Supreme Court individual rights

The Supreme Court has recognized a constitutional right to bodily integrity that includes the right of a person to make voluntary and informed decisions about medical treatment." The government s concept of compassionate coercion appears to turn upside-down the individual s right to informed consent. All fifty states have laws that protect informed consent. These laws require that before performing medical procedures or treatments, medical personnel must make certain disclosures to patients and obtain the patient s consent." ... 

This case illustrates a possible path that the Supreme Court might take if it ever revisits its view of the Second Amendment in Miller v. U.S. The decision here implies that the Supreme Court s rejecting constitutional protection for a nonmilitary weapon doesn t necessarily mean that possession by an individual of a military weapon outside an organized military context would be protected. Gun rights advocates view such an approach as contradictory and as a failure to honor the intent of the Constitution s framers. 

The Ninth Amendment argument was quickly dismissed as lacking any convincing precedents. Appellants may believe the Ninth Amendment should be read to recognize an unwritten, fundamental, individual right to own or possess firearms the fact remains that the Supreme Court has never embraced this theory. ... 

Currently only the Fifth Circuit (see U.S. v. Emerson) has upheld an individual right to keep and bear arms in the Second Amendment. If the Supreme Court should eventually resolve the conflict between the circuits in favor of this interpretation, a stricter test would presumably be applied to state gun laws. Of course, some regulations might still pass such scrutiny. 

Supreme Court overturns the conviction, declaring that this right is independent of the Second Amendment and that the latter cannot be used against individuals or states, only against the federal government. 

In U.S. V. Miller the Supreme Court rejects an appeal by stating that it had been given no evidence that a sawed-off shotgun was suitable for use in a militia, and because it is not, carrying it would not be protected by the Second Amendment. Because the decision also implied an individual right to bear military-type arms, it would be cited by both supporters and opponents of gun control. 

Carmer, Clayton E. For the Defense of Themselves and the State The Original Intent and Judicial Interpretation of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. West-port, Conn. Praeger Publishers, 1994. Explores the conflict between the original intent of the Second Amendment, well established by scholarship as conferring an individual right to keep and bear arms, and the judicial interpretation of the Supreme Court and most other courts that have pre-... 

Sprigman, Chris. This Is Not a Well-Regulated Militia. Open Forum, Winter 1994, n.p. Reviews Supreme Court cases and concludes that the Court has interpreted the Second Amendment as protecting state militias, not as an individual right to bear arms. Sprigman cites United States V. Miller (1939) and argues that the militia concept is probably not relevant to modern America. 

In a decision written by Justice Harry Blackmun, the Supreme Court rejected the appeal and ruled against the Virginia State Board of Pharmacy. The ruling concluded that commercial speech has some protection under the First Amendment, particularly in relation to the right of citizens to receive information. Because the individual consumer and society in general may have strong interests in the free flow of commercial information, even commercial speech that has an economic rather than a political or artistic motivation deserves protection. Indeed, such information is crucial to the... 

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