• Selected
• Entire List

Abstract:
These con law haiku
Tell law with style and rhythm.
Download and enjoy.

Constitutional law, Supreme Court, poetry, haiku, Constitution

Abstract:
September 11, 2001, changed the world. Exactly five weeks later, the individual right theory of the Second Amendment received its greatest boost ever. In United States v. Emerson, 270 F.3d 203 (5th Cir. 2001), the Fifth Circuit opined that the Second Amendment protects the rights of individuals ... to privately possess and bear their own firearms. This decision may have been the first prominent pronouncement on civil liberties by the federal judiciary after September 11.

This article explores emerson in a larger legal and real-world context. It explores the constitutional implications of treating gun ownership as a protected individual right. First, recharacterizing the chief law enforcement officers of the states as members of the militia enables Congress to command them to execute the Laws of the Union. U.S. Const. art. I, Section 8, cl. 15. Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997), which struck down the Brady Bill, should be reconsidered and perhaps overruled. Second, Emerson's underlying logic suggests that the Second Amendment should not be incorporated against the states via the Fourteenth Amendment. Finally, insofar as the individual right theory rests upon an expansive definition of militia, Emerson portends the recognition of a stunningly fecund font of federal police power.

Shifting from legal doctrine to empiricism, this article then explores a singular contradiction of the individual rights theory's underlying assumption that widespread gun ownership deters violence. Federal law has historically imposed a comprehensive gun-free zone on one of the principlal channels of interstate commerce: air travel. Nothing in the United States' hastily revamped security matrix permits, let alone encourages, civilian travelers to arm themselves. Commercial aviation therefore challenges the idea of public security through widespread deployment of personal firearms. If total civic disarmament not only promises but actually delivers freedom from violence, broad gun ownership - to say nothing of its protection through constitutional law - loses much of its appeal.

As a legal matter, Emerson establishes a modest new civil liberty in exchange for an expansive congressional power. Civil aviation in practice subverts the individual rights theory's approach to public safety. The leading threat to American security today comes from terrorism and asymmetrical warfare. September 11 changed our perspective on private violence and its place in the American constitutional scheme. Neither that scheme nor September 11 justifies the treatment of private gun ownership as a pillar of national security.

This is the way the law ends
This is the way the law ends
This is the way the law ends
Not with a whimper but a bang.

This article was written under the pseudonym Gil Grantmore.

September 11, Second Amendment, individual rights theory, gun control, airports, Emerson, Printz, fascism, microbiology, bacteriophages, viruses, terrorism, civil liberties, militia, Osama bin Laden, Ashcroft

Abstract:
Constitutional Commentary has decided to abandon The Chicago Manual of Legal Citation in favor of The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation. This decision should not be construed as a wholesale endorsement of the Bluebook. Constitutional Commentary feels no obligation to defer to the law reviews at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Penn on any subject, least of all on questions of legal citation. Constitutional Commentary has identified specific Bluebook rules that it will ignore, modify, or clarify. All rules of legal citation, including those outlined here, may be suspended when common sense so dictates. Where Bluebook rules have proved undesirable, unworkable, or ugly in the experience of Constitutional Commentary's editors, they will be broken without hesitation or regret. In the spirit of norm entrepreneurship, Constitutional Commentary invites other journals to adopt any of its rules. Acknowledgement is appreciated but not necessary.

citation, Bluebook, Maroonbook, Chicago Manual, Constitutional Commentary, norm entrepreneurship, norms, bibliography, legal scholarship

Abstract:
Every Supreme Court opinion is prefaced by a curiously self-contradictory citation. The Syllabus is accompanied by a footnote warning of the Syllabus's unofficial status. By the same token, of course, the footnote itself is unofficial and has no legal standing. This essay reexamines the status of the Syllabus, and argues that it should have precedential authority.

headnote, abstract, Supreme Court, reporter, decisions, Detroit Lumber, Detroit Timber, United States Reports, clerks, Balkin, footnote

Abstract:
The Harvard Law Review is the Word of Law. America's premier student-edited law review derives much of its reputation from its premier student-written features. Written in a coporate yet incorporeal voice, Harvard's Supreme Court and Development notes have epitomized the fiction that student-written legal commentary should be regarded as a collective product.

Throughout it all the Review has never forgotten its humble origins as the brainchild of a small group of Harvard students. Till now. The Harvard Law Review's 1999 Developments note, dedicated to "The Law of Cyberspace," 112 Harv. L. Rev. 1574, trashed a half-century of tradition by breaking into the first-person singular.

Behold the new covenant, cast in the hallowed pages of the Harvard Law Review: "Le droit, c'est moi."

Harvard Law Review, Developments, Supreme Court, student writing, cyberspace, Coughlin, Mark, legal scholarship

Abstract:
Even in the legal arena, fashion is a topic of utmost importance. Fashion can overturn criminal convictions. Fashion has also had communicative aspects from time immemorial. This article therefore examines the impact of fashion, as a means of self-expression, on law. It reaches the conclusion that every junior high girl knows: how you dress expresses who you are. In other words, Fashion is Speech. Because appearance is inherently communicative, cases involving the regulation of dress and appearance should be decided under strict scrutiny. Government must advance a compelling justification for such regulation. It is especially important to maintain this strict standard when the speech in question occurs in school.

clothing, fashion, speech, expression, schools, Tinker, hair, religion, First Amendment

Abstract:
Lemon isn't dead, but contra is. Once upon a time, truth was truth, and we had a way to signal what wasn't. Until 1996, the Bluebook directed lawyers to use contra when cited authority directly states the contrary of the proposition. The 16th edition of the Bluebook removed contra from the list of valid introductory signals.

The death of contra is the latest, surest sign of decadence and decline in American legal culture. It symbolizes the subtle subversion of law and legal scholarship. Where once clarity ruled, negation now lacks legal voice.

Poor contra! A legal culture that neither knows contra and nor respects its power is one in which the Supreme Court can spurn a condemned man's habeas petition because the Court had used cf. instead of see in another man's case. Lambrix v. Singletary, 520 U.S. 518 (1997).

O contra, now sent to Heaven, cursed by your fate. Accord, remain; you will be used, in courts as in the law reviews. Give us a way to signal lies, and forgive our omitted parentheticals, as we forgive those who force us to write parentheticals. And mock us not with citations, but deliver us from pedants. For in Hell there will be nothing but law, and the Bluebook will be meticulously observed.

contra, citations, Bluebook, Harvard, Lambrix, accord, post-modernism, law reviews, legal writing, humor, satire