Constitutional Law

Reaction to McDonald v. Chicago

Posted on July 03, 2010
In the wake of the decision, the Jackson County (WI) prosecutor has announced he's no longer taking CCW and similar gun cases. "Prior to this historic ruling, our state Supreme Court placed the state?s interests first, and would only create an exception to these laws when the individual?s need for protection outweighed the state?s interest...

Dave Kopel's testimony on the Kagan nomination

Posted on July 03, 2010
Video on Youtube, here.

The Empire Strikes Back

Posted on July 02, 2010
Mayor Daley proposes to replace the handgun ban with onerous regulation. Well, that's one reason for the attorneys' fees provisions of 42 U.S.C. §1988. If he wants to play, he has to pay.

Cardozo Law Rev. symposium on Heller & McDonald

Posted on June 30, 2010
It's here. Articles by some of us usual suspects.

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Gura's already on the move

Posted on June 30, 2010
Here's a discussion of his next case, filed the day McDonald came down. I suspect it's just one of his next series of cases. New York are Massachusetts are out there, with big targets pasted on them.

Bob Cottrol on McDonald

Posted on June 29, 2010
at SCOTUSBlog. Very much to the point. A sample: The opinions in McDonald are rich in ironies. We have conservative justices authoring opinions which squarely confront the tragic legacy of race and its impact on American Constitutional history, while we have liberal justices wanting to largely skip over that history...

Photos from the Supreme Court yesterday

Posted on June 29, 2010
Right here.

Comments

Posted on June 28, 2010
I had to block .gmail and aol.com after huge waves of comment spam came, giving those as a return address. (The latest wave, yesterday, fired off 60 spam comments in a matter of a few minutes, before I blocked aol; no idea how many it would have posted if I hadn't done that)...

Chicago

Posted on June 28, 2010
Opinion here. 240 pages if you count the concurrences and the dissents. A wonderful day! Everyone gets something. Alan Gura gets Thomas' concurrence, and the fifth vote. Steve Halbrook gets cited a zillion times (as I've said before, if you could copyright an argument, the Supreme Court would have had to negotiate royalties with him)...

Chicago-- WE WIN

Posted on June 28, 2010
opinion here here.

ABA Warning

Posted on June 26, 2010
The ABA (of which I am a proud non-member) reminds us that a JD and partnership in a major firm give no protection against being fleeced by really dumb internet scams. The comments are interesting, too.

VPC's latest study is debunked

Posted on June 25, 2010
VPC claims that loose gun laws, and in particular "right to carry," is associated with higher crime rates. Howard Nemerov takes them on, showing how they discarded much of the data, and the full dataset cuts the other way.

Waiting for Chicago

Posted on June 24, 2010
Supreme Court handed down a load of opinions today (I lost count, 5-6-7?). Last opinions will be handed down on Monday. Ginsburg got the Skilling decision today, meaning that for the sitting when McDonald was argued, only that case remains, and only Justice Alito has not written an opinion...

Genocide, guns, and Hollywood

Posted on June 23, 2010
Dan Gifford raises some serious points at the screening of a documentary on genocide.

James Madison's notes on his study of law

Posted on June 23, 2010
An interesting article. (Download it by clicking on "pdf" or "html" in upper right margin). It's of interest mainly in a historical sense -- no great insights into Madison's constitutional thoughts.

Incompetent local crook

Posted on June 23, 2010
From this morning's paper: John Catania plead out to armed robbery, agg assault and kidnapping. He faces 10 to 70 years when sentenced. He was apprehended after a pizza place reported being robbed. As the robber reached for the money, he put the gun in his waistband, and it fired, shooting him in the leg...

Countdown to Chicago

Posted on June 21, 2010
The custom is that each Justice gets at least one opinion from each two-week "sitting" on arguments. Coming into today's opinion releases, there were three opinions left from the sitting in which the Chicago case was argued, and three Justices who hadn't written an opinion from it...

open carriers given flak in MI

Posted on June 19, 2010
Apparently, the Ass't Chief of Police of Marysville (MI) hasn't heard that open carry is legal in his State. Hat tip to Justin Martin of GeorgiaCarry.org.

