I thought that was telling when they came out with the Roe v. Wade decision and the 2nd amendment case that were both published on the same day (or maybe back to back days).
In the gun case, the conservative justices concentrated solely on state and federal law passed after adoption of the Bill of Rights and the admission of states to the union. They discarded gun laws from the Arizona, Texas, Wyoming, and Idaho territories (pre-statehood) because while they were American territories, they were not truly state laws. The English common law and parliamentary laws that many American laws derived from were discarded as irrelevant. Any law that predated the Constitution was said to be increasingly less relevant with its separation in time (“evidence that long predates ratification may not illuminate the scope”).
And then…in the analysis overturning Roe, they had several pages of analysis of English common law and British parliamentary law - as well as reference to other European practices of the pre-Colonial era - dating to the 1200s. This analysis formed a big part of their basis in that case. They clearly cherry-picked their legal precedents to support a position.
The liberal justices were no better. They don’t like the historical basis idea, apparently preferring to interpret law based on current conditions and perceived needs. In the gun case, their basic position was that legal precedents don’t matter, we just need to make a way to have less guns. They flipped that around in the abortion case, and said that we have to follow the legal precedent even if it may have been flawed.
Only Roberts actually seems to try to confine himself to actual legal interpretation, all of the other justices continually try to make their interpretations fit a particular agenda.
Clarence Thomas needs to retire, I think his Originalist view makes him one of the most dangerous people in the government. It's really odd that he's the one too...since under the laws and interpretations he supports, he should only be 3/5 of a person.
