The Supreme Court recently decided 5-3 that the phrase “any court” on a gun application (as in, has any court ever thrown you in the hoosegow for a year or more?) refers only to domestic courts.
At first I thought this was silly, but in reflection, especially considering the idea that the person who doesn’t write a contract gets the contract interpreted in their favor, I agreed with it. I figured that agreeing with a gun-runner in a way that isolated me from international courts was going to put me on the rare side of things with Scalia, Thomas, and Rehnquist.
So I was astonished to find out that these were the only three judges who voted in favor of interpreting “any court” to include foreign courts–that once again I was siding with the liberals, only this time we liberals were saying that gun-runners should go free, notwithstanding what foreign judges have to say on the matter.
What do other folks think of this case? I’m interested in hearing the discussion; I learn a lot from SCOTUS debates around here, so I figured I’d open this one up.
After thinking about this, I agree with the minority. I’m assuming that the “form” mentioned in the article accurately reflects the wording of the statute. These statutes are written by lawmakers with legal backgrounds or access to aids with legal backgrounds. If they meant “any US court”, the statute shoudl have been written that way. After all, the plaintiff in this case seems like exactly the kind of person the satute was written to flag.
I’d like to see some evidence from the majority opinion that federal statutes don’t normally speciify “US courts” when refering to “courts”. Also, if someone has been convicted in a foreign court, is there some appeals process for the case of someone from, say, North Korea who was jailed as political disident? At any rate, it sure seems to be a poorly written statute, and the prudent course would be to interpret it literally.
I’m also surprised that this is the first time such an issue has come up. Especially if, per the majority opinion, the legislature routinely uses “any court” to mean “any US court”.
Broadly, I agree with John Mace. That said, the majority was not without effective arguements and I can see it having gone either way. Congress should have been more clear, as they almost certainly wouldn’t have wanted, say, a conviction for “speculation” in Russia to disqualify one from gun ownership, as the majority pointed out. But I do think that a broad, everyday interpretation of “all” would have worked better here and if Congress didn’t like it they could change the statute from that standard rather than from one which kind of strains to make “all” mean “some.”
