Are the Supreme Court's big guns and abortions decisions intellectually consistent?

The sharpest opinions from around the web

A gun.
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The Supreme Court just upended "the most fiercely polarizing issues in American life: abortion and guns," The Associated Press reports. On one day last month, the court's conservative majority expanded the Second Amendment to guarantee the individual right to carry concealed handguns, and the next day, they removed the constitutional right to abortion enshrined for 50 years in Roe v. Wade.

Among the many practical and political questions left in the wake of these two "momentous decisions," AP says, is "whether the court's conservative justices are being faithful and consistent to history and the Constitution — or citing them to justify political preferences." In other words, is there some intellectual constancy in allowing states to ban abortion but forbidding them from regulating guns, or is the court's emboldened 6-3 conservative majority just flexing its newfound ideological might?

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.