I'm delighted to report that Josh Chafetz will be guest-blogging here next week. Josh is a law professor at Cornell, a scholar of British and American legal history, the author of Democracy's Privileged Few: Legislative Privilege and Democratic Norms in the British and American Constitutions (Yale Univ. Press 2007), and cofounder of OxBlog.

Josh's posts will focus on his new article, Leaving the House: The Constitutional Status of Resignation from the House of Representatives, which makes the surprising assertions that, (1) while the Constitution gives Senators a right to resign their seats, Representatives have no such right, but may only quit if the House lets them, and (2) there are good reasons for the House to change its rules so that resignations have to be accepted by vote of the House to become effective. Long-time Conspiracy readers may recognize that this is Josh's second guest-blogging appearance here; he and his OxBlog cobloggers guest-blogged here nearly five years ago.

by a 10-3 en banc vote (U.S. v. Stevens). Here's my summary of the issue from when I blogged about another such case last year, though I've revised it slightly.

The relevant statute, 18 U.S.C. § 48, criminalizes (a) "knowingly creat[ing], sell[ing], or possess[ing] a depiction of animal cruelty with the intention of placing that depiction in interstate or foreign commerce," though with an exception for (b) "any depiction that has serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical, or artistic value."

"[D]epiction of animal cruelty" is defined in (c) to include "any visual or auditory depiction ... of conduct in which a living animal is intentionally maimed, mutilated, tortured, wounded, or killed, if such conduct is illegal under Federal law or the law of the [jurisdiction] in which the creation, sale, or possession takes place, regardless of whether the maiming, mutilation, torture, wounding, or killing took place in the [jurisdiction]." This means that it's a federal crime to distribute videos of cockfighting or dogfighting in, say, California (assuming the depictions lack "serious ... value") even if the cockfighting or dogfighting was legal in the place (say, Puerto Rico or Japan) in which the video was created.

The statute was enacted as an attempt to stop the distribution of so-called "crush videos," which generally depict a woman's legs and feet, often in high heels, stepping on insects, mice, or kittens; and it does indeed seem to cover such videos, assuming the relevant state law bars the underlying conduct (often yes as to killing kittens, often no as to killing insects). Don't ask me why people would want to watch this stuff, but apparently some get their jollies this way.

But the statute is written much more broadly than that. On its face, the statute would also punish, depending on how judges and juries interpret "serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical, or artistic value" (emphasis added):

• A TV program showing foreign bullfights, which might be legal in the country in which they're taken, but illegal in at least some states in which the program is shown.

• A magazine with photographs of people illegally killing endangered species in a foreign country.

• A magazine with photographs of people committing cruelty to animals, aimed at exposing and punishing such cruelty, so long as the magazine is sold on newsstands or by subscription (rather than given away).

One can certainly argue that all the above has such serious value, but at least as to the first item and maybe as to the others, some factfinders might conclude otherwise — the test is quite subjective, and some jurors or judges might well say "this bullfighting scene has no serious value; it's just aimed to shock, titillate, and get ratings."

Note also an important difference between this clause and the third prong of the obscenity test, from which the clause is borrowed: clause (b) doesn't say that the work has to be judged "taken as a whole." This means the "serious value" exemption under this law may well be a smaller safe harbor than the "serious value" exemption under obscenity law.

The statute doesn't fit within the existing obscenity or incitement exceptions. President Clinton's signing statement tried to cabin the statute by saying that the Justice Department should construe the law narrowly, limiting it to "wanton cruelty to animals designed to appeal to a prurient interest in sex"; that at least brings it closer to the obscenity exception, though not entirely within it. But the signing statement isn't part of the law, and is certainly not binding on later administrations.

The real question is whether the child pornography exception — the one exception that allows restriction of the distribution of speech because of the manner in which the speech was created — should be extended to cover the distribution of material the making of which involved harm to animals, rather than just harm to children. The argument would be that, as with child pornography,

1. production of cruelty videos can be done in secret, but the distribution has to be relatively public;

2. a ban on production will thus be very hard to enforce;

3. so long as there's money to be made in distributing cruelty videos, there'll always be someone willing to produce them; and thus,

4. to prevent the harm that takes place when the videos are made (injury to animals), one also needs to stop their distribution.

The argument against extending the child pornography exception would be:

1. The statute might end up suppressing a lot of valuable speech, such as the film of the bullfight and the like, and clause (b) is an inadequate safe harbor because it's much too vague.

2. The statute will in fact suppress more valuable speech than child pornography law does, because depictions of animal cruelty are more likely to be relevant to political debates or to legitimate art than depictions of sex (or of lewd exhibition of genitals) involving children.

3. The harm that the distribution of this speech causes — indirectly furthering animal cruelty — is much less severe than the harm of indirectly furthering sexual exploitation of children. (The legal system itself embodies such a judgment — child sexual abuse is a very serious crime, generally punished much more severely than animal cruelty. Cockfighting, in particular, is not even a crime in Puerto Rico, though Congress could have outlawed it if it wanted to. For more on when and whether it's legitimate for courts to draw such crime severity lines as a constitutional matter, see Crime Severity and Constitutional Line-Drawing, 90 Va. L. Rev. 1957 (2004).)

This also illustrates how the "slippery slope" can work in a legal system that's built on precedent and analogy. Crush video laws have indeed been advocated by their supporters as analogous to child pornography bans; and while courts might well draw the line between the two, perhaps on the grounds that child sexual abuse is just much more harmful than crush videos, the analogy seemed to be at least helpful in persuading legislatures to enact the laws.

