"Gun Control on College and University Campuses in the Wake of District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. City of Chicago" ( http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1984829 ) Virginia Journal of Social Policy and Law, 2012 LEWIS MICHAEL WASSERMAN ( http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=1770444 ), University of Texas at Arlington Email: [email protected]
>From the Constitution’s ratification in 1791 until its 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller decision, the Supreme Court had never held that a statute violated the Second Amendment. In invalidating Washington, D.C.’s extensive gun control prohibitions, which extended into the home, the Court declared that the Second Amendment protects citizens’ right to keep and bear arms in the home for the purpose of self-defense, so long as the weapon was of the kind used for such purposes at the founding. Moreover, in contrast to precedents going back to the nineteenth century, the Court stated this right was independent of any militia service by the gun user. In 2010 in McDonald v. City of Chicago, the Court declared the Second Amendment was enforceable against the states. In practical terms this meant that as of 2010 a new protection was incorporated into the Bill of Rights. Thus, the Second Amendment joined its constitutional cousins including, for example, the First Amendment Free Speech and Religion Clauses, as rights limiting states’ power. This article examines the capacity of public colleges and universities to enact campus gun control policies affecting students, faculty, staff, and others, in light of the landmark Heller and McDonald decisions and judicial interpretations of those cases, along with state constitutional and statutory constraints on the ability of public college and university officials to act autonomously in fashioning campus gun control policies. Through this examination, this article derives principles to guide campus officials in the quest to fulfill their policy goals, while remaining faithful to citizens’ individual Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms,” and state limitations on campus institutional power. The article makes observations about areas in which campus officials should feel secure in enacting firearm controls, as well as where ambiguities remain, and concludes that the political branches of state government, rather than lofty constitutional principles, may determine who prevails in this contentious policy debate. "Scribble Scrabble, the Second Amendment, and Historical Guideposts: A Short Reply to Lawrence Rosenthal and Joyce Lee Malcolm" ( http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1988804 ) Northwestern University Law Review, Vol. 105, No. 4, p. 1821, 2012 ( http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/PIP_Journal.cfm?pip_jrnl=138528 ) PATRICK J. CHARLES ( http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=1428375 ), Government of the United States of America - Air Force Email: [email protected] The following is a reprint of the Northwestern University Law Review Colloquy Essay published in 2011, with minor text, citation, and footnote revisions. The original abstract is below: In a recent article Professors Lawrence Rosenthal and Joyce Lee Malcolm provided an intriguing debate over the standard of scrutiny that should be applied to restrictions on the Second Amendment in the wake of McDonald v. City of Chicago. This article sets forth to illuminate two aspects of that debate. The first is Professor Rosenthal’s concern on the constitutionality of open-carry or conceal-carry prohibitions. He inaccurately claims that the Founders left insufficient historical evidence to support such prohibitions, thus this article addresses those concerns through the use of “historical guideposts.” The second aspect this article sets forth to address is Rosenthal and Malcolm’s characterization of the Second Amendment’s “well-regulated militia” language, for it highlights a historical and legal error that continues to pollute contemporary Second Amendment jurisprudence. This error being a “well-regulated militia” does not merely equate to “well-trained,” nor is it a vehicle to analyze gun control regulations in the constraints of the opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller. **************************************************************************************************************** Professor Joseph Olson, J.D., LL.M. o- 651-523-2142 Hamline University School of Law (MS-D2037) f- 651-523-2236 St. Paul, MN 55113-1235 c- 612-865-7956 [email protected] http://law.hamline.edu/constitutional_law/joseph_olson.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.
