Opinion: Those other constitutions
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Like the late Rodney Dangerfield, state constitutions ‘get no respect’ in discussions of constitutional law. A rare exception came in this week’s oral arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court over the constitutionality of the District of Columbia’s gun-control law. In trying to puzzle out the original meaning of the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Justice John Paul Stevens asked Walter Dellinger, D.C.’s lawyer: ‘To what extent do you think the similar provisions in State constitutions that were adopted more or less at the same time are relevant to our inquiry?’ Dellinger bobbed a bit, replying that various state constitutional provisions on the right to keep and bear arms are written in ‘different terms.’
Dellinger surely knew that at least one state, my native Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, has a venerable state constitutional provision dealing with guns that sounds as if it was written by the NRA: ‘The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned’ Hmm. maybe I was violating the state constitution when I was writing all those pro-gun-control editorials for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. (I’m safe now; California’s constitution lacks a little Second Amendment.)
Unlike the ‘real’ Constitution, state constitutions are sometimes prolix documents. For example, their protections of religion and freedom of expression often read like the First Amendment on steroids. The First Amendment is content to say that Congress shall make no law ‘abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.’
Here’s the equivalent provision in the Pennsylvania Constitution’s Declaration of Rights:
The printing press shall be free to every person who may undertake to examine the proceedings of the Legislature or any branch of government, and no law shall ever by made to restrain the right thereof. The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the invaluable rights of man, and every citizen may freely speak, write and print on any subject, being responsible for the abuse of that liberty. No conviction shall be had in any prosecution for the publication of papers relating to the official conduct of officers or men in public capacity, or to any other matter proper for public investigation or information, where the fact that such publication was not maliciously or negligently made shall be established to the satisfaction of the jury; and in all indictments for libels the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the facts, under the direction of the court, as in other cases.
Whew!
Ironically, in this case more (verbiage) is less: Pennsylvania’s version of the First Amendment is less friendly to the press, particularly in libel cases, than the First Amednment as it has been interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court. Hunting is big in Pennsylvania; so are libel suits by public officials, including judges. Too bad the framers of the constitution didn’t write: ‘The right of freedom of the press shall not be questioned’