Edwin Vieira, Jr., holds four degrees from Harvard: A.B. (Harvard College), A.M. and Ph.D. (Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences), and J.D. (Harvard Law School).
For more than thirty years he has practiced law, with emphasis on constitutional issues. In the Supreme Court of the United States he successfully argued or briefed the cases leading to the landmark decisions Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson, and Communications Workers of America v. Beck, which established constitutional and statutory limitations on the uses to which labor unions, in both the private and the public sectors, may apply fees extracted from nonunion workers as a condition of their employment.
In Article I, Section 8, Clause 16, the Constitution delegates to Congress the power—and, as well, imposes upon it the duty—“[t]o provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia”, so that the Militia will be capable of responding to any exercise of Congress’s power and duty under Article I, Section 8, Clause 15 “[t]o provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions”. The Militia to which these provisions refer are “the Militia of the several States”—that is, the multiple institutions of the States, taken separately, as opposed to a single institution of the United States, taken collectively—which the Constitution identifies as such in Article II, Section 2, Clause 1. Plainly enough, such “affirmative words in the Constitution * * * must be construed negatively as to all other cases”. Ex parte Vallandigham, 68 U.S. (1 Wallace) 243, 252 (1864) (emphasis in the original) (footnote omitted). Accord, Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 174 (1803); and Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. (6 Wheaton) 264, 394-395 (1821). So, Congress lacks any color of authority to disorganize, disarm, and leave undisciplined the Militia for those three purposes, or to treat the Militia as other than separate institutions of each the fifty States, which for those purposes and those purposes alone “may be employed in the Service of the United States”, pursuant to Article I, Section 8, Clause 16 and Article II, Section 2, Clause 1. And, the Constitution having delegated to Congress no other powers with respect to the Militia, Congress lacks any color of authority to legislate as to them in any other way for any other purpose.
Nonetheless, instead of doing what the Constitution requires (and of not doing what the Constitution prohibits), Congress has purported in 10 U.S.C. § 311 to consign to a chimerical institution which it calls “the unorganized militia” every American citizen or legally aspirant citizen from 17 to 44 years of age who is not a member of the National Guard. This institution is truly chimerical, because no constitutional Militia, by historical legal definition in America, can ever be a “militia” and “unorganized” at the very same time, any more than a circle can ever be a square. (In this same statute Congress calls the National Guard “the organized militia”; but anyone who reads other statutes relevant to the formation and characteristics of the National Guard will conclude that the National Guard actually consists, not of any sort of “militia”, but instead of the “Troops, or Ships of War” which the States may “keep” “in time Peace” “with[ ] the Consent of Congress”, pursuant to Article I, Section 10, Clause 3 of the Constitution.) Even beyond all that, Congress has purported to enact extensive “gun controls” the obvious intent of which is the incremental but inexorable disarmament of all Americans, including those whom it claims to have assigned to “the unorganized militia”—thus, in effect, decreeing that “the unorganized militia” is to be now largely, and eventually entirely, disarmed as well as disorganized. This, too, is fantastical, because no constitutional Militia, by historical legal definition in America, can ever be “disarmed”, any more than a triangle can ever be a rectangle.
Because the Militia are “the Militia of the several States”—that is, permanent governmental establishments of, in, and for each of the individual States—the Constitution requires that each State organize, arm, and discipline her own Militia for all purposes other than the three it assigns to Congress (and for those three as well, to the extent that Congress fails in its constitutional responsibilities in that particular). Yet, following the faulty Congressional pattern, the States have dumped into “the unorganized militia” those of their citizens who are not members of the National Guard and its related State “defense forces”. And all too many of the States, such as “the people’s republics” of New York and Connecticut, are aggressively disarming their citizens, including those within “the unorganized militia”.
Source: Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr. – TMM
You can learn more by reading the book THREE RIGHTS by Dr. Edwin Vieira.
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