Some might embrace the slippery slope here, if they think that cruelty videos should be banned. Some who disagree about cruelty videos nonetheless might accept the slippery slope risk, on the theory that child pornography is so harmful that we should have an exception for it even if there's some risk that the exception will spread further than one would like. (That's my view, and the Third Circuit decision suggests the risk of spread isn't that high, though note that the 3 dissenters did indeed rely heavily on Ferber as justification for carving out a new exception here.) But one shouldn't pretend that the slippery slope risk doesn't exist.

Tortious interference with business relations -- that's what most of the cartoons are about!

College Life, an Orange County Register blog, reports that "Orange County’s first law school [Western State University College of Law], which educated an entire generation of lawyers and judges here since it was founded in 1966, has been sold to an education company based in Geneva, Switzerland.... The deal was estimated valued between $5 million and $10 million, according to SEC documents filed July 16 by Education Management LLC, the parent company of the for-profit law school."

A short snippet from the Newburyport Herald, Jan. 25, 1799, which illustrates just how hot the political divisions of the time were -- remember that this was the Sedition Act era of massive political warfare between the Federalists and the Republicans (whom the Federalists derided as Jacobins). "Sedition pole" is a reference to a liberty pole, at the time a symbol of opposition to the Adams Administration, that the target presumably helped erect; other accounts of the incident report that the Sedition and Alien Acts were burned at the foot of the pole. Here's the entirety of the mini-article:

Thursday last a petition was presented by Charles Webber, of Vassalborough, to the Mun. Court of Sessions, &c. now sitting in this town, for a Licence to keep a house of public entertainment, which (to the honor of the Bench) was unanimously rejected. So much for Sedition Poles, and being an enemy to country, Charley.

Oddly, Charley had already publicly repented two weeks before the article was written, perhaps because of the threat of Sedition Act prosecution.

The cases about secular enforcement of Muslim dowry-on-divorce agreements (see below) remind me of a broader thought I had offered before about Islamic agreements and American law: Those agreements should be treated the same as other agreements, without any attempt to specially nanny-state the parties.

If American law provides for certain constraints on contract enforcement generally -- e.g., you can't contract to have your hand cut off, certain prenuptial agreements are unenforceable, contracts entered into by minors are unenforceable unless properly ratified when the minor becomes an adult, parties can't contract away the rights of nonparties, such as the parties' future children, etc. -- those same constraints should apply to Islamic agreements. That should be true of agreements to arbitrate pursuant to certain rules, agreements to pay money in the event of a divorce, or whatever else. But if American law allows people freedom of contract, even when the people are young, foolish, socially pressured, and the like, Muslim people are as entitled as other people to such freedom (with the burdens that freedom often yields).

Sometimes the enforcement of the agreements might hurt Muslim women, who we think were wrongly pressured by family, community, or religion into waiving important rights. Sometimes it might help Muslim women, as with the enforcement of promises of a certain payment on divorce. But that, I think, shouldn't much matter, because the more important point is that Muslims, women, and Muslim women should be no more and no less entitled to freedom of contract than the rest of us.

If they feel undue pressure, the harsh but proper remedy is for them to leave the source of the pressure, again, whether family, community, or religion. Of course the law should protect them as best it can against unlawful (for instance, violent) retaliation for the departure; but that should be the extent of it. This "leave and take the social consequences, or stay and live with the contracts you make" is the remedy American law offers to the Amish, Hasids, Mormons, Catholics, Baptists, or anyone else, religious or not, who are dissatisfied with what their families, communities, or religions demand of them. It should be no different for Muslims.

Mohammed Zawahiri and Raghad Z. Alwattar were married, in an arranged marriage. The day of the wedding, Zawahiri signed a "mahr" under which he promised to pay his wife $25,000 in the event of divorce. Last week, the Ohio Court of Appeals held that the agreement was unenforceable under generally applicable Ohio prenuptial agreement law (chiefly because it was "presented a very short time before the wedding ceremony and postponement of the ceremony would cause significant hardship, embarrassment, or emotional stress," and because "Zawahiri did not have the opportunity to consult with an attorney prior to signing the marriage contract"). This may well be an accurate statement of Ohio law, and I don't mean to quarrel with it here.

What particularly interests me, though, is the trial court's alternative basis for its decision, on which the appellate court didn't opine: The First Amendment barred enforcement of a mahr -- just as it would bar the enforcement of an agreement to give a Jewish religious divorce (citing an unpublished Ohio decision, Steinberg v. Steinberg, 1982 WL 2446 (Ohio. App.)). Though the mahr requirement "seems less like a religious act than the participation in a religious divorce ceremony," "because the obligation to pay $25,000 is rooted in a religious practice, it is similarly a religious act" and a court therefore can't order the husband to make the payment.

I saw a similar First Amendment argument made in last month's Ahmed v. Ahmed, but the appellate court didn't consider it because it hadn't been properly raised below. I also saw it made and rejected in Odatalla v. Odatalla, 810 A.2d 93 (N.J. Super. Ch. 2002):

[T]he Mahr Agreement is not void simply because it was entered into during an Islamic ceremony of marriage. Rather, enforcement of the secular parts of a written agreement is consistent with the constitutional mandate for a “free exercise” of religious beliefs, no matter how diverse they may be. If this Court can apply “neutral principles of law” to the enforcement of a Mahr Agreement, though religious in appearance, then the Mahr Agreement survives any constitutional implications. Enforcement of this Agreement will not violate the First Amendment proscriptions on the establishment of a church or the free exercise of religion in this country. “The primary advantages of the neutral principles approach are that it is completely secular in operation, and yet flexible enough to accommodate all forms of religious organization and polity.”

