Constitutional Law

Gun rights rally in Chicago this Frida

Posted on July 08, 2008
A Second Amendment Freedom Rally, 11 AM -1 PM, July 11, sponsored by ILSRA and Illinoiscarry.com. Details here. They cleverly applied for a permit to have it on a State, not City, owned site.

Texas: proposal to allow guns on college campuses

Posted on July 07, 2008
Story here. Hat tip to reader Jack Anderson...

DC stumbling on dealing with Heller

Posted on July 07, 2008
Story here. I assume the reference to DC having about three weeks to comply reflects that fact that the Supremes haven't issued the mandate yet. An appellate court's opinion is just that, an opinion. Then there's a delay to see if anyone moves for rehearing...

ACLU Blog update

Posted on July 07, 2008
Say Uncle notes they're up to 700 comments, with those favorable to ACLU's position countable on one hand. UPDATE: I'd second the suggestion that anyone looking for a place to send donations look at the NRA Civil Liberties Defense Fund. As a pre-emptive note, for folks who have complaints about NRA, remember this is a separate organization: it's governed by a small board of trustees, entirely pro-gun attorneys, and I'm told put hundreds of thousands, as in a major portion of its annual budget, into supporting the Heller case...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

Britain: mandatory jail time for carrying a knife?

Posted on July 07, 2008
Story here, with a note that presently 17% of those found with a knife get jail time. Hat tip to Norman Heath...

RedState update on Heller

Posted on July 06, 2008
Here. Pretty funny!

Conference in DC August 1

Posted on July 05, 2008
Got an email alert from Second Amendment Foundation. BTW, if anyone is attending and can use tips of cheap rooms and getting around, I'm an expert there: Students for Conceal Carry on Campus (SCCC) will be having their first National Conference on Friday, August 1st at the National Press Club in Washington D...

Brady's grading system and "sensible gun laws"

Posted on July 05, 2008
Howard Nemerov's analysis is here. Brady Campaign grades States A-F on how their gun laws match Brady's ideal. Nemerov's statistical work suggests that (1) high Brady grades correlate to low gun ownership -- restrictive laws reduce the number of persons who can own guns and (2) they also correlate to higher violent crime and homicide rates...

More on Obama and Joyce Foundation

Posted on July 04, 2008
At National Review Online.

A few disappointments in Heller

Posted on July 04, 2008
I love the result, but the academic in me sees a few disappointments in the method. MAJORITY: Scalia begins with a clear statement of his method: "In interpreting this text, we are guided by the principle that ?[t]he Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical meaning...

Randy Barnett on interpretation vs. construction

Posted on July 04, 2008
Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, with application to Heller.

Still more on Britain's knife culture

Posted on July 04, 2008
16 year old lured to an ambush where he is beaten and stabbed to death. "Meanwhile a 17-year-old boy who lives near where Shakilus was attacked said stabbings were depressingly commonplace - and often happened for no reason at all. He said: "If he hadn't died, no one would have cared about this, it would have just been another stabbing...

More on the British experience

Posted on July 03, 2008
"FRENCH STUDENTS TORTURED AND STABBED 250 TIMES IN TARANTINO-STYLE RAID ON LONDON HOME" "It also sent shockwaves across France where the loss of two of the country's finest young minds was seen as proof of Britain's spiral into knife-obsessed lawlessness...

FBI director on Heller

Posted on July 03, 2008
FBI Director Robert Mueller says "weapons harm people, and more often than not they harm the people carrying them.". Say Uncle asks is he going to take his agents's guns away, then? From Days of Our Trailers. I'm assuming FBI weapons policy is similar to local LEOs -- you must, not just may, carry at all times, even when off duty...

A piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer

Posted on July 02, 2008
By the co-chairman of Philadelphia Against Drugs, Guns and Violence. It's not what you'd expect, tho. "never felt so good about a decision rendered by the court's conservative majority. I never thought that I would agree with Associate Justices Scalia or Thomas...

Liberal vs. conservative wings of the Court

Posted on July 02, 2008
Prof. Bernstein has some interesting thoughts at Cato Online. "The Heller dissent presents the remarkable spectacle of four liberal Supreme Court justices tying themselves into an intellectual knot to narrow the protections the Bill of Rights provides...