Funny read, from the Chi Tribune

Posted on June 17, 2010
It asks what gun laws Chicago should adopt if its ban is stricken. The "model gun laws" listed are worth a good laugh.

DISCLOSE bill and NRA

Posted on June 16, 2010
A few months ago, the Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on corporations airing campaign ads (or anything mentioning a candidate's name, including an ad that suggests asking him to do something). The powers that be started pushing a bill, DISCLOSE, which would make these now-lawful ad expenditures a bit more burdensome...

Attorney shoots self in foot in court

Posted on June 16, 2010
Literally. Incidents like this make me feel less old-fashioned: I won't have a gun without a manual safety, and it stays on unless readying to fire. I know ... I was trained by my father, and he was trained to WWII standards with a 1911, so I'm half a century out of date.

"F" rated Congressman assaults interviewer

Posted on June 14, 2010
Rep. Bob Etheridge. N.C., gets gets caught on camera. Some viewers think he was plastered, and if so, he must have been starting early. David Codrea reports he is rated F by NRA and GoA.

More reading of tea leaves

Posted on June 14, 2010
As I noted during the last such exercise, the Supreme Court considers each two-week session of oral arguments a ?sitting,? and the custom is that each Justice (if at all possible) gets to write at least one opinion from each sitting. McDonald was heard during the sitting of February 22...

Self defender downs cop-killer

Posted on June 14, 2010
This posting points to a memorable 1999 event which doesn't seem to have attracted much media interest (it happened in Phoenix, and don't remember hearing of it before this). Phoenix PD officer Marc Atkinson was tailing a stolen vehicle and waiting for backup when he went around a corner and found its three occupants waiting in ambush; he had no chance, and they killed him...

Culpepper Co. VA ends investigation of self-defender

Posted on June 13, 2010
Actually, I don't know that the Sheriff of Culpepper did investigate the fellow, after he held a burglar at gunpoint, but I suspect there must have been some inquiry before the sheriff issued him a letter of commendation.

Brady Campaign selling its mailing lists

Posted on June 12, 2010
Joe Huffman makes an interesting discovery on the web: Brady Campaign is selling its mailing list. And it's only got 50,000 names (only 28,000 of whom have donated or otherwise responded in the last year, if I read it correctly), rather than the 500,000 to which Brady has laid claim...

Lott on gun laws and mass murders

Posted on June 11, 2010
John Lott's latest is at National Review Online. "Contrary to public perception, Western Europe, most of whose countries have much tougher gun laws than the United States, has experienced many of the worst multiple-victim public shootings. Particularly telling, all the multiple-victim public shootings in Western Europe have occurred in places where civilians are not permitted to carry guns...

GREAT video, watch it while you can

Posted on June 09, 2010
I had a previous post about Brady Campaign giving Helen Thomas its award for vision, and a commenter noted that Brady has pulled that page. But they forgot to take down this embarassing clip, where Paul Helmcke reads a long stream of letters from big names, kissing up to her, followed by Sarah Brady brown-nosing her at length...

Shooting is a dignified sport

Posted on June 09, 2010
The points are counted, and if you didn't qualify, you case your guns, pack your range bag, and join the spectators. In other sports, it's not so dignified. We had a joke going around, regarding what would be the Camp Perry equivalent of Europe's soccer holliganism...

For the third time, a Chicagoan blasts a robber with an unregistered gun

Posted on June 09, 2010
This time, a pawnbroker kills an armed robber, who'd been convicted of robbery before but apparently paroled after boot camp. [I always thought that was a singularly foolish idea. The reasoning seems to be (1) the military teaches self-discipline and duty, (2) the military starts with physical workouts and being yelled at, therefore (3) if you have someone yell at a criminal while he works out, he will become self-disciplined and law abiding...

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