It seems to me that the New Jersey court got it right, and the Ohio trial court got it wrong: If two parties enter into an agreement promising to perform a secular act (e.g., pay money) in the event of some secularly ascertainable event (e.g., a divorce), there's no Establishment Clause barrier to enforcing such an agreement. There might be state law principles constraining such agreements. But the religious motivation for the promise, and the religious event in which the promise was made, shouldn't affect the analysis. (See Jones v. Wolf, which holds that church property disputes may be resolved by civil courts using "neutral principles" of contract and deed interpretation.)

I would go further and say that refusing to enforce a contract simply because of its religious source or motivation would itself violate the Free Exercise Clause, because it would deny people an important generally available right (the right to have contracts enforced) because of their religious motivations. A person who has a religious reason for entering into a contract is just as entitled to enforcement of the contract as a person who has a secular reason for doing so.

There are indeed reasons why civil courts may not enforce certain contracts, for instance when enforcing the contract requires interpretation of religious doctrine, or when it would require ordering people to perform an act that has purely religious significance. (I should note that there's a conflict among courts about whether enforcing prenuptial contracts to give a Jewish religious divorce, called a get, would violate the Establishment Clause; but that, I think, is because the giving of the divorce, as opposed to paying money, is indeed an act that has purely religious significance.) But when the contract simply calls for a payment of $25,000 in the event of a divorce, and the parties do indeed get civilly divorced (so there's no need to determine whether there's a valid religious divorce), then it seems to me that the motivation for the contract should not make any difference.

at the Northwestern Law Review's Colloquy. Both Professors, in addition to their other claims to fame, have written a good deal of scholarship on the Second Amendment before, and even more on constitutional rights more generally. Much worth reading, and only 9 pages.

Orin asks -- in the context of our discussion of self-defense rights -- why the existence of state constitutional rights would be relevant to whether there is an analogous federal constitutional right. Let me offer a few thoughts on this.

1. Tradition: To begin with, the Court has made clear that whether American law traditionally recognizes a right is relevant to the existence and scope of federal constitutional rights. Washington v. Glucksberg says the existence of such a tradition is necessary to recognizing an unenumerated right (and Glucksberg strikes me as still important despite Lawrence v. Texas's seeming departure from the Glucksberg approach). Richmond Newspapers v. Virginia relied heavily on tradition in recognizing a First Amendment right of access to criminal trials (even though generally the First Amendment has not been read as securing a right of access to government property or proceedings).

Justice Scalia has long argued that traditional recognition of restraints should generally lead courts to uphold those restraints as constitutional, even where the question relates to the scope of an enumerated constitutional right. Likewise, in D.C. v. Heller itself, Justice Scalia suggested that various traditionally accepted gun controls would be constitutional, and my sense was that he was chiefly relying on tradition in doing so.

More broadly, in our legal system tradition -- which is to say the accumulated judgments of important governmental decisionmakers -- influences court decisions. That's clearest when the tradition comes from judicial precedent (even of other courts), but it's also visible when courts rely on legislative decisions (again, even outside the jurisdiction) and other governmental judgments. There are, for instance, many tort law cases in which courts choosing a common-law tort rule consider as authority the decisions of other state legislatures as well as the decisions of other courts.

2. State Constitutional Rights: And if courts look to traditional recognition of a right as evidence that the right should be further constitutionalized, it seems to me that recognition in state constitutions should be an especially influential form of recognition. Now it need not always be so, for instance if the right is controversial, and some state constitutions recognize it but others deliberately reject it. (Consider, for instance, "right to work" amendments in some state constitutions, which bar private employers and unions from requiring that all employees pay union dues.) But in a case such as self-defense, there is no such controversy. Rather, all the states recognize the right as a matter of common law or statute, and on top of that 21 states recognize the right in a state constitution, plus 23 more recognize a state constitutional right to bear arms in self-defense.

The state constitutional evidence as to self-defense (whether the 44 states if you include the right to bear arms in self-defense states, or only the 21 that speak separately of the right to defend life) thus strikes me as evidence of a particularly strong and important tradition of protecting the right. The state constitutional evidence may be neither necessary or sufficient, but it seems an important piece of data nonetheless, and likely to be of influence on courts considering -- especially under the Glucksberg rule -- whether to recognize a federal constitutional right of self-defense.

3. Rebutting the Charge of Novelty: Finally, consider a question that Orin himself asked as to whether there's a constitutional right of self-defense:

If it's so obvious, why is it that no one has recognized the right before? Indeed, why is it that (as far as I know) no one litigated the issue in court in the last 220 years despite hundreds of thousands if not millions of opportunities?

For reasons related to what I said in item 1, these sorts of questions are very important in a fundamentally conservative legal system, or for that matter to anyone who takes a Burkean or Burkeanish approach to constitutional law. Remember, as the old saying goes, "law is the only field where 'that's an original idea' is a pejorative."

