Spells wrote:Five is more than four. It's a clear majority.
Sure it's a MAJORITY, but you had stated the court had a clear CONSERVATIVE majority - which they do not.
5-4 decisions are also a function of how sweepingly the majority decision is written, and the Heller ruling was very broad, extending into things like carrying firearms. It's unsurprising that you'd only get the minimum majority, but completely unsurprising that the ruling would go the way it did.
It was both broad and narrow, it covered very specific ground and left quite a few things unanswered, since they weren't being argued, but they could have said so all the same. The direction of the ruling is more akin to a compass than a right/left pointer. The ruling went our direction (THIS TIME by a ONE VOTE margin), but it's full impact is more like 30 degrees rather than 90 degrees our way. Dick Heller couldn't even register his semi-auto handgun (and the ruling said handguns are common use) after the decision in his favor.
You say "It's unsurprising that you'd only get the minimum majority," - yet if we truly had a CONSERVATIVE majority as you first stated, it would not be a minimum majority at all.
None of which has anything to do with the topic of this thread, so it needs to get back on topic.