Miller was only dicta?? Help!

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glummer

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IANAL, so I'm asking for clarification from those more knowledgable than I. Please do not laugh too hard if these questions are simple-minded.
I just read a bit about Dicta, and Stare Decisis, and if I'm understanding what I read, it implies that Miller has surprisingly little binding power, and I don't understand why it seems to carry so much weight.
Specifically
Insofar as precedent is concerned, stare decisis is important only for the decision, for the detailed legal consequence following a detailed set of facts.
In other words, stare decisis applies to the holding of a case, rather than to obiter dicta
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Since the only actual decision in Miller was "we cannot say ...", and a remand to the original court, would it not be true, then, that the Militia Clause analysis is simply dicta, and therefore not binding??
 
Miller ruled nothing and can be interpreted any way anyone wants. The SCOTUS basically avoided the issue, they were under threats from FDR because they were starting overturning many of his ideas because they were un-Constitutional. FDR eventually threatened to pack the court with new justices, expanding the size, but, that didn't happen, the threat was enough and the court did little against FDR. I can't help but think the Miller case was an example of them not wanting a showdown with FDR over this issue.
 
AC
That would explain Miller, at the time. But why does it STILL carry so much weight, if my understanding is accurate? It should be no more than an obscure "no-decision" in the law books.
 
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Because it's one of very few federal court decisions on the issue, and the results were, regardless of the "non-decision" nature of it that the NFA stood.

Now, if you go back to the 19th century, you'll find other federal and state court decisions on the right to keep and bear arms, that are very helpful to us, but many of those decisions have been ignored, like in Texas where the right was taken away from the 1890's until relatively recently, despite earlier Texas court decisions upholding the right. Of course, Reconstruction had a role in that change but still...

Some haven't though, the case in Vermont in the first decade of the 20th century that said the right to carry could not be restricted in the state, has withstood over a century of attacks by cities/towns wanting bans and socialists in recent decades who'd love to pass gun control laws but luckily can't...

We really need a modern SCOTUS decision upholding our rights nationwide instead of going on a state by state basis...
 
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why does it STILL carry so much weight
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I don't think it does carry much weight among intellecutally honest folk.

If, however, one is ideologically prejudiced in favor of gun control, and one wants to go hunting through obscure court decisions to cherry-pick odd phrases that can be twisted into seeming to support gun control, Miller is perfect.
 
It is only important in that misguided or intellectually dishonest poliltical hacks on the left like Schumer, Gore, Clinton etc can get up and repeat over and over about "It is setteled law that we can pass such and such gun control law or It is settled law that there is NO individual right". And then the NYT and buddies across the MSM get to parrot the whole mantra until the general public is truly propangandized and hostile to the 2nd amendment.
 
Insofar as precedent is concerned, stare decisis is important only for the decision, for the detailed legal consequence following a detailed set of facts. In other words, stare decisis applies to the holding of a case, rather than to obiter dicta
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Technically accurate, but in practice, not quite correct. The opinion of the court provides the rationale for the decision... the legal principles applied to the fact pattern in order to arrive at the decision. To the extent that the the reasons articulated are "relevant" to the rendering of the decision, it is not considered "dicta".

Let me provide you with an example. In both Emerson and Parker, the dissent (or to be totally accurate--- the concurring opinion in Emerson) complained that the majority opinion was "mere dicta".

In Emerson, that observation had some merit, since the decision was that the law did not violate the 2nd amend. Thus, the same decision would have been reached by the court regardless of whether they adopted a collective right theory or an individual right theory.

In Parker, however, the dissent's comment was... well stupid. I could not believe that a federal appeals court judge would dare assert that posistion. The opinion that the 2nd was an individual right was nescessary to reach the decision that the majority reached. It can not, under any stretch of the word, be considered dicta.

A close examination of Miller... and IMHO, that part of the opinion stating that the shotgun must have "some reasonable relationship to the preservation of the militia" is not "dicta".
 
The reason it holds weight with the anti-gun crowd is it was the last straight Second Amendment case SCOTUS ruled on and the ruling went against the defendant. What they do is totally ignore the reason why the ruling went against Miller. Even though they ruled wrongly about the SBS being a "militia" weapon, they did imply that the Second Amendment DID protect the right of the individual to possess military weapons.
 
Even though they ruled wrongly about the SBS being a "militia" weapon,
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They did not rule that an SBS was not a "militia" weapon. They properly ruled that they could not make that determination. SCOTUS is not an evidentiary forum. The district court made the decision without any evidence presented as to the nature of the weapon and its utility to the militia.
 
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Where Miller carries weight is in the District courts, which have chosen, for whatever reason, use it as the basis of accepting a collectivist misinterpretation of Miller, and by extension, 2A. It is these -district- decisions that have cast the collectivist theory into legal cement.

2 Districts have gone with and individual interpretation, the rest with collective theory.

Starting in the 70's & 80's, scholars turned their attention to 2A, and the wide scholarly concensus is that 2A is an individual right, and there is no basis for the collective theory.

The district court decisions from the 60's collective era, however, still stand, and the rest of the legal system has yet to catch up.
 
the ruling went against the defendant.
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NO.

This is the critical point people need to understand.

The ruling did not go -against- the (dead and unrepresented in court) defendant.

The ruling simply said, "we have no basis to do anything in the defendants favor".

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The other thing people need to realize about most 2A cases is that 99% of them are about genuine, bona fide criminals, murders, rapists, drug dealers, and so on, and NOT about Joe Law Abiding Citizen with a gun. 2A defenses are brought up in the context of trying to get as many of a long list of charges dropped as possible.

Courts and juries are really, really reluctant to rule that Jim Thug really did have the right to have a gun on him up until the moment he started slaughtering nuns and children with it.
 
But why does it STILL carry so much weight, if my understanding is accurate?
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Only because some lower courts choose to, although many lower court gun cases are mere dicta themselves with respect to the 2A.

Note that the very first circuit court to interpret Miller (notice I said interpret) believed that the Miller court had not held a collectivist view of the 2A. The appeals court did not feel "that the Supreme Court in this case was attempting to formulate a general rule applicable to all cases" because it would "in effect hold that the limitation of the Second Amendment is absolute." (Cases v. U.S. : http://www.guncite.com/court/fed/131f2d916.html )

This is something the Brady-bunch and their ilk always leave out in their "analysis" of Miller.

Edited to add:
In other words the lower courts have never been unanimous in their interpretation of Miller.
 
I believe that the only federal protection of our RKBA is as it relates to militia, but I do not base that on Miller, nor upon "Militia Clause analysis". The way I understand it, the federal limit upon the States does not come from the Second Amendment but rather from the US Militia power. I think it was Presser v Illinois where the SCOTUS said that the Second Amendment did not limit the States, but that a State could not ban guns because it would interfere with the US militia power (or something to that effect). So maybe it's not that Miller carries so much weight, maybe the thing that carries so much wight is an aspect of constitutional law that precedes Miller.
 
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