Well, the state constitutional cases, and the court decisions I cited in which the claim was raised by the parties and in which the court recognized a constitutional right, seems to answer Orin's objection: Some people, specifically at least 21 sets of state constitutional drafters, plus the judges who applied the provisions, did recognize the right. Some people litigated the provisions -- not often, perhaps because the right to self-defense has been so broadly accepted, but sometimes. It's true that most of the cases involved people raising specific state constitutional rights, but some spoke more broadly about constitutional principles that weren't mentioned in that particular state's constitutional text. And of course it makes sense that litigants in state court would raise state constitutional objections, especially before the massive federalization of constitutional criminal procedure that mostly took place in the 1960s.

So I hope the state constitutional evidence -- both the provisions and the many cases I cited that apply the provisions, including sometimes to trump contrary statutes (and sometimes to interpret statutes or common-law principles) -- does help respond to Orin's "If it's so obvious, why is it that no one has recognized the right before?" objection. One can still argue, of course, that for various reasons the federal courts should decline to recognize a federal constitutional right to self-defense. But I hope I've demonstrated that the state constitutional evidence is important here, even if not by itself conclusive.

From yesterday's unpublished U.S. v. Gilbert (some paragraph breaks added):

Keith Gilbert appeals his jury conviction on one count of conspiracy to manufacture unregistered firearms ..., one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm ..., seven counts of possession of a machinegun ..., and two counts of possession of an unregistered firearm ....

At trial, Gilbert admitted to participating in each of the four controlled purchases and testified that he knew the buyer was acting as an informant. Gilbert maintains that he sold the guns to the informant intentionally, to challenge the constitutionality of firearms laws. Gilbert attempted several times to testify, twice successfully, that he believed the Second Amendment gave an individual the right to bear arms. Each time, the court sustained government counsel's objections and instructed the jury to disregard Gilbert's answers.

The court also denied Gilbert's request for an additional jury instruction to the effect that the Second Amendment affords an individual right to possess firearms for personal use. The final jury instructions included, at the government's request, the following instruction:

A person does not have the right under the Second Amendment, or under any other provision of the Constitution, to possess a machinegun. A person does not have a right, under the Second Amendment, or under any other provision of the Constitution, to possess a rifle with a barrel shorter than 16 inches that the person has not registered in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record.

... The district court's instructions were particularly appropriate to rebut inferences created by Gilbert's counsel's statements that Gilbert believed the Second Amendment allowed him to possess, sell, and manufacture firearms, Gilbert's stricken statements about his beliefs regarding the Second Amendment, and his statement that he was challenging the constitutionality of the law.

The Supreme Court's recent decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, holding that the Second Amendment protects a limited individual right to possess a firearm -- unconnected with service in a militia -- does not alter our conclusion. Under Heller, individuals still do not have the right to possess machineguns or short-barreled rifles, as Gilbert did, and convicted felons, such as Gilbert, do not have the right to possess any firearms....

Gilbert also argues that the district court erred by preventing him from testifying as to his understanding and beliefs concerning the Second Amendment.... [T]he charges against Gilbert did not require, as an element of proof, evidence that Gilbert knowingly broke the law, only that he knowingly possessed weapons and knew the characteristics of those weapons. The only elements of proof which required inquiry into Gilbert's mental state were met: the government proved that Gilbert joined the conspiracy knowing its object and intending to accomplish it, and that he knowingly possessed machineguns and a rifle with a barrel less than 16 inches in length.

Thus we conclude that the district court acted well within its discretion to exclude Gilbert's testimony regarding his beliefs about the Second Amendment as inadmissible [as irrelevant]. For the same reason, we conclude that the district court's exclusion of Gilbert's testimony did not violate his right to present a witness in his own defense.

Whatever one might think about what D.C. v. Heller should have said about these issues (and I'm inclined to approve of its conclusions on them), it seems to me the Ninth Circuit read and applied Heller quite correctly.

More in my state constitutional self-defense rights series, from my short article on the subject, which was written before D.C.v. Heller. As before, the citations are available here.

Forty-four state constitutions, dating from 1776 to 1998, secure a right to keep and bear arms; 40 of these clearly secure an individual right to keep and bear arms in self-defense, though they may also secure a right to keep and bear arms for other purposes. Of these, 22 say this expressly, using provisions such as “every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state”; 17 have been read by courts as securing an individual right to keep and bear arms in self-defense; in one more state, Alaska, the expressly individual right was enacted in 1994, when the supporters of an individual right to bear arms treated the right as aimed at least in part at self-defense. Any “right [of a citizen] to bear arms in defense of himself” necessarily presupposes some right to use force, including lethal force, in self-defense. A few court decisions say so expressly, but the conclusion flows clearly from the text of the right-to-beararms provision.

The ten states that lack an individual right to bear arms aimed partly at self-defense are California, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, and New York, which have no right-to-bear-arms provision; Kansas and Massachusetts, in which the provisions have been read as securing only a collective right; and Hawaii and Virginia, in which the provisions do not expressly set forth the right as individual, and in which state courts have not decided whether the right is individual. Of these, California, Iowa, Massachusetts, and New Jersey expressly secure in their constitutions a right to defend life. Thus, 44 of the 50 state constitutions secure an individual right to self-defense in some way, 4 only through a right to defend life, 23 only through a right to bear arms in self-defense, and 17 through both.

