Every year the political roundtable show Colorado Inside Out does a time machine episode. Last year’s 1951 episode has just been nominated for a regional Emmy Award, in the news/interview program category. Our topics for the episode were the firing of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the Korean War, duck and cover training, and the new federal […]
Archive | History
D-Day thoughts
In a column from 2000, I examined what military historians suggest might have happened if the D-Day landings had been repulsed. Or what if they had taken place in 1943 instead of 1944? The short answers are that if D-Day had failed, Stalin would have ended up occupying almost all of German, which would have […]
The Great Gun Control War of the 20th Century — And its Lessons for Gun Laws Today
By David Kopel on May 31, 2012 2:37 pm in Constitutional History, Constitutional Law, Fourteenth Amendment, Guns, History, McDonald v. City of Chicago, Politics, Popular Constitutionalism, Registration, Right to carry, Supreme Court
This is the subject of my article in a forthcoming symposium issue of the Fordham Urban Law Journal. The article details the political, cultural, social, and legal battles over gun control from the 1920s to the early 21st century. Here’s the abstract: A movement to ban handguns began in the 1920s in the Northeast, led […]
House Tax bleg
In July 1798, Congress enacted a direct tax to raise revenue for national defense against France. The “House Tax” imposed taxes on land, houses, and slaves. As required by Article I, section 9, clause 4 of the Constitution, this direct tax was apportioned by state population. Fries’s Rebellion, which was eventually suppressed by President Adams, […]
How the British Gun Control Program Precipitated the American Revolution
By David Kopel on May 14, 2012 2:17 pm in Constitutional History, Guns, History, Militia, Religion, Religious Freedom
I posted a draft of this article a few months ago, and I thank VC readers for some helpful comments in improving it. The final version has been published by the Charleston Law Review, and is available on SSRN. Here’s the abstract: This Article chronologically reviews the British gun control which precipitated the American Revolution: the […]
Liberty Quotes. Free new book
Just published on-line by the Ludwig von Mises Institute, at Auburn University. Edited by Christopher Kalabus. Subtitled “Peace and Prosperity: A collection of historical, legal, and philosophical quotations.” Begins with Edward Abbey and Bruce Ackerman, and concludes with Aaron Zelman. In-between are quotes from VC writers Adler, Barnett, and Kopel. Plenty of pro-right to arms […]
Cinco de Mayo: An all-American holiday
UCLA Professor David Hayes-Bautista explains the 1862 origins, an all-American holiday created by Mexican-Americans, who saw the Mexican victory against the French attempt to destroy Mexican democracy as another front in the Union’s battle against the Slave Power. The Franco-Mexican war continued until 1867, and American firearms played an important role in the liberation of […]
The “Taint of Social Darwinism”
The New York Times has up a post by Philip Kitcher, John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, on Social Darwinism. Kitcher is eager to reach the conclusion that the GOP’s budgetary policies are “Social Darwinist”, and in service to that agenda, or perhaps because his research on the matter isn’t up-to-date, her presents […]
President Obama versus the Constitution
By David Kopel on April 2, 2012 11:54 pm in Congress, Constitutional History, Constitutional Law, Constitutional Theory, Counter-Terrorism Policy, Executive Branch, Federalism, Growth of Government, Habeas, Health Care, History, Individual Mandate, Jefferson, Judicial Power, Obama, Presidency, Public Opinion, Supreme Court, Uncategorized, War on Terror
President Obama today fired his opening salvo in an unprecedented attack on the Constitution of the United States. Regarding the impending Supreme Court ruling on the health control law, the President said, “Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was […]
In Defense of Rutherford B. Hayes
In a recent speech, President Obama attacked former President Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881). As Politico reported: Speaking about the need to develop new sources of American energy in Largo, Md., Obama used our 19th president to illustrate a failure of forward-thinking leadership. “One of my predecessors, President Rutherford B. Hayes, reportedly said about the telephone: […]
The Machinery of Criminal Justice: From Public Morality Play to Hidden Plea Bargaining Machine
By Stephanos Bibas (University of Pennsylvania), guest-blogging on March 13, 2012 9:22 am in Crime Victims Rights, Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, History
In yesterday’s guest-blog post on my new book, The Machinery of Criminal Justice, I surveyed how colonial American criminal justice was public, participatory, informal, and run by laymen. To be clear in response to some comments, I did not imply that we should go back to Salem witch trials, let alone medieval European trial by […]
The Machinery of Criminal Justice: Colonial Criminal Justice as a Morality Play
By Stephanos Bibas (University of Pennsylvania), guest-blogging on March 12, 2012 10:46 am in Crime Victims Rights, Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, History, Uncategorized
I’d like to thank Eugene and his fellow co-conspirators for graciously letting me guest-blog this week about my new book, The Machinery of Criminal Justice, which was just published by Oxford University press and is available here. In a nutshell, the book is about: 1) how America moved from a populist system of public jury […]
Libertarianism and the Civil War
By Ilya Somin on March 6, 2012 12:55 am in Civil War, Federalism, History, Libertarianism, Racism, Secession
Over at Libertarianism.Org, Jonathan Blanks has an interesting series of posts criticizing libertarians who defend the secession of the Southern states that precipitated the civil war (see here and here). Like Blanks, I believe that any possible justification that the Confederates may have had was negated by the fact that they seceded for the purpose […]
Lawtalk: Volokh Abets Observations on “Aid and Abet”
By James E. Clapp, guest-blogging on December 21, 2011 8:50 am in History, Language, Legal Profession
In addition to the scores of specific words and phrases dissected in Lawtalk: The Unknown Stories Behind Familiar Legal Expressions, we also discuss more generally what may be the most ridiculed characteristic of legal language — its predilection for redundancy: “aid and abet,” “over and above,” “goods and chattels,” “ordered, adjudged, and decreed,” and so […]
Of Time and Lawtalk
By Prof. Elizabeth Thornburg, guest-blogging on December 19, 2011 8:41 am in History, Language, Legal Profession
Thanks so much to Eugene Volokh for the invitation to guest blog about Lawtalk: Unknown Stories Behind Familiar Legal Expressions this week. Working on the book was tons of fun (and a dramatic lesson in the amount of historical material now available online), and my co-authors and I are enjoying the opportunity to share what […]