Appellate Law

What do abortion and guns have in common besides being a lot of fun?

By S. COTUS

Give up?

Judge Wilkinson whines about how lawyers for the government couldn?t convince the court to let them ban either of them.  Tnx Legal Theory Blog. 

Seriously folks, just give it up.  The rights to hold a gun and name it after a girl or have a ?totally radical? abortion, for many Americans, are very important. The sky isn?t going to fall if someone has an abortion or gets a gun license.  Do we really need to defer to the executive on this?  Does Judge Wilkerson really need to pretend that some great constitutional values are at stake if the court sees some ambiguity in the constitution and comes down on the side of fun?

Or, in the words of LTB:

My ultimate verdict on Wilkinson's essay is that it relies on a very serious conceptual error--essentially equating ambiguity of linguistic meaning with the existence of reasonable disagreement. 

Full post as published by Appellate Law and Practice on September 16, 2008 (boomark / email).