It is not clear, though, that these provisions presuppose a right to use force in defense of property rather than in defense of life or in resistance to serious infringements on liberty, such as attempted rape or kidnapping. American law has generally not allowed the use of deadly force in defense of property (with some important exceptions), so a right to bear arms, which generally refers to deadly weapons, is more logically seen as focusing on self-defense rather than defense of property. In fact, only 8 of the right-to-bear-arms provisions mention defense of property, though 3 more mention defense of home but not of property generally.

Continuing with how the state constitutional right to self-defense has indeed been asserted -- sometimes successfully -- in various kinds of cases:

Criminal Law: A few cases have used state constitutional self-defense rights as guides for determining the scope of permissible self-defense in criminal cases. For instance, Ohio courts relied on the Ohio “defending life” provision to recognize an exception to bans on felons’ possession of firearms when the felon picks up a gun to stave off an imminent threat. Likewise, a California court relied on the California provision to clarify the longstanding principle that self-defense is unavailable when the defender is the one who started a deadly fight, a principle that has sometimes been imprecisely cast as an exception for cases of “mortal combat.” The jury had been instructed -- in the language of the applicable statute -- that “a person claiming [self-defense] if he were the assailant or engaged in mortal combat, must really and in good faith have endeavored to decline any further struggle before the homicide was committed”; the court concluded that this instruction was unconstitutional:

The right to defend life is one of the inalienable rights guaranteed by the constitution of the state. It is plain that if a person without fault is assailed by another and a mortal combat is precipitated, to require the former to attempt to withdraw before killing his adversary is to require the very thing that may prevent him from defending himself at all. The instruction is quite capable of the interpretation that although the defendant was without fault and the deceased was the aggressor, yet, if they were engaged in a mortal combat, it was the duty of the defendant to endeavor to withdraw before killing his adversary, although he had reason to believe, and did believe, his life was in imminent danger, and that to attempt to decline further struggle would increase his peril and probably enable his adversary to kill him. Such, of course, was not the intention of the learned trial judge in giving the instruction nor, probably, of the legislature in enacting the law, but it is capable of such interpretation and may have been so interpreted by the jury.

had a right to enter, in a lawful manner, the house ... of any person ... for the purpose of talking with and procuring his said wife to leave the said house, and had a right to use such reasonable force and persuasion as was necessary to induce her to ... come back to her home with him; and no person ... had a right to interfere with him in the exercise of such reasonable force or persuasion.

Civil Liability: One case, Kentucky Fried Chicken of California v. Superior Court, relied on a state constitutional right to defend property to hold that a shopkeeper’s agents have “no duty to comply with a robber’s unlawful demand for the surrender of property,” even when the robber is threatening a patron’s life. [There are also other opinions on this question, but they focus on nonconstitutional self-defense or defense-of-property principles rather than a constitutional guarantee.]

Employment Law: Several cases have relied on state constitutional self-defense rights in concluding that an employer may not fire employees for acting violently when the violence was committed in reasonable self-defense. In the course of deciding whether firing an employee for his actions constitutes tortuous “discharge against public policy,” courts often look to whether the state or federal constitutions protect that conduct against governmental retaliation. Such constitutional protection is not necessary or sufficient for the tort to be recognized, but it is relevant to the decision.

More from my article, which I introduced below:

The state constitutional defense-of-life/property provisions have most clearly and most often made a difference in cases where a person claimed a right to kill wild animals to “protect[] property.” These cases have read the right to “protect[] property” as a judicially enforceable constitutional right that could trump statutes. It follows that the coordinate right to “defend life” -— a right that the common law historically saw as even broader than the right to protect property —- would likewise be seen as an enforceable right.

The longest line of such precedents comes from Pennsylvania, where cases from 1917 to 2000 hold that the constitutional right to protect property entitles landowners and their agents to kill wild animals that are threatening the landowner’s crops, and that it is unconstitutional for state game laws barring the killing of wild animals to be applied in such situations. Cases from Iowa, Kentucky, Montana, New Hampshire, and Ohio take the same view. Cases from Alabama, South Carolina, Washington, and Wyoming take this view even though the states do not have express defending life/protecting property provisions.

The common law has generally seen protecting property as an inadequate justification for using force that is deadly to humans; the constitutional right likely doesn’t extend beyond this common-law tradition. But when the law tries to interfere with the use of even nonlethal force against humans, the right to protect property may intervene: Consider In re Reilly [a 1919 Ohio case], which held that a ban on hiring security guards during a strike unless the guard “shall first have been empowered to act such special guard by the director of public safety” violated the state constitutional right to “protect[] property.”

The recent posts on whether there's a federal constitutional right of self-defense reminded me that very few people have paid attention to state constitutional analogs of the right (and the state constitutional right to defend property). Even experienced criminal law professors are often unaware, I think, of these rights, and there's very little literature on them. I thought, therefore, that I'd serialize my short and mostly descriptive article on State Constitutional Rights of Self-Defense and Defense of Property, 11 Tex. Rev. of L. & Pol. 399 (2007), which discusses (though doesn't deeply analyze) the rights and some of the cases decided under these rights.

If you're interested in citations for the various cases I mentions, just click on the link above and you'll see them; nearly all the applications of the rights that I mention are based on real cases discussing the state constitutional rights, and sometimes relying on them to limit government action. (I don't necessarily approve of all these applications, here I am just describing them.) I should also stress again that this article is about state constitutional rights; the federal constitutional analysis would be different, but for reasons I mentioned yesterday, I think there's a good case that such a federal constitution right exists, and the state constitutional tradition is relevant both to whether the right is firmly rooted in American law and to whether the right is sensibly judicially administrable.

Here's a slightly adapted version of the Introduction:

“[D]efending life and liberty” and “protecting property,” twenty-one state constitutions expressly tell us, are constitutional rights, generally “inalienable” though in some constitutions merely “inherent” or “natural” and God-given. A sample, from the California Constitution, which California courts have indeed found to secure a constitutional right to self-defense (emphasis added): “All people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety, happiness, and privacy.” Yet these constitutional rights are also almost entirely undiscussed ....

This silence may stem precisely from the broad acceptance of self-defense (and defense of property, at least with force that is not lethal to humans) as a criminal law doctrine. If states never deny people the right of self-defense, then there’s little occasion to explore constitutional limits on such denials.

Nonetheless, the constitutional status of self-defense [both under these state constitutional provisions and under state provisions that secure a right to keep and bear arms in individual self-defense] may matter; it may, for instance, influence courts’ judgments about:

1. the boundaries of self-defense or defense-of-property doctrine, such as proposed self-defense exceptions to felon-in-possession statutes, or [rules about] when someone forfeits his right to self-defense against fellow criminals by engaging in a drug transaction;

2. tort liability based on acts of self-defense or defense of property, such as when a store’s employee defends himself against a criminal and in the process inadvertently jeopardizes a third party;

3. limits on private employers’ ability to fire employees for violent acts in the workplace when the acts were defensive;...

4. the permissibility of bans on nonlethal weapons such as tasers (even setting aside the gun control debate).

And, more broadly, thinking about a right that many constitution-drafters found important enough to expressly secure may provide a broader perspective on American constitutionalism.

Orin's and David Kopel's posts below discuss whether Heller recognized a constitutional right to self-defense. I'm inclined to say the answer is yes, for the following reasons:

1. Heller recognized a right to keep and bear arms in self-defense, which logically presupposes some legal right to self-defense. Why would the Constitution let you keep an object for a certain purpose, when all use of the object for that purpose could be outlawed?

2. Heller often talks of a "right to self-defense" in contexts that suggest it is of constitutional statute, e.g., "That of the nine state constitutional protections for the right to bear arms enacted immediately after 1789 at least seven unequivocally protected an individual citizen's right to self-defense is strong evidence that that is how the founding generation conceived of the right."

3. I suppose that a right to keep and bear arms in self-defense could coexist with a regime that allowed people only a right to self-defense using arms, and that banned unarmed self-defense, or self-defense with weapons that might not qualify as "arms" for Second Amendment purposes. But that wouldn't make a lot of sense: Why would you have a right to defend yourself — lethally, if necessary — using the most lethal weapons, and not using less lethal means? Sometimes the legal answer to some questions is "because that's the way we've always done things, even if you think that's illogical," but that answer can't work here, because tradition is on the side of a right to self-defense using whatever means come to hand.

4. But can an opinion by Justice Scalia, no fan of unenumerated rights, be read as recognizing such a right? Well, it does seem to read that way on its face; and beyond that, Justice Scalia has signalled an openness both to unenumerated rights when they have been broadly recognized for hundreds of years, and to this right in particular. See Montana v. Egelhoff, 518 U.S. 37, 56 (1996) (four-Justice plurality authored by Justice Scalia) (suggesting that "the right to have a jury consider self-defense evidence" may be "fundamental" and supported by the "historical record"; such a right would make little sense if self-defense could be abolished as a defense).

5. At least some lower court judges — including some Reagan and Bush appointees — have shown a willingness to recognize a constitutional right to self-defense, even before the Second Amendment was recognized an individual right. Compare, e.g., Rowe v. DeBruyn, 17 F.3d 1047, 1054-56 (7th Cir. 1994) (Ripple, J., dissenting); id. at 1047 n.** (Cudahy, Flaum, Ripple, and Rovner, JJ., supporting rehearing en banc); DeCamp v. N.J. Dep’t of Corr., 902 A.2d 357, 361–62 (N.J. Super. Ct. App. Div. 2006) (endorsing Judge Ripple’s position and concluding that prisoners have self-defense rights, though without explicitly deciding whether those are federal constitutional rights or only state law rights); Isaac v. Engle, 646 F.2d 1129 (6th Cir. 1980) (en banc) (Merritt, J., dissenting), rev'd on other grounds, 456 U.S. 107 (1982) with Rowe, 17 F.3d at 1052-53 (7th Cir. 1994) (rejecting a constitutional right to self-defense generally, though the case involved only prisoner rights).

6. Likewise, at least two state courts have expressly read a state constitutional right to bear arms in self-defense provision as supporting a right to self-defense, at least with those arms (though for the reasons mentioned in item 2, I don't see how the right would be so limited. See McKellar v. Mason, 159 So. 2d 700, 702 (La. Ct. App. 1964); State ex rel. City of Princeton v. Buckner, 377 S.E.2d 139, 142–44 (W. Va. 1988).

7. If one counts all the states that have a right to bear arms for individual self-defense in the state constitution together with all the states that have a right to defend life expressly mentioned in the state constitution (and many state courts have indeed read such rights to defend life and property as securing constitutionally protected rights), one gets 44 of the 50 states — an important marker of the breadth of self-defense as a constitutionally secured right, and not just a common-law right. See generally Volokh, State Constitutional Rights of Self-Defense and Defense of Property, 11 Tex. Rev. of L. & Pol. 399 (2007).

None of these, standing alone, would be dispositive evidence that the courts are likely to recognize a constitutional right to self-defense in the wake of Heller. But put together, it seems to me they point strongly in that direction.

I should note, though, that this surely doesn't mean a constitutional right to use deadly force in all circumstances in which one is defending oneself. Historical limitations on this right — either broadly accepted, or at least accepted by a substantial minority of states — are likely to be upheld, especially if history and tradition is a large part of the basis for recognizing the right in the first place.

Thus, a rule that one can only use deadly force to defend oneself against threats of death, serious bodily injury, rape, kidnapping, and a few other very serious threats would likely be constitutional (even though many states also allow use of deadly force to defend against robbery and in some situations burglary). Likewise, the "duty to retreat," which is to say the principle that deadly force can only be used in self-defense if it's genuinely necessary, in that no safe avenue of retreat is available, is likely to be constitutional, too, because it has long been recognized in at least a substantial minority of states. There may be other examples as well. My point is that a federal constitutional right to self-defense likely exists, especially in the wake of Heller; but it is not unlimited, and is likely to be strongest precisely where there's a broad and deep common-law and statutory tradition of recognizing such a right.

I should stress that this is a small thing compared to the very solid body of evidence that's already been uncovered in this direction. Still, I came across it, and thought I'd mention it. This is from Judge John Reed's Pennsylvania Blackstone (1831), "A Modification of the Commentaries of Sir William Blackstone, with numerous alterations and additions, designed to present an elementary exposition of the entire Law of Pennsylvania." Reed was the President Judge of the Court of Common Pleas of the Ninth Judicial District of Pennsylvania, and the founder of the oldest law school in Pennsylvania, the Dickinson School of Law. Here is his elaboration of the passage in Blackstone that discusses the English right to have arms:

5. A fifth right of every citizen, "is that of having arms for his defence." By the constitution of the United States, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed;" and by that of Pennsylvania, "the right of citizens to bear arms in defence of themselves and the state, shall not be questioned." These provisions also, were no doubt intended, to avoid a recurrence of the restrictions, on this subject, found in the English laws. By the forest and game laws, in England, the right of keeping arms is effectually taken away from the great body of the people; and, in another place in the Commentaries, it is said, "that the prevention of popular insurrections, and resist[ance] to government, by disarming the bulk of the people, is a reason oftener meant, than avowed, by the makers of such laws.

So Judge Reed is clearly treating the Second Amendment as (1) being based on the English right to have arms (something that Justice Stevens' Heller dissent largely denies), (2) being similar in scope to the Pennsylvania right to bear arms in defence of themselves as well as of the state (again something that Justice Steven's dissent seems to deny), and (3) not being dependent on membership in a government-defined militia (since the right is "of every citizen," and is a "right of keeping arms" that the government may not "take[] away from the great body of the people").

When looking at alphabetized indexes, don't assume all the entries are in strict alphabetical order. Indexes that purport to be alphabetized generally alphabetize things accurately by the first letter, but within each letter the entries are sometimes out of order. I just noticed this in several indexes from that era, and thought I'd pass it along.

The Ninth Circuit's Berger v. City of Seattle decision earlier this year seemed to authorize such broad bans, on a "captive audience" rationale; today, the Ninth Circuit agreed to rehear the case en banc. Here's my earlier criticism of the decision, which still strikes me as correct, and which leads me to hope that the en banc court will reject the panel's reasoning:

It seems to me pretty clear that [the government may not restrict advocacy near movie theaters, outdoor restaurants, and the like], because such [speech, including picketing, performance, and other genres] -- whether related to labor issues, the merits of the movies the theater was showing, or whatever else -- is protected by the First Amendment, at least in traditional public forums such as parks or sidewalks.

The law may restrict the volume of the picketing, or the size of the group, especially if there's a serious security threat that may stem from the presence of a large group, or if the group is likely to block pedestrian traffic. In some situations, the law may create a 36-foot buffer zone if there's a serious risk of picketers' blocking entrances, and narrower restrictions have proven unavailing. The law may also require that people not approach within a few feet of a particular person to talk to the person without the person's permission. And the Court has upheld restrictions on residential picketing, stressing the special role of the home as a place where people should be able to retreat from controversy. But as a general matter, people -- especially in small groups -- are free to express their views in front of places of commerce and entertainment, even when offended listeners might be present.

The Ninth Circuit, though, held last week (Berger v. City of Seattle) that it's constitutional to ban speech to strangers -- even speech by one person -- within 30 feet of "any captive audience," including "patrons waiting in line for events" or eating in a seating area. The particular rule involved restrictions in a park, but a city sidewalk is just as much a traditional public forum as a park.

So this means that picketing, demonstrating, and the like, on city sidewalks -- even when engaged in by one person -- can be forced 30 feet away from any movie theater line, any outdoor restaurant seating area. Likewise, I take it that such speech can be forced 30 feet away from any employee whose job requires him to stand near a sidewalk, for instance a hotel doorman, an employee working as a sidewalk vendor, a maintenance worker, and the like. Those employees are, after all, even more "captive" than diners or people standing in line.

What's more, the court read Madsen's authorization of a 36-foot buffer zone outside an abortion clinic entrance as being justified by "captive audience" concerns related to "women entering an abortion clinic." The Ninth Circuit thus seems to suggest that an audience may be "captive" even to speech that it only needs to see briefly. If that's so, then any picketing or demonstrating outside any business would be seen as involving a "captive audience" of business employees and vendor employees who have to come and go through the front door, and perhaps of customers, too.

This strikes me as a pretty clearly mistaken result. It might not have been intended by the judges in the Ninth Circuit panel majority, who were talking about restrictions in a park and not on a sidewalk -- but, as I mentioned, parks and sidewalks are both treated as the same sort of place by First Amendment law (a traditional public forum), and if a restriction is allowed in a park, it would presumably also be allowed on a sidewalk. (If anything, restrictions on sidewalks may often be more justifiable because pedestrian traffic problems tend to be more serious on sidewalks.)

Moreover, while the particular plaintiff in the Ninth Circuit case was a street performer who made balloons, apparently performed magic tricks, "talk[ed] to his audience about his personal beliefs, especially the importance of reading books," and seemingly accepted contributions, the panel's rationale wasn't limited to people like plaintiff (nor am I quite sure just how it could be so limited). The panel upheld the captive audience rule on its face, and treated it (in relevant part) as banning "speech activities 'within thirty (30) feet of any captive audience ....'" It did not limit its decision to rules banning speech activities that solicit (expressly or implicitly) the immediate handing over of money, or to rules banning balloonmaking and magic tricks but allowing political or social advocacy. The decision is thus a precedent for restrictions that cover many more people than "Magic Mike" Berger.

Finally, I should note again that the Court has indeed accepted some kinds of restrictions on picketing in public places, as I said in the second paragraph of this post. The Ninth Circuit's decision is thus not a completely radical new step. But it does go far beyond, I think, the narrow restrictions that have been upheld, and covers speech that poses no real security risk, no threat to individual privacy, no material threat of blocking entrances, and no inherent danger of people trespassing on others' personal space (this is a 30-foot exclusion zone, not a requirement that one stay 8 feet away from people whom one is approaching).

And to the extent that one does see this as a logical extension of past decisions, that should be a reminder that the slippery slope from narrow restrictions to much broader ones is a real risk in a legal system that's built on analogy and precedent. Even when the precedents by no means require a particular result, and even don't justify it in the minds of many, some decisionmakers (here, judges) may read them that the precedents may end up justify many more restrictions than the precedents' drafters contemplated.

[UPDATE: The decision below was filed July 7, and PACER, which I checked before posting the post, echoes this. Nonetheless, as two commenters pointed out, the decision is dated June 25, one day before Heller was handed down. If anyone could explain why there'd be a two-week delay between the signing of the written decision and the filing — something I generally haven't found to be the case in district court — I'd love to hear it.

It may be that my condemnation of the court was mistaken or at least overstated, given the June 25 date; on the other hand, Heller was big news the very next morning -- and anticipated to be coming down then -- so if the district court decision wasn't officially filed until July 7, I wonder why there wouldn't be an opportunity to correct it. In any case, I'd love to hear what people who are knowledgeable on such matters, especially in the Northern District of California, could tell me.]

From Bates v. San Jose, 2008 WL 2694025 (N.D. Cal. July 7):

Bates was formerly a sergeant with the San Jose Police Department. He was granted a disability retirement from the department in April 2004, due to the fact that the City could not accommodate the work restrictions placed upon him by his physician, at least in part to “avoid psychologically or physically stressful work.” Upon receipt of this information, defendant Amoroso, then deputy chief, denied Bates a concealed weapon permit under Cal.Penal Code § 12027.1(e) which prohibits the issuance of a permit to carry a concealed weapon to any officer who has retired “because of a psychological disability.” ...

Bates now sues the City, Davis and Amoroso for violation of his civil rights to freedom from deprivation of due process of law, freedom from summary punishment and freedom from the deprivation of the right to bear arms for failing to initially grant him a concealed weapons permit under § 12027.1. [Footnote:] The denial of a concealed weapons permit does not constitute a deprivation of the right to bear arms. Hickman v. Block, 81 F.3d 98, 101-02 (9th Cir.1996), cert. denied, 519 U.S. 912 (1996)....

But Hickman expressly rested on the view that "the Second Amendment is a right held by the states, and does not protect the possession of a weapon by a private citizen" — a view D.C. v. Heller expressly rejected. As one might guess, while district courts are generally bound by circuit precedent, "where intervening Supreme Court authority is clearly irreconcilable with our prior circuit authority" — including when the irreconcilability is in the "mode of analysis" and not just square conflict in the specific holdings — "a three-judge panel of this court and district courts should consider themselves bound by the intervening higher authority and reject the prior opinion of this court as having been effectively overruled." Miller v. Gammie, 335 F.3d 889, 899, 900 (9th Cir. 2003). And it's not like Heller was a low-profile case that judges and clerks would routinely miss, or that the conflict between Heller and Hickman was somehow subtle. Now it may well be that under Heller, concealed weapons bans remain constitutional; there's language in Heller that suggests this. I should also note that all the briefing in this case came before Heller, so the parties technically didn't raise Heller; and more broadly, my skim of the plaintiff's opposition to the city's motion for summary judgment didn't really discuss the Second Amendment. If the court had made any of these points, that would have been fine. But simply relying on a precedent that Heller swept away strikes me as wrong, though of a piece with other recent decisions (see here and here).