In his majority opinion, Mr Scalia glossed the amendment's prefatory clause thus There are many reasons why the militia was thought to be "necessary to the security of a free state".
But the fact that modern developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the right.Because...why?
He wrote that the "prefatory" clause (that first bit about the militia) made no important restriction on the second ("operative") clause about the right to bear arms.
The allusions serve to distract rather than to amuse, as do Mr Greene's attempts at outright jokes.The footnotes, a substantial proportion of which are issued with the prefatory, "for the mathematically inclined reader" are another weakness.
There follow eight "longer poems," ranging from 48 lines to 408 (number LXV, of 24 lines, is prefatory to number LXVI) in four different metres.
Volumes 26 through 33 began with a prefatory essay on an aspect of developments in the modern world.
Johnson's last great work, Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets (conventionally known as The Lives of the Poets), was conceived modestly as short prefatory notices to an edition of English poetry.
As Praetorius made clear in his detailed, prefatory instructions and in broader remarks about his concerti in his Syntagma Musicum, his concerti comprise a virtual compendium of the vocal-instrumental concerto in all its uses of voices and instruments and styles of opposition and in all its applications of the Protestant chorale, as well.
The prefatory notice further pointed out that this new edition, while following the dual plan of its predecessors, was forced by the progress of science to introduce different groupings of subject matter, provisional though these may be, and a new style of treatment in those subjects that were concerned with human nature and human life.
In a prefatory note near the beginning of the History, Thucydides speaks a little of the nature of his task and of his aims.
In the Wallenstein cycle a work on the grand scale, consisting of a prefatory poem, a dramatic prologue, and two five-act plays Schiller reached the height of his powers as a dramatist.
