The Constitutionality of President Obama's Proposed Actions on Gun Control

On Tuesday, January 5, President Barack Obama delivered an inspiring address proposing a number of steps that his administration will take to protect Americans from gun violence. Because Congress has refused to enact new legislation -- for example, it failed to enact the Toomey-Manchin background check bill, summarized by Politifact here -- the President announced what his administration will do to improve the enforcement of existing law. Many have attacked the President's proposals on the ground that he lacks the authority under the Constitution to take these steps. I don't see any constitutional difficulties whatsoever with the President's proposals.

Political Correctness

A number of leading Republican candidates for President have decried "political correctness." Why?

In Defense of Hate Crimes Legislation

I explained the purpose and defended the validity of hate crimes legislation in a pair of posts that were published in 2009 in the Akron Law Cafe. Those posts are summarized and updated here.

What Drives the Ideological Divide in the United States? Reason Versus Magical Thinking

Over the past fifty years the political parties have realigned demographically and ideologically. In general, conservative groups moved towards the Republican Party and liberals have become Democrats. For example, the Dixiecrats switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party and Evangelical Christians became politically active and joined the Republican Party; while conservationists and "good government" reformers abandoned the Republican Party for the Democratic Party. Conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans no longer exist in any numbers. Thus, today there is a sharp ideological divide between the parties, making it difficult to find common ground on issues such as climate change, health care policy, gun control, immigration, or same-sex marriage. But another difference has also arisen between the two dominant political parties in the United States: an epistomological one. Democrats, who in general seek to change the future, are increasingly drawn to science and economic analysis, while Republicans, who wish to preserve or return to what they value in the past, are more and more likely to depend upon various forms of magical thinking. Some examples follow.

The First Amendment Defense Act: State Action, Equal Protection, Freedom of Expression, and Establishment Clause Concerns

In the preceding post discussing the First Amendment Defense Act I analyzed the vague and overbroad language of the Act and how the Act fundamentally misunderstands the nature of "liberty." This post discusses how the proposed law fares under the State Action Doctrine, Equal Protection, Freedom of Expression, and the Establishment Clause.

First Amendment Defense Act: Protecting an Open-Ended "Right" to Discriminate Against Same-Sex Couples

The First Amendment Defense Act purports to prohibit discrimination. In fact it fosters and promotes discrimination against same-sex couples. Moreover, the proposed law is fatally vague, and as it result it would encourage and protect a broad range of discriminatory actions by businesses, universities, hospitals, and other institutions. Furthermore, although the Act purports to defend "liberty," the Act fundamentally misunderstands the true nature of liberty -- that no person is entitled to more liberty than he or she is willing to grant to every other person.

Analysis of Little Sisters of the Poor v. Burwell

The Supreme Court is returning to the issue that it dealt with in the Hobby Lobby case -- whether the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) gives an employer the right to refuse to provide health insurance coverage for contraceptive services. This is a difficult question because the Affordable Care Act gives employees the right to such coverage. In Hobby Lobby the Court was able to craft an accommodation that protected the rights of both employers and employees. In this case, a group of employers challenges that accommodation; they contend that the accommodation itself violates their rights to religious exercise under RFRA.

Consistent with the Constitution, What Can We Do About Gun Violence?

Guns don't kill people. People kill people. But they mainly use guns to kill people. Every year twelve thousand Americans are gunned down by other Americans; in addition there are more than twenty thousand American suicides by gun annually. In the past 20 years we have lost over 600,000 Americans to gun violence. That's more than we lost in combat in World War II; twelve times more than we lost in Vietnam; thirty times more than we lost in Korea; one hundred times more than we lost in Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan combined; and three hundred times more than we have lost to terrorists. In fact, over the last 20 years we have lost more Americans to gun violence than we lost in combat in all of our wars and every terrorist attack over the last 80 years.

We think of war as a terrible scourge. Domestic gun violence is four times as deadly as war.

It is way past time for this country to adopt common-sense gun control legislation. What laws would be constitutional?

The Constitutionality of Defunding Planned Parenthood

Would it be constitutional for a state or the federal government to defund Planned Parenthood? The answer lies in the interpretation of the Spending Clause and the First Amendment.

County Clerk Kim Davis and the Establishment Clause

County Clerk Kim Davis contends that she has a constitutional right to refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples under the Free Exercise Clause of the Constitution. But she forgets that Freedom of Religion consists of two rights: not only the right of the individual to the free exercise of religion, but also the prohibition against the establishment of religion by the government.