Appreciate the factors! Agree on most of them being quite important. One quick note:
One thing you leave out is mass public opinion, and all the various ways that can be effective—demonstrators in the streets, general strike, cessation of quasi-voluntary compliance in all the areas where the government requires it, and so on, perhaps insurgency or terrorism in extremis. Layer onto that the various additional actions available to economic elites. The real hope for the Supreme Court is that the public takes its side in some extreme crisis, and that a clear ruling on its part serves as the focal point to kick all of that off.
Yeah, my analysis here was focused on what the supreme court and judiciary can do, from a constitutionalist perspective. My sense is the constitution doesn’t really allow insurrection under almost any circumstance, but does also maybe kind of expect it’s an important thing to maintain the threat of (hence the right to bear arms). I would be interested in someone analyzing when the constitution would permit a private citizen to take up arms against a sitting government (if any such circumstance exists).
I would be interested in someone analyzing when the constitution would permit a private citizen to take up arms against a sitting government (if any such circumstance exists).
To my knowledge, the interpretation which comes closest is Insurrectionist theory which interprets the right to bear arms as including the right of citizens to use them to defend against an oppressive government. There are apparently more explicit statements of this right in the preambles to some first-state constitutions, as well as the declaration of independence.
It should not be surprising that nobody has yet won on such a case in court though, and practically speaking you don’t have this right[1].
My understanding has been that even if you are arrested unlawfully by a police officer, you can’t use proportional force (as you would if you were assaulted by a non-police-officer), since the perspective of the government is that it is the judiciary’s right to determine whether an arrest is or isn’t lawful, not the citizen’s.
Except implicitly the founders themselves, who of course supported the right to revolution. Or at least supported that right for themselves. But originalism has never been a popular (or coherent) constitutional philosophy.
Appreciate the factors! Agree on most of them being quite important. One quick note:
Yeah, my analysis here was focused on what the supreme court and judiciary can do, from a constitutionalist perspective. My sense is the constitution doesn’t really allow insurrection under almost any circumstance, but does also maybe kind of expect it’s an important thing to maintain the threat of (hence the right to bear arms). I would be interested in someone analyzing when the constitution would permit a private citizen to take up arms against a sitting government (if any such circumstance exists).
To my knowledge, the interpretation which comes closest is Insurrectionist theory which interprets the right to bear arms as including the right of citizens to use them to defend against an oppressive government. There are apparently more explicit statements of this right in the preambles to some first-state constitutions, as well as the declaration of independence.
It should not be surprising that nobody has yet won on such a case in court though, and practically speaking you don’t have this right [1] .
My understanding has been that even if you are arrested unlawfully by a police officer, you can’t use proportional force (as you would if you were assaulted by a non-police-officer), since the perspective of the government is that it is the judiciary’s right to determine whether an arrest is or isn’t lawful, not the citizen’s.
Except implicitly the founders themselves, who of course supported the right to revolution. Or at least supported that right for themselves. But originalism has never been a popular (or coherent) constitutional philosophy.