Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal Commentary Blogs -> LawPundit

Legal Commentary

: LawPundit

Links on the LawPundit Main Page : (2) (u,v,w,x,y,z) The Law Blogroll - Blawgs Beginning with Letters U, V, W, X, Y and Z

By Andis Kaulins

We have gone through our links on the LawPundit law blogroll to update URLs and to provide selected recent information about those linked websites or blogs. This posting covers Links on the LawPundit Main Page : (2) (u,v,w,x,y,z) The Law Blogroll - U,V,W,X,Y,Z:

Useful Arts will be blogging at the Virtual Law Conference, April 3-4, 2008, in New York City.

The Video Game Law Blog has posted about "Virtual worlds ripe for real-world lawsuits".

Everyone knows about the Volokh Conspiracy, but who is doing something about it? Paul Cassell has a list of Original Sources Underlying the Second Amendment writing:

"With Heller about to be argued, a lot of folks are debating what the Second Amendment means. But what does the historical record really show?"

That amendment provides:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

See that historical record there.

Now, being a dictionary writer, and knowing something about law, but not more or less than anyone else who knows anything about law, and yet having the advantage of experience which comes from the precision of dictionary writing, the operative word in the 2nd Amendment is infringed.

Is this sort of like the "infringed" in "patent infringement" or "copyright infringement" or "trademark infringement"? And is there something there analagous to the "fair use" exception which presumes of course an "unfair use", which is to say that limitations can -at least from the standpoint of word logic - FAIRLY be placed on the right to "keep and bear Arms" without "infringing" on the 2nd Amendment right, for the reason that the right to keep and bear Arms is rooted in a "well regulated Militia" and NOT in any right of any citizen to keep and bear Arms as personal weapons or toys. Does the 2nd Amendment give you a private right to buy a bazooka - the answer is NO. That much is clear, at least from the standpoint of the WORDS of the U.S. Constitution.

Nor is there any limitation of gun control and gun registration in the 2nd Amendment, for a well-ordered militia would well know where the weapons are and who has them, if only to be able to provide proper ammunition to those possessing them. Nor does the 2nd Amendment say anything about self-defense as a justification for gun ownership. The right of citizens to keep and bear arms is rooted in the idea that they should be able to repel any invaders and be ready to rise against insurrections, riots and other kinds of dangers against the public good, and we are for that. But does the 2nd Amendment require that we permit the ownership of guns by citizens for private reasons? The answer can only be no. Legislatures can of course grant such gun rights, but they are not demanded by the Constitution of the United States.

As far as Heller is concerned and as Linda Greenhouse at the NY Times has reported, "Mr. Heller, who carries a gun while on duty guarding the federal building that houses the administrative offices of the federal court system, wants to be able to keep his gun at home for self-defense." This is prohibited, however, by "the District of Columbia?s 31-year-old prohibition on the ownership of handguns". (See this gun law discussion and see these stats.)

If Heller were arguing that he needed his gun at home to be prepared for an attack - in his absence - on the federal building that he guards, so that he could, if needed, come to its rescue, then he would have a good case for being able to keep his gun at home, because then, he would believably be a part of the "militia" foreseen by the 2nd Amendment. But he is not arguing that. He wants to keep a gun for private reasons, directly contrary to the D.C. gun law. Sorry, no deal.
No politician in Washington D.C. wants the city to be full of nuts bearing dangerous weapons.

Nevertheless, in making its interpretation, which has the potential to be politically explosive, the Supreme Court has the escape clause of concentrating on the word "infringed", so that the decision need not be made along the lines of private vs. militia purposes, but rather along the logical semantic line of reasoning which holds simply that the 2nd Amendment does not prohibit gun legislation, but only such gun legislation that does not materially infringe on the right to keep and bear arms for reasonable and necessary private or militia purposes. In other words, they can throw the entire issue back to the District of Columbia (which is not a State of the United States) or to the States. We would hold to the following politically correct decision: the 2nd Amendment guarantees the right of citizens to keep and bear arms: however, the 2nd Amendment only prohibits "infringement" of that right, so that reasonable gun control for the circumstances under consideration can be exercised without infringing upon that right in principle. Your average farmer can keep his rifles and shotguns on the farm, if his area of jurisdiction finds that to be reasonable, while at the same time, urban areas can limit hand guns, if that is decided to be reasonable in the given jurisdiction. Neither approach "infringes" on the 2nd Amendment right.

Washington Briefs alerts us to the fact that Senators Introduce Legislation To Add Judgeships Nationwide.

WisBlawg from the University of Wisconsin Law Library has a great posting on a problem that affects all of us, and offers solutions at 80% of Legal Professionals Suffer from Information Overload, But You Don't Have to be One of Them.

As if Mississippi did not have enough other problems we read at the Wise Law Blog, "The Toronto Lawyers' Legal and Political Blog" by Garry J. Wise of Toronto, about a Proposed Mississippi Bill: Restaurants not to Serve Obese People. Wise Law Blog writes:

"Last month, three Mississippi lawmakers introduced a bill that would prohibit ?obese? people from being served in Mississippi restaurants.

Understandably, the proposed law has created serious backlash, and the bill?s authors are now backtracking, claiming their intention was to bring attention to the obesity problem in Mississippi, rather than enacting the controversial law." Read the rest here.

Our own view is that this kind of thing follows on the heels of the anti-smoking hysteria which started in the United States and which has now swept the globe. It is a new kind of intolerance, which is being bred by the religious intolerance that is increasingly raising its undemocratic Medusian head on our Planet Earth. Being in harmony with God no longer seems to equate with getting your own act together but is seen by many globally as an excuse and justification to try to force others to do what the bidders are unsuccessful in doing themselves. We are more than unimpressed by having those who are unable to order their own lives try to order our lives. Moreover, obesity is such a problem in the United States because people generally eat the wrong kinds of foods and get too little exercise. The presence and absence of obesity as a function of the available food supply is documented well in a place like modern Cuba, which has had its ups and downs, take a look. In other words, leave the restaurants alone.

Dan Slater at the Wall Street Journal Law Blog writes that Originalism Likely to Rule the Day in High Court Gun Arguments, citing to Randy E. Barnett at Gun-Rights Showdown, who writes:

"Today, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case of Heller v. District of Columbia, a suit brought by several D.C. citizens contending that the ban on the possession of operable firearms inside one's home violates the Second Amendment. The Circuit Court of Appeals for D.C. agreed and held the ban to be unconstitutional. However it is decided, Heller is already historic. For the first time in recent memory, the Supreme Court will consider the original meaning of a significant passage of the Constitution unencumbered by its own prior decisions. The majority and dissenting opinions in this case will be taught in law schools for years to come. Here's a layman's guide to the significance of the case...." Take a look.

You and Yours Blog has "Thoughts and comments on Business Law, Elder Law, Estate Planning and Tax Law...".

Zeugma reports on Signature pedagogies: how do they emerge?, writing:

"Shulman?s ideas about signature pedagogy, which oddly enough didn?t have a high profile in the Future of Legal Education conference, still have me hooked. They raise a central issue, namely the extent to which we are ruled by a learning outcomes model of education, and the whole technocracy and superstructure (in a Marxist sense) of a modern mass educational system. Technology and superstructure, as Benjamin knew so well, are intimately linked."

What interests us is Paul Maharg's conclusion that the new technologies have had little impact on the superstructure of education:

"Massification, yes. Transformation, no."

Full post as published by LawPundit on March 18, 2008 (boomark / email).