The Hawaii Supreme Court handed down a unanimous opinion on Wednesday declaring that its state constitution grants individuals absolutely no right to keep and bear arms outside the context of military service. Its decision rejected the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment, refusing to interpolate SCOTUS’ shoddy historical analysis into Hawaii law. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed the ruling on this week’s Slate Plus segment of Amicus; their conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
The US is akin to the EU, American states are like European states
There’s no federal system for the EU, every country is fully autonomous.
So you can see why states are so defiant when the union tries to impose laws over them
Aren’t US states like counties? Like the states have a narrow set of rules they decide over and the rest comes from the top down.
Over the years the federal government has expanded it’s power, so ideally yes but States still have a lot of power
The notion that they are self governing is why they scream about state’s rights and push against any loss of control
Hah, even I remember from history class that states rights just meant states right to do slavery in the US.
I guess it is then closer to a state and county relationship for the US states and federal government. The EU probably is not very comparable as it mostly does trade stuff, collective bargaining and consumer protection. Joining and leaving is also free for anyone usually based on a referendum.
All of those things used to be true
They even screamed state rights about abortion but I guess your history class didn’t cover current events
Yea, history class was like 30 years ago