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2007 Archive, January-July
Brown University Welcomes Duke Rape Case Victim:
Sophomore Reade Seligmann was one of the victims of the false rape case at Duke University. The Brown University lacrosse coach, with support from the school's administration, recruited Seligmann for the Brown team, and he will enroll at Brown this fall. As a Brown Daily Herald article explains, Brown's new coach began recruiting Seligmann "almost immediately" after being hired last August. Although the malicious prosecution had not yet collapsed, the coach talked to people in the lacrosse community who knew Seligmann, and was "absolutely convinced" of Seligmann's innocence. According to the BDH, "Seligmann, who says he always wanted to attend an Ivy League school, chose Brown over the other two or three schools that were interested in him because of how the University treated him. They allowed him to visit the campus when he wasn't even allowed back at Duke."
Three cheers for my alma mater for standing up for truth and justice.
Case against flying not so airtight
That's the headline of my latest Rocky Mountain News media column, debunking the claim that commercial air travel for long flights causes greater CO2 emissions than would driving a SUV solo the same distance. To the contrary, air travel causes far few per-capita CO2 emissions. Presumably the emissions of most pollutants, such as carbon monoxide, would also be less.
The column also castigates newspapers for running pre-publication reviews of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
Finally, kudos to Fred Thompson for criticizing the over-federalization of criminal law. Along with Glenn Reynolds, Paul Blackman, and Mike Krause (and sometimes by myself), I've written a variety of articles criticizing over-federalization regarding guns, drugs, and abortion.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Case against flying not so airtight
- Fred Thompson on Federalism:
The
Threat
from
Sino-America:
In a
new
article
on Tech
Central
Station,
Mike
Krause
and I
examine
the
growing
threat
of
Chinese
influence
in Latin
America,
and
elsewhere.
We
suggest
an
expansion
of free
trade--with
Latin
America
and with
Taiwan--as
part of
the
American
response.
David Kopel,
July 14,
2007 at
4:52pm]
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More Harry
Potter:
[Warning: If
you haven't
finished all
of HP
through book
6, but you
plan to, do
not read
this post,
because it
contains
plot
details.] To
follow up on
Ilya's post
to kick off
the weeklong
build-up to
Harry Potter
7...I
recommend
that serious
Potterphiles
check out
HogwartsProfessor.com.
Some very
sophisticated
analysis. On
this page,
you'll see
links to buy
some
books--which
I urge you
to purchase
with
expedited
shipping, so
you can read
them this
week, and
thereby
understanding
Book 7 in
greater
depth when
you start
reading it
at midnight
on Friday.
"Who Killed
Albus
Dumbledore?"
and
"Unlocking
Harry
Potter"
provide
diverse
analyses of
the mystery,
of Rowling's
literary
techniques,
and of the
omnipresent
influence of
alchemy.
At the
least, these
books
demonstrate
quite
persuasively
that what
Harry (and
the naive
reader) saw
on the
Astronomy
Tower in the
climactic
scene of
book 6 was
certainly
not the full
explanation
for what was
really
taking
place.
My own
analysis, "Severus
Snape: The
Unlikely
Hero of
Harry Potter
book 7"
was
originally
published on
the VC in
2005, and
was cited by
the NY Times
a few weeks
ago.
Russian,
Polish,
French, and
Spanish
translations
are
available.
A few
further
predictions:
1.
Especially
given
the
alchemical
necessity
of a
resolution
involving
the
combination
of all
four
Houses,
Luna
Lovegood
will
play a
major
role in
book 7.
2.
Harry's
ability
to speak
with
snakes
(which
he
shares
with
Voldemort)
was
important
in early
part of
book 1,
very
important
in book
2, and
has been
mostly
ignored
since
then. I
predict
that it
will be
important
in book
7, most
likely
with
Nagini.
3. In
the
penultimate
scene of
movie 5,
Luna
(searching
for her
lost
shoes),
talks
with
Harry
about
Sirius's
death,
and
explains
that
important
things
which we
have
lost
often
come
back to
us,
although
in
unexpected
ways.
She
immediately
finds
her
shoes,
tied to
a
rafter.
In a
movie
that had
to make
tough
decisions
about
condensing
a 900
page
book
(with
Rowling
supervising
the
screenplay
and
every
detail
of the
movie--including
where
objects
are
placed),
I think
that the
inclusion
of this
seemingly
trivial
scene
points
us very
strongly
to
Sirius
meeting
Harry
again,
somehow.
Two Cheers
for
Newshounds
My latest
media column
for the
Rocky
Mountain
News
praises the
citizen
activist
website
Newshounds.us
for
providing
checks and
balances to
Bill
O'Reilly's
extremely
deceptive
coverage of
a
controversy
at Boulder
High School.
(The
coverage is
discussed in
depth in an
Issue Paper
I wrote for
the
Independence
Institute.)
I wish that
Newshounds
were less
angry in its
tone, but I
do think
that it
sometimes
plays a
useful role
in providing
facts which
are omitted
in Fox's
coverage of
issues.
