The Sixth Amendment: Version 1.0 ET Seq. - Commas, Clauses, and the Constitution

Abstract

The Sixth Amendment is the repository of some of the oldest rights protected by the Constitution. These include the right to a speedy, public trial by an impartial jury in the locality of the alleged offense; the rights of confrontation and compulsory process; and the right to counsel. But the text of the Sixth Amendment proposed by Congress to the several states in 1789 and the texts ratified by each state vary in their use of capitalization and spelling. More remarkably, the proposed and ratified texts, as well as a selection of other sources thrown in for good measure, employ commas and semicolons in a variety of combinations, dividing and subdividing (or, in their absence, performing neither of these functions) the Sixth Amendment into clauses and subclauses.

This Comment begins by painting a contemporary backdrop of punctuation-dependent constitutional interpretation in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller. Then, a methodology is applied to the Supreme Court’s Sixth Amendment jurisprudence to determine possible future applications of Heller’s unique brand of constitutional interpretation in the specific, Sixth Amendment context.

Keywords: Heller, Parker, Fell, Second Amendment, Sixth Amendment, quotes, quotations, comma, clauses, Constitution, interpretation