When the Archaic Rules

The United States Supreme Court appears ready to interpret the notorious Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to mean that individuals--not just bonafide military braches--have the right to bear arms.  While many have long held this view, the court's apparent willingness to consider striking down gun control laws in the District of Columbia would establish the concept in legal fact.  And this is not just an application of an archaic premise that long ago lost usefulness, but it is monumentally stupid as well.

As Daniel Quinn cogently pointed out in Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit, one of the most pervasive beliefs of our time is that evolution has somehow stopped; that we, exactly as we are constitute the highest life form that will ever exist.  The High Court seems to be taking the same view toward the Constitution, a view that has much in common with conservative political ideology.  By what reasoning should we assume that a principle of law appropriate to an Eighteenth Century agrarian populus befits a 21st Century heavily urbanized nation?

Of course, we see the same willingness to hold onto things thart no longer serve useful purposes in some of our clients.  Maybe the Constitution needs a freshening-up.  Maybe your/our school/business/practice/clinic does, too.