http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local_state/story/134741.html OCT 10, 2009 RALEIGH -- The N.C. Supreme Court attracted national attention a few weeks ago as the first court in the nation to rule that a convicted felon has a right to own a gun.
What drew little notice is that Edward Thomas Brady, the justice who wrote the 5-2 decision in August, is a federally licensed gun dealer and gun manufacturer who has collected more than $5,000 a year from gun sales since 2007. Legal experts split over whether Brady was properly bringing his perspective to the case or should have recused himself from the decision. "I don't think gun dealers should be deciding the constitutionality of gun laws," said Dennis Henigan, vice president for law and policy at the pro-gun control Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence in Washington. Gene Nichol, a law professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, described the ruling by the justices as "the most aggressive gun rights decision" in the country. "Then you read that the highly-activist opinion is written by a gun dealer and manufacturer," he said. "It sure smells." Other legal scholars, however, countered that the decision was narrowly written to resolve that particular case and likely wouldn't apply to many others. Two former state chief justices, one a Republican and the other a Democrat, said they saw no need for Brady to recuse himself. "It seems to me that there's no conflict nor even arguably the appearance of a conflict," said Burley Mitchell, a Democrat and chief justice from 1995 to 1999. "I've got a driver's license, but I regularly ruled on cases involving automobiles and driver's rights. If a judge starts recusing over connections that remote, you'll have a judiciary that can dodge every difficult case." ... -- --henry schaffer P.S. The original story about the decision is http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local_state/story/67066.html _______________________________________________ To post, send message to [email protected] To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/firearmsregprof Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
