Constitutional Law

Parker/Heller set for argument

Argument is Tues., March 18. No time to say more, worked about 14 hours on the case yesterday, will be doing more today.

Update in light of comments: nope, no television. I forget which Justice replied, when asked about televising arguments, "over my dead body." They have lately gone to posting audio and transcripts a day or two after an argument, tho.

And yep, beating the "horrible hypotheticals" is always a problem. That's why the question of regulation comes in. I sometimes say that you could say the same about freedom of speech. "Why, if we allow 'freedom of speech.' we'll have to legalize blackmail (which is nothing but a threat to express embarassing incidents unless paid for silence), death threats, etc." Or have to allow people to use bullhorns in residential areas at 1 AM. There are ways to work out the extreme cases WITHOUT impairing the core rights. Complexity here is that courts tend to favor First Amendment liberties, and do not tend to favor Second Amendment ones.

Akhil Amar had an interesting test: if (to use his interesting if a bit eccentric, and I regard that as good) theory, the 2A was meant to protect a right of the people en masse to resist tyranny, and the 14A to protect their right to resist criminals, then a weapon that is good for neither can be banned without harming either purpose. A backpack nuke isn't appropriate to defending your house, and rather than enabling us to resist a tyrant enables one to become a tyrant (since terrorism is by tyranny writ small).

Full post as published by Of Arms and the Law on January 22, 2008 (boomark / email).