Not THE Court, but an appeals court. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...s-concealedcarry-ban-20121211,0,7034171.story I approve of the decision in general, but honestly: if giving the legislature a 180 day-deadline to write a law you feel is constitutional doesn't fall under the category of "activist judges," I don't know what would.
I don't read it like that. I read it as the appeals court said the law was unconstitutional but instead of just striking down the law immediately it is giving the state 180 days to change the law and bring it inline with the Supreme Courts interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. If they fail to do that then the whole law will be struck down. To me the court is helping the state by telling them in so many words, "look this law you passed is garbage but we are giving you the option to fix it before we have to throw it out."
The OP is right, that is exactly an activist judge at work. The job of a judge isn't to hand the law back and say "Fix it so we can pass it."
I disagree. An activist judge would write the law. These judges are saying the law is unconstitutional but we will give you a chance to bring the law into constitutional compliance. I see nothing wrong with a court, any court, giving the legislature a chance to fix something so the court doesn't have to strike the law down. Striking the law down may cause other complications in regards to gun ownership in the state. The court is saying the restrictive ban on concealed carry goes to far but it doesn't say the whole law is bad just the concealed carry part.
This is like a teacher handing a paper back to the student and saying "Fix this so I can give you a C instead of an F." The people behind wanting to get this passed are supposed to be professionals and know the law. They had plenty of time to get this right. The law was unconstitutional and should have been struck down.
I don't think anyone in their right mind would ever expect elected politicians at any level to be "professional" about anything.
There's no judicial activism here. The decision was completely consistent with prior Supreme Court decisions. This is what happens when a law is found un-Constitutional. It gets thrown back to the legislature for either repealing or changes. From what I understand from legal minds on another board is that this means all Illinois--including Chicago--will effectively go SHALL ISSUE. The court's ruling clearly says that 2nd Amendment rights apply beyond the home. The ridiculous argument of the antis was that it only applied in the home. But the 7th ruled, correctly in any logical view, that limiting the right to the home was to ignore the "bear" portion. This won't have an immediate effect on us here in California, but this ruling will be used as ammo to win pending cases here. Worst case: we lose in the 9th, creating a circuit split, and it goes back to the Supremes and, with any luck, the same justices who voted to uphold the 2nd in Heller and McDonald.
