Adam Winkler > Quotes

“Federal gun control of the twentieth century has made machine guns unusual and uncommon, while the absence of serious restrictions on the availability of handguns has given people the opportunity to choose them for self-defense. The scope of the Second Amendment’s protections was not, in other words, defined by the original meaning of the Constitution. The protections were shaped instead by the marketplace choices of twentieth-century consumers, made within the confines of contemporary government regulation.”
― Adam Winkler, Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America

“A Constitution, from its nature, deals in generals, not in detail. Its framers cannot perceive minute distinctions which arise in the progress of the nation, and therefore confine it to the establishment of broad and general principles.” The purpose of diversity jurisdiction under Article III was to protect people against potentially parochial and biased state courts.”
― Adam Winkler, We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights

“In Ex parte Milligan, decided in 1866, the Court held unconstitutional the North’s policy of using military tribunals instead of civilian courts to try citizens charged with attempting to sabotage the war effort. In Ex parte Garland, decided the next year, the Court struck down a law barring former members of the Confederacy from serving in federal office. In Bill Cruikshank’s case, the Court disregarded what John Bingham said was the very purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment and held that it did not in fact make the Bill of Rights enforceable against the states. “The second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed; but this . . . means no more than it shall not be infringed by Congress,” the Court explained.”
― Adam Winkler, Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America

“Dartmouth was, however, formed as a corporation, and the central question in the college’s case had a direct bearing on all corporations, business or otherwise: Are corporations public or private? Are they public entities subject to broad governmental control? Or are they private entities over which the state has only limited regulatory authority? Today, we take for granted that corporations are private entities. In the early 1800s, however, the question of whether corporations were public or private remained unsettled. Webster’s Dartmouth College case would largely settle it.”
― Adam Winkler, We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights

“he knew that even the most compelling logic falters if it defies common sense.”
― Adam Winkler, We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights