That’s the title of a new article by Gary Lawson and me, forthcoming in a symposium issue of Boston University’s American Journal of Law & Medicine. The Journal has a large readership among medical professionals who are interested in legal issues relating to medicine. Accordingly, if you have been following the VC’s debate on the ACA […]
Author Archive | David Kopel
Recommendations for First Amendment textbook
Next spring semester, I will be teaching a First Amendment class. So I request advice from commenters about what textbooks they liked, or did not like, and why. For the recommendations, please ignore entirely the textbook’s treatment of the religion clauses. Denver University has a separate class on them, so my class will be entirely […]
Independence Institute brief on Medicaid mandate
By David Kopel on January 19, 2012 2:30 pm in Constitutional History, Constitutional Law, Constitutional Theory, Health Care, Spending Clause, Tenth Amendment
On behalf of the Independence Institute, Rob Natelson and I wrote an amicus brief on the Medicaid mandate currently before the Supreme Court. (The ACA requirement that states must drastically expand Medicaid eligibility, or lose all their federal matching funds for Medicaid.) Here’s the Summary of Argument: By imposing the Medicaid mandates in the Affordable […]
Mercedes-Benz: The car for people who admire mass-murdering racist totalitarian thugs
Mercedes-Benz’s latest marketing ploy is to associate itself with Che Guevera. Over at the Huffington Post, Michael Gonzalez (Heritage Foundation) supplies the details. It’s not surprising that a corporation which is currently pro-Che was pro-Hitler, far more so than many other German businesses during the Third Reich. As recounted in Cecil Adams’ “The Straight Dope”: […]
Bleg on 3-strikes laws
What are the most draconian three-strikes laws currently on the books? Do any states still have a 25 year mandatory minimum for the third strike?
Are people with concealed handgun carry permits a menace to society?
According to the New York Times, the answer seems to be “yes.” An article in yesterday’s Times by Michael Luo collects some anecdotes about misbehavior by a few licensees in North Carolina. The Times article has some numbers in it, and it provides the number of North Carolinians with carry permits (240,000). After a thorough […]
Laws about gun ownership in early America
By David Kopel on December 9, 2011 2:23 am in Constitutional History, Election Law, Guns, History, Militia, Political Ignorance, Religion and the Law, Right to carry
Regarding Eugene Volokh’s post below about an NYU L. Rev. article, “The People” of the Second Amendment: Citizenship and the Right To Bear Arms. I just scanned the article, and there appears to be only a single footnote which directly cites any state statutes from before 1800. Note 125, accurately cites standard statutory compilations from […]
How the British Gun Control Program Precipitated the American Revolution
That’s the title of my new law review article, currently in the editing process at the Charleston Law Review. A draft is available at SSRN, and comments are welcome. The final part of the article suggests how the history might inform our modern understanding of Second Amendment rights.
The original meaning of the 14th Amendment regarding interracial marriage
By David Kopel on December 5, 2011 5:38 pm in Anti-Semitism, Congress, Constitutional History, Constitutional Law, Federalism, First Amendment, Fourteenth Amendment, History, Racism, Supreme Court
Over at Balkinization, Andrew Koppelman (Northwestern) has an interesting and thoughtful post on the state of originalism. Synthesizing analysis by Jamal Greene and Jack Balkin, Koppelman writes, “Originalism is fundamentally about a narrative of rhetorical self-identification with the achievements of a founding historical moment. That is the real basis of its power. An originalist argument […]
Supreme Court: “Obviously, direct control of medical practice in the states is beyond the power of the federal government.”
By David Kopel on December 1, 2011 5:54 pm in Constitutional History, Constitutional Law, Health Care, Taxing and Spending Clause, Tenth Amendment
So said the unanimous Supreme Court in United States v. Linder, 268 U.S. 5 (1925). The opinion was written by McReynolds, and joined by the progressive Justices Brandeis and Holmes, along with the rest of the Court. At issue was the federal Harrison Anti-Narcotic Law, which taxed opium and coca leaves, and their derivatives. Ostensibly […]
Defense bill will allow President to indefinitely detain American citizens
By David Kopel on November 30, 2011 4:11 pm in Counter-Terrorism Policy, Obama, Terrorism, War on Terror
H.R. 1540, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, has already passed the House, and is currently before the Senate. One section of the bill gives the President the authority to detain indefinitely American citizens, picked up on American soil, because they are allegedly supporting the enemy: SEC. 1034. AFFIRMATION OF ARMED CONFLICT […]
60s sitcom themes: The hidden alien. The strange family that doesn’t know it is strange.
During the early and mid-1960s, a typical theme of television situation comedies was a character who is some way was different from everyone else, and whose difference (or whose very existence) needed to be concealed from almost everyone by the show’s protagonist. To wit: Mister Ed (1961-66). Mister Ed is a talking horse who belongs […]
Why Yankee Doodle called it “macaroni”
The question has bothered me for decades. We sang “Yankee Doodle” plenty of times at school, but nobody seemed to wonder why he would say that “a feather in his cap” was “macaroni.” At last, I found the answer, in Thomas Wright’s book “Caricature History of the Georges” (1860), which examines political and social satire […]
Bleg: Recommended US history book for Con Law I?
Next semester I will teaching the Constitutional Law I class at Denver University. It’s the standard class that almost all 2d or 3d semester law students must take at all law schools: This required introductory course examines the role of the United States Supreme Court and, in particular, the Court’s power in exercising judicial review […]
Will the Necessary & Proper clause save Obamacare? Not if the Court follows McCulloch v. Maryland
By David Kopel on November 17, 2011 4:33 pm in Constitutional History, Constitutional Law, Health Care, Necessary and Proper
Gary Lawson and I explain why, in an article published last week by Yale Law Journal Online. In short, the Necessary and Proper Clause expressed the well-known agency law doctrine of principals and incidents. That is, the grant of power to an agent (and the federal government was an agent of the people, to exercise certain […]