Everyone who has television, a computer, a newspaper, or a radio, knows that the Supreme Court handed down its decision in the Heller Case on Thursday, ruling that the Second Amendment provides a personal right to "keep and bear arms."  Therefore, it struck down the District of Columbia law that has banned citizens from owning new handguns after 1976.  But the case is much more important than that.

        Cases concern more than just the parties involved.  The Heller decision will affect the rights of millions of Americans to protect themselves, their families, and their homes.  But the “why” of a Supreme Court decision has far more importance than the “what” or “who.”  The logic of the decision will live on, and can apply to cases that have nothing to do with the facts of the current case.

         An object lesson comes from the very first case ever decided by the Supreme Court, The Schooner Peggy.  That case concerned whether a French ship, captured by a American privateer, was properly awarded to the captor.  For centuries, we have had no more privateers.  We are now fully friends with the French.  Still, in 1976 I cited that case in a Circuit Court case, and it was ultimately used in the Supreme Court as dispositive in an attorneys fee case out of Richmond.

         How did that happen?  Well, the “why” of the Schooner Peggy is that when the law changes between the trial in court and the Supreme Court review, the court must follow the new law, even though the trial court was correct when it made the original decision.

         Exactly the same will, I think, apply to the Heller case in the years and decades to come.

         Heller was a 5-4 decision, and the majority ppinion by Justice Scalia had very harsh words for the two Dissents by Justices Stevens and Breyer.  The divisions among the sides were harsh, and identical.  Scalia’s Opinion was joined by the Chief Justice, and Justices Kennedy, Thomas and Alito.  Both Dissents were filed for all of the remaining justices: Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer.

           Here are some of the charges leveled by the Opinion against the Dissents:

           “Justice Stevens is dead wrong to think that the right to petition [First Amendment] is ‘primarily collective in nature.’ ” “Justice Stevens flatly misreads the historical record.”  “Justice Stevens suggests that ‘there is not so much as a whisper’ in [Joseph Story’s Commentaries on the Constitution] ... that favors the individual-rights view.... That is wrong.’

           “Justice Breyer arrives at his... answer: because handgun violence is a problem,... the law is limited to an urban area,.. there were similar restrictions in the founding period (a false proposition...),... [therefore] the interest-balancing inquiry [means] the handgun ban is [constitutional].”

            Here are some of the charges leveled by the Dissents against the Opinion: From Stevens, the Opinion lacks “respect for the well-settled views of all of our predecessors on the court, and for the rule of law itself.”  From Breyer, “The majority derides my approach as ‘judge-empowering....’  I take this criticism seriously, but I do not think it accurate.”

           In the normally polite environment of Supreme Court decisions, these charges are the equivalent of calling each other dishonest at gathering and using legal sources, and even incompetent as judges.  The simple truth is that one side in this war of words is correct, and the other is dead wrong.  And what that says about the future of the Supreme Court and the Constitution is truly important.

           To my view, the majority Opinion is a textbook on how to understand, obey, and enforce the Constitution, that is, as it describes itself, “the supreme Law.”  Like all laws, its meaning is determined by those who wrote it.  For the Constitution, the writers were the drafters in Philadelphia, followed by the ratifiers in the states.

           Do not take my word for it.  The Opinion and both Dissents are on the Internet.  Laymen can understand most of the text.  If more cases on any subject use the logic of the Heller case, the justices will be more honest, and the Constitution will be safer.

           The problem in reaching that result is that the next president of the United States will probably name at least two, or as many as four, new justices to the Supreme Court.  I, for one, consider the nomination of new justices to be an overriding consideration in the 2008 election.