No, you are absolutely and unequivacably wrong on that point. Especially the part I underlined.
Cite? Name a single piece of state legislation which has ever been permitted to override a Constitutional Amendment.
Cornell Law School disagrees with you, Dio. Emphasis added:
I think I see where the problem is. The guarantees of the Constitution fall into two groups: those which purposively bound the Federal government unless they specified the states as well, and those which guaranteed a right after 1867, which automatically were understood to bind the states. In other words, no state can decide that the legislature and not the electorate will choose its Senators, can deny the vote to women or raise the voting age to 21; those were guarantees written with the intent of binding both Federal and state governments. Parts of the original Constitution specified powers prohibited to the states, and others granted exclusively to the Federal government and therefore reasonably understood to have preempted state authority.
In between, there are a bunch of important guarantees spelled out before 1867, to which Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment arguably applies. But it’s very clear that it is incorporated piecemeal and in principle rather than to the letter. For example, freedom of speech, of free exercise of religion, from compulsory self-incrimination, from unreasonable search and seizure are specified as binding on the states. But the right to a jury trial, to a grand jury indictment before being tried for a felony, and a few other things, mandatory in Federal proceedings, are concentrated into a concept that a defendant is entitled to a fair trial with due process of law, and a state which chooses to substitute other means that equally guarantee a fair trial and due process is free to do so. The underlying principle is the substantive guarantee incorporated by the Fourteenth.
your Cornel thesis is only a theory, not settled law. It would only hold true if SCOTUS decided that this particular interpretation of the 2nd Amendment was the correct one. Like I said, if SCOTUS were to rule that the amendment applied to private citizens, states would not be allowed to abridge it.
Your second cite leaves out this part:
Also on preview, what Polycarp said.
Let me put this another way, no rights granted to citizens* by the US Constitution may be abridged by the states. The 2nd Amendment example doesn’t fly because it has never been determined that it grants any right to private citizens.
Grand juries. Required by the federal constitution. Not required in many states.
I *quoted * it. Scroll up. Sheesh.
False. The feds can pass the same laws that states can. There can be no abridgment of a right that does not exist. As I already explained.
Grand juries are not something guranteed to invidual citizens as a right, so there’s no conflict there. The states are not overriding anything. If an Amendment were passed tomorrow which staed that no citizen could be indicted for a felony without a grand jury then the states would have to abide by it.
Once more, I was trying to say that states cannot abridge individual rights granted to citizens by the Constitution. If state law is contrary to the Constutution then the Constitution wins.
If the SCOTUS rules that a particular state gun control law is unconstitutional, then it will incorporate that amendment. Until and unless it does so, that amendment applies only to the federal government, not to the states. There is no settled law incorporating the 2nd amendment. Period. If you can point me to such a SCOTUS case, I’ll stand corrected. But the SCOTUS has never ruled that the entire Bill of Rights is incorporated. Each amendment that has been incorporated has been incorporated by a seperate ruling.
Perhaps you are getting hung up on by use of the word “abridge”. I don’t mean to imply that the states have voided a right-- I meant that the right never existed (on a state level).
So what? It wasn’t relavent to the fact that it doesn’t apply to all state courts.
But it is a prohibition against certain acts by Congress, and is not a prohibition against certain acts by the state legislatures.
Exactly. Grand juries and gun ownership are not constitutional rights (or at least in the latter case, SCOTUS has never ruled it to be a Constitutional right), so it’s false to say that states have abridged them.
What?
The Constitution says:
Yet Connecticut can hold me to answer for a capital crime without a grand jury.
Funny, the drafters of the constitution sure considered it a right (emphasis added):
Look, you understand that the federal government cannot hold me to answer for a crime unless I’m indicted by a grand jury, right? That’s my right, as an individual. A grand jury MUST indict me before the federal government can try me. That’s because the Fifth Amendment guarantees me that right.
Yet that guarantee is not binding on the states, and there are a number of states that don’t use or require grand juries before bringing someone to trial.
You have read the Fifth Amendment, right?
The Grand Jury clause does not apply to states but only to how people must be treated in federal courts. It has not been ruled to be an applicable under the 14th Amendment as long as some other means of equal protection can be applied. Citizens only have a right to a grand jury when they are tried in Federal courts.
Exactly. It’s not a civil right, it’s mandate for how federal courts have to proceed.
Yes, that’s exactly right.
But then what did you mean when you said, “In point of fact, ALL Constitutional Amendments are binding on ALL states.” and “If an Amendment were passed tomorrow which staed that no citizen could be indicted for a felony without a grand jury then the states would have to abide by it.”
Huh? States can’t abridge the right to jury trials or double jeapordy.
The latter statement is true, is it not?
My initial statement was sloppy. I was trying to say that stae law is always subordinate to the Constution in the case of a conflict. States can’t abridge rights guaranteed by the Constitution or overrule Constitutional authority if there is a direct conflict. Grand juries, apparently have not been ruled to be a civil rightper se, but a procedural mandate for federal courts so there is no conflict. State law is not overriding the Constitution it’s just not addressed by it.