United States v. Miller, 307 U. S. 174 (1939) involved the indictment of Jack Miller and a cohort for unlawfully transporting a short-barrelled shotgun in violation of the National Firearms Act of 1934. The trial court granted Miller’s motion to dismiss the charges, holding that the section of the act under which he had been indicted violated the Second Amendment. The United States appealed.
Jack Miller fled to parts unknown. Only the Solicitor General for the United States filed a brief or appeared to argue the case before the Supreme Court. The Court was not at all concerned that Jack Miller, an individual, was asserting a Second Amendment claim. What the Supreme Court cared about was whether the shotgun possessed by Miller had ‘some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia, … .’ 307 U. S.
at 178. The Court refused to take for granted that a short-barrelled shotgun ‘is any part of ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense’. 307 U. S. at 178. The case was sent back to the trial court for further proceedings on this question.
Unfortunately, Jack Miller was no longer around and the case went no further. If the Second Amendment guaranteed only a collective right, the Supreme Court could have simply held that Mr. Miller, as an individual, lacked standing to assert a right to keep and bear arms. However, the fact that Miller was not affiliated with an organized state militia had no bearing on the case. The opinion in United States v. Miller never even suggested that the possessor of a firearm must be a member of a militia, and the individual nature of the right to keep and bear arms went unquestioned..
The Essay on Federal Courts State Courts And Concurrent Jurisdiction
The United States court system has seen a trend of increased involvement of the federal courts in criminal matters, which used to fall within the exclusive domain of the state courts. Most criminal cases violate only state law, and therefore are tried only in the state courts. Henry Glick would agree that counterfeiting, treason, and illegal immigration are some of the unique cases, which can only ...
