove jurisdiction from all federal courts for certain issues. For any judicial issue there always has to be a court somewhere that can hear it, even if it is only the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court always has at least appellate jurisdiction. Congress also has no authority to recognize the authority of the states to do anything, like some kind of license. The states do have the authority to protect the unborn in certain ways, just as they have the authority to protect trespassers from being summarily shot without due notice or an opportunity to leave peacefully. They could similarly require that, if it can be done without unduly burdening the right of the woman to terminate her pregnancy, the termination leave the fetus alive. That may not be medially feasible today in most cases, but with medical progress it may become possible. Some might like to punish women for getting pregnant irresponsibly by forcing them to carry to term, but as a matter of constitutional law we have to make more subtle decisions.

Passing a statute criminalizing abortion would merely drive it underground, as it was before Roe v. Wade, when it was difficult to get juries to convict. Statistical studies show that the rates of abortion are about the same regardless of whether it is legal or illegal. Like the prohibitions on alcohol and psychotropic substances, such laws are unenforceable in practice, and do more harm than good. Law is not some kind of magic. Passing a law against something is as likely to cause more of it than less. Some interventions are simply beyond the competence of government, and we need to recognize those limits and use other measures, like education and social pressure, to do what government can't.

A law is a command from those authorized to issue it to the members of the public body bound to obey it. To be a law it must continue to mean what it meant to the lawgiver when it was issued, to the extent that meaning can be discerned upon investigation. It is not a stretch to interpret "writings" to include all kinds of communication of information, or "arms" to include all the kinds of tools that might be used by military or militia to accomplish their proper missions (from ammunition to computers). "Mile" has essentially the same meaning. All we have done has been to adopt more precise measurement operations.

Now consider some other constitutional terms, such as "jury" or "due process", and posit extreme departures from original usage. Are we really free to redefine those terms? The U.S. Supreme Court sustained the power of a state to try a case with a jury of as few as six in Williams v. Florida, 399 US 78 (1970), but I regard that as a wrong decision, if the term in the Florida Constitution is considered to have the same meaning the term has in the U.S. Constitution, which can be presumed if it is not redefined in the Florida Constitution. But suppose "jury" were interpreted to be a single individual designated by the Party (as in Orwell)? Or suppose "due process" were interpreted to mean, as it did for the Queen of Hearts in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, "Sentence first--verdict afterwards." http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19033/19033-h/19033-h.htm . The defenders of that interpretation might argue that it is "due" because it is uniformly applied to everyone, but I would argue that it unconstitutional because it does not provide the minimal level of protection of the rights of persons that was the standard when the Constitution was adopted.

Now we get to the term "person". Are we really free to redefine it by contemporary usage? The slave states tried to do that for blacks to maintain slavery, although they tried to do it using the term "citizen" rather than "person" and attaching rights to citizenship instead of personhood, which is contrary to the usage of those terms in the Constitution. Proponents of making abortion illegal might try to redefine the term to include more objects, but if we allow that we must also, logically, allow redefinition to include fewer. To allow states to each adopt their own definitions would be to allow them to define "person" to exclude humans of German descent, or perhaps members of the opposition political party, making it legal for any person to kill anything not a person. Be careful what you ask for.

We can detect the onset of brain activity. For most fetuses it is a sudden event that occurs at about the 145-day point. "Like a lightbulb", said one fetal neurologist. The idea of moving the commencement of personhood back to that point has been proposed, but it would require a constitutional amendment.

Suppose we only redefine the term "person" to begin at some point before birth. That would mean that if there were any reasonable suspicion that the woman might terminate the pregnancy, the court would have the duty to confine the woman under constant supervision of a guardian ad litem to deprive her of the opportunity to abort, and charge the woman or her spouse the costs of the court-appointed supervisor. If anyone has been following what has been happening in family courts recently, this is not an implausible scenario. Be careful what you ask for.

I remember the days when the "conservative" position was to support abortion as a way to reduce crime, thought to be increased by producing more unwanted children, a hypothesis that has recently been supported by research). The reality is that if there is not more of a consensus to make it a crime than we have in this country today, anti-abortion criminal laws would be unenforceable, as they were before Roe v. Wade. What we don't need is yet more unenforceable statutes.

Considering personhood to begin at birth may not be a perfect solution from all viewpoints, but we can reasonably maintain that it is the worst solution -- except for all the others.

It is not a stretch to interpret "person" to include android robots, animals enhanced to have humanlike intelligence and ability to speak, or space aliens, but to do that we would be invoking a bundle of competences that they have and a fetus does not. We are still stuck with the meaning of the term for humans in 1787 that personhood begins at birth (or somewhat after).

Southern slaveholders denied rights to blacks by essentially adopting legal definitions of personhood that were different from the definitions used in other states. They tried to do it using the term "citizen" when they meant "person". If they had known what they were doing they would have used "person" and the issue would be more clear. But now that people are coming to use the words with greater precision, once we open the way for the states to redefine it there is nothing to prevent a local majority to redefine it to exclude anyone they don't like. How would you like it if some day those without social security numbers were defined as "nonpersons" subject to being killed by anyone on sight, and some bureaucrat deleted your SSN from the system?

I wouldn't be surprised if half of all pregnant women have thought about terminating the pregnancy, and hinted that to someone, which would create reasonable suspicion, and trigger confinement and 24/7 supervision. Consider the figures from http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5511a1.htm . You are probably looking at such draconian interventions for 1million women a year at a cost of $50,000 each, or $50 billion/year. Are you willing to pay taxes to do that? I suspect there would also be a cost from pregnant women assassinating the judges, supervisors, and other persons who tried to impose that kind of slavery on them.

Abortionists or even women acting alone have always been able to induce abortions throughout the gestation period without surgery, but at some risk. Surgery is safer but not necessary. Besides, long before Roe v. Wade juries were refusing to convict, especially when there was at least one woman on the jury.

There is no constitutional authority for the federal Congress to prohibit abortion, or any other medical procedure. The only constitutional federal crimes are treason, counterfeiting, piracy, felonies on the high seas, offenses against the laws of nations, enslavement, violations of rights by state agents, or impeding voting on certain grounds, such as race, gender, age 18 or above, nonpayment of a tax, etc. That's all. All those federal statutes prohibiting other things are unconstitutional. See http://www.constitution.org/col/02729_fed-usurp.htm .

Concerning whether the Supreme Court had jurisdiction to decide Roe v. Wade, the 14th Amendment is usually cited as having extended the jurisdiction of the federal courts to cases between a citizen and his state over a claim that the state denied a fundamental right of the citizen. That amendment was indeed intended to clarify the question of whether adoption of the Bill of Rights, except for the First Amendment, made such cases "federal questions" within the jurisdiction of federal courts. The decision in Barron v. Baltimore had been that they did not. I argue in my commentary on that case that it was wrongly decided. The 14th Amendment only clarified original meaning and understanding. It didn't change it.

The Constitution did not establish any mechanism other than that each and every person has to interpret and apply the Constitution himself, in any situation in which he might find himself, and may not relinquish the responsibility for doing that to supervisors, legal counsel, or even judges. If you read the opinion in Marbury v. Madison carefully, you will find that we are all on our own. One can say that this is a design flaw in the Constitution, but it is not. It is the only way a constitution can work, and if that is too much of a demand on citizens of a republic, then there is no constitutional design that can work, and a constitutional republic is impossible.

The founders adopted a system of constitutional republican government to surpass the limitations and defects of the old common law system, which incorporates nonconflicting parts of the common law, but established a completely new foundation on a historical act of ratification, not on custom, tradition, or precedent, except mainly to provide the definitions of key terms.

Opponents of abortion sometimes look for support to a quote from founder James Wilson, in Vol. 2 of his Works:

With consistency, beautiful and undeviating, human life, from its commencement to its close, is protected by the common law. In the contemplation of law, life begins when the infant is first able to stir in the womb.⁹⁸⁰ By the law, life is protected not only from immediate destruction, but from every degree of actual violence, and, in some cases, from every degree of danger.