DC's gun crime

Posted on July 02, 2008
From an article in the Washingtonian: "Gun violence is relatively rare across the Potomac River in Virginia, despite the fact that guns are easily bought and registered there. And there is much less gunplay in urbanized parts of Montgomery County, just over the line from DC...

How will ACLU react to Heller? Pt. 2

Posted on July 01, 2008
They can't believe it. Say Uncle has the story. Not to say I'm tired, but I'd blogged their reactions right after the ruling--they denounce the Heller ruling as putting a "strait jacket" on legislatures. This has got to be a first for ACLU, complaining that a constitution right is a strait jacket for the benevolent and wise government! Under the Bushitler Administration, no less...

Cross petition for cert. in Parker/Heller denied

Posted on July 01, 2008
Orders here. This was the cross-petition by the Shelly Parker and the others whom the DC Circuit held had no standing to sue, under the Circuit's quite narrow case law (which is applicable to gun cases only; any other challenge is judged with a very broad test of standing)...

How will ACLU react to Heller?

Posted on July 01, 2008
It puts them in quite a dilemma. Their past supposed neutrality on the 2A was premised on their position that Miller settled that it wasn't an individual right, so they didn't have to consider it one. Heller takes care of that nicely. So what are they to do? Some thoughts at Concurring Opinions...

Georgia case on airports

Posted on July 01, 2008
A challenge to an Atlanta airport rule that prohibits firearms in the parking lots, lobbies and restaurants, notwithstanding the recent State legislation allowing carrying in public transit, restaurants, etc.. Story here. Georgiacarry.org is carrying the organizational ball...

Heller's effect on the Presidential campaign

Posted on July 01, 2008
Bob Novak writes on it in WashPo. Hat tip to reader Jim Kindred...

Chicago may rework gun law

Posted on July 01, 2008
Or so Daley ambiguously suggests. I recall that once during my days in the Federal government, an agency suggested rewriting a rule in order to moot a test case against it, and after research I concluded it wouldn't work.

Stevens' dissent: can Congress define the militia?

Posted on June 30, 2008
In an email, J. Norman Heath (THE authority on Federal-State pre-emption of militia statutes) points out an interesting thing. Stevens' dissent takes the view that the entire purpose of the 2A was to allow States to form militias independent of Federal control (he makes this point in reply to Scalia's argument that a right limited to enrolled militia would be meaningly as a check on the national government, since it could define who is in the militia)...

Collective right per se dead

Posted on June 30, 2008
Instapundit makes an excellent point: the traditional "collective rights theory," i.e., that the 2A was a right of States to have a militia, could not muster a single vote on the Court. (In fact, DC didn't even argue it). And that "collective right theory" was what all of the lower court cases were based on (not that that stops Stevens from claiming their support)...

Con law scholars on Heller

Posted on June 29, 2008
William van Alstyne, of William and Mary: ?This case is to the Second Amendment what Roe vs. Wade was to abortion,? he said. ?That one didn?t settle all the questions, and some people still don?t like it, but it was a watershed, like this one.? Van Alstyne said the ruling?s ?heat and volume? give the opinion added weight ? 150 pages of research and dissections of the amendment?s 27 words, broken down phrase by phrase...

Transcript of online chat yesterday

Posted on June 28, 2008
It's online here. Thanks to those who wandered in! [UPDATE: the key is that the dissenters claim you only have a right to arms if you are in a WELL-REGULATED, with inference by the goverment, militia, which (they don't add) (a) conveniently doesn't exist and (b) certainly wouldn't be created by any jurisdiction that wanted to enact arms restrictions...

An odd ad hominem attack on Heller

Posted on June 27, 2008
Over at History News Network. If this is the best the critics can do... it's pathetic. It reduces to undocumented assurances that Heller got it al wrong, and that the individual rights postiion can't be right -- why the first almost-recent (1960) article on it was by a non-historian in a law review...

Online chat on Heller today

Posted on June 27, 2008
Leaving now for the Arizona Star offices to do it. 4 PM EDT. You can partipate here.

Prof. Keller on Heller, Justice Breyer and culture wars

Posted on June 27, 2008
He posts over at The Volokh Conspiracy. Interesting point. In an earlier school voucher case, Breyer considered a potential harm to a constitutional interest (that controversial religions might created funded schools, that the public would demand that measures be taken against them, and that that would lead to entanglement of church and state, even if the voucher system itself did not) sufficient to vote to strike a law...

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.