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A federal defendant prevails with a Second Amendment claim, sort of...

By Douglas A. Berman

Thanks to this post by Eugene Volokh, I can not longer assert that every lower court has turned back every defendants effort to base a legal claim on Heller and the Second Amendment.  This post is titled, "The First (?) Post-Heller Case Holding a Gun Control Law Unconstitutional," and here are snippets from Eugene's effective reporting and analysis: That's U.S. v. Arzberger. The gun control law is the part of 18 U.S.C. § 3142(c)(1)(B) that requires that when someone is charged with possessing child pornography (among other crimes) and is freed on bail, he be ordered not to possess any firearm.... This is formally a Due Process Clause holding, but it rests on a conclusion about the Second Amendment. Recall that the Due Process Clause (sometimes) entitles people to hearings only when there's a legally relevant factual dispute to be resolved...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on January 12, 2009 (boomark / email).