980. 1. Bl. Com. 129.

However, that footnote 980 is to a passage in William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England:

I. The right of personal security consists in a person's legal and uninterrupted enjoyment of his life, his limbs, his body, his health, and his reputation.6

1. Life is the immediate gift of God, a right inherent by nature in every individual; and it begins in contemplation of law a soon as an infant is able to stir in the mother's womb. For if a woman is quick with child, and by a potion or otherwise, killeth it in her womb; or if any one beat her, whereby the child dieth in her body, and she is delivered of a dead child; this, though not murder, was by the antient law homicide or manslaughter.o(6) But the modern law doth not look upon this offence in quite so atrocious a light, but merely as a heinous misdemesnor.^p

(6) But if the child be born alive, and afterwards die in consequence of the potion, or beating, it will be murder. 3. Inst. 50. But quere, how shall this be proved?

p 3 Inst. 50. q Stat. 12. Car. II. c. 24. r Stat. 10 and 11 W. III. c. 16.

So Blackstone's comment is in turn based on Edward Coke's Institutes (3 Inst. 50).

If a woman be quick with childe, and by a potion or otherwise killeth it in her wombe; or if a man beat her, whereby the childe dieth in her body, and she is delivered of a dead childe, this is a great misprision, and no murder: but if the childe be born alive, and dieth of the potion, battery or other cause, this is murder: for in law it is accounted a reasonable creature, in rerum natura, when it is born alive.

So it is not murder, because not yet a person, if the death occurs before natural birth. It is a common law misdemeanor, a "misprision", in which the woman, not the fetus, is the victim. It should be understood that in that time, it could be held a common law offense to assault oneself as well as another. That is the basis for laws against suicide.

However, common law crimes are forbidden by the constitutional prohibitions on ex post facto laws. See my comment on United States v. Hudson, 7 Cranch 32 (1812). The way is still open for a state to pass a law against abortion as an assault on the woman, but if she doesn't complain, we come back to Blackstone's "quere, how shall this be proved?"

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In response to those who call for overturning Roe v. Wade, it is worth asking what the effects of that would be. The issue in the case was not a statute making it a crime for a woman to have an abortion, but for a physician or other person to assist in it, although it was treated as though the pregnant woman were the party targeted with prosecution, which is why it was argued to be moot after the period of the pregnancy concluded. We have to consider the following:

1. There is little or no drive to make the woman a criminal. It would also be nearly impossible to get juries to convict, nullifying the statutes.
2. The lack of medical assistance is not going to prevent most abortions, just make them more dangerous. Do we really want to criminalize physicians trying to minimize the danger? Juries are unlikely to convict those as well.
3. Is it really good public policy to make abortions more difficult or expensive? That has never prevented them.
4. Is it really true that there are plenty of people willing to adopt unwanted pregnancies? Not kids from disadvantaged backgrounds. Not if the kids are brain damaged or sociopathic. I know of people who have adopted children with the ever more common oppositional defiance disorder (ODD) (presumably caused by the birth mother taking drugs) for whom managing the kids is a nightmare.
5. Is it really punishing the mother to make her care for the child? I know many who welcome more unwed babies for the welfare benefits. (Most of which eventually become criminals.)
6. Advocates in this field should not presume that all affected are prosperous middle-class persons. Abortion appears to be a major way to combat multi-generational poverty. Do we really want to be overrun by desperate delinquents?

Links:

1. Legal issues of Roe v. Wade, Daniel J. Castellano, 2009, 2011.
2. “Sua cuique persona?” A Note on the Fiction of Legal Personhood  ... , Jeanne Gaakeer, https://doi.org/10.1080/1535685X.2016.1232920
3. “An Artificial Being”: John Marshall And Corporate Personhood, Christopher J.Wolfe, Harvard Journal of Law& Public Policy [Vol.40]
4. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood, 1985. Amazon, Hulu , Wikipedia .
5. Originalism does not support social conservative agenda https://constitutionalism.blogspot.com/2016/12/originalism-does-not-support-social.html