The column
also
discusses a
new ranking
of the most
influential
political
blogs in
Colorado (my
Independence
Institute
colleague
Ben Degrow
won second
place for
Mount Virtus),
and the
Denver
Post's
failure to
fully
correct a
major error:
incorrectly
claiming
that Powell,
speaking in
Aspen, had
predicted a
Sunni
victory in
Iraq; he
actually
predicted a
Shia
victory.
9 Comments
The Tiahrt Amendment:
A reader asked for analysis of the Tiahrt Amendment, which will be voted on today in the House Appropriations Committee. The amendment, which has been a BATFE appropriations rider since 2004, protects the privacy of law-abiding gun owners by restricting disclosure to third parties of various federal records of lawful gun purchases, by enforcing a prior federal law requiring the prompt destruction of National Instant Check System records on lawful purchases, and by forbidding the creation of a computerized federal gun-owner registry. The amendment also partially limits the disclosure of information from federal gun traces--which Chicago Mayor Daley and other politicians have sought, in order to support their lawsuits against gun manufacturers. More detailed information is available from a 2004 article I wrote for National Review Online.
The gun control lobby, with New York City Mayor Bloomberg as the point man, are seeking to eliminate the Tiahrt Amendment entirely, but their public campaign has said almost nothing about the most of the provisions of the amendment. (Even though those provisions are contrary to the lobbies' support for comprehensive gun-owner registration.) Instead, they claim that the trace provisions interfere with local law enforcement. Notably, Kansas Rep. Tiahrt offered to negotiate technical modifications of the trace language, to the extent necessary to address legitimate law enforcement (as opposed to lawsuit) needs, but Mayor Bloomberg broke off the negotiations.
What Would
George
Washington
Do?
A
special July
4 issue
of the
Boulder
Weekly
asks what
the Founders
would think
about
various
modern
issues. The
article
begins with
an interview
with Jim
Hightower,
the former
Texas
Agriculture
Commissioner,
who is now a
populist
political
commentator
(and whose
column
appears in
the
Boulder
Weekly).
After that,
the article
asks a
series of
written
questions to
me and to
Paul Danish.
Danish is
former
Boulder City
Councilman
and Boulder
County
Commissioner.
He also once
served as an
Independence
Institute
Senior
Fellow. He
is
best-known
for "the
Danish
plan," a
growth-control
law adopted
by the
Boulder City
Council.
The format
did not
require us
to answer
every
question,
and so a I
skipped a
pair about
Guantanamo
and the
Patriot Act;
a wise
decision on
my part,
since there
is little
that I could
add to
Danish's
thoughtful
answers.
Below are
some
additional
questions,
and my
responses,
which were
not included
in the
published
article.
Does the
average
American
understand
the freedom
our founding
documents
provide
enough to
successfully
defend those
freedoms
from
domestic
enemies,
i.e., the
government
itself?
No. The
National
Constitution
Center's
1998 survey
of teenagers
found only
41 percent
could
identify the
three
branches of
government,
only 45%
knew what
the Bill of
Rights was.
As Ilya
Somin
detailed in
a 2004 Cato
Institute
study, a
large number
of surveys
show that
between a
quarter and
a third of
adults are
extremely
ignorant of
public
affairs;
many cannot
even name
the Vice
President.
With so many
people so
scandalously
ignorant, it
is no wonder
that
elections so
often
produce
rulers who,
like Roman
emperors,
are better
at pandering
to transient
hysterias
and desires
than at
guarding our
traditional
liberties.
Which
Constitutional
Amendment
are you most
grateful for
when you
celebrate
the Fourth
of July?
The Second
Amendment
has been the
topic of
much of my
scholarly
writing, but
I love all
of the Bill
of Rights;
each of them
makes the
other nine
stronger and
more
effective.
How would
the Founders
respond to
modern
feminism?
Many of them
likely would
have
understood
and approved
that the
democratizing
forces
unleashed by
the
Revolution
would lead
to political
rights for
the many
American
women whose
talents were
equal to
those of
Abigail
Adams or
Mercy Otis
Warren.
What would
the Founders
have to say
about the
oil
industry?
The actual
extraction,
refining,
and
distribution
of oil would
likely be
seen as
fulfilling
the
Founders'
highest
hopes of
America's
scientific
and
commercial
genius. The
oil
industry's
current role
in politics
might be
seen as an
inevitable
consequence
of the
federal
government's
arrogation
of a massive
role for
itself in
choosing
favored and
disfavored
big
corporations
to persecute
or enrich,
especially
beginning in
the early
20th
century.
What would
the Founders
think of the
outsourcing
of American
jobs?
There was a
healthy
debate in
the Founding
Era between
protectionist
forces (led
by Alexander
Hamilton)
and free
trade (led
by Thomas
Jefferson),
with the
protectionists
winning. And
even
Jefferson,
as
President,
accepted
many
protective
tariffs. So
perhaps the
Founders
would be
divided on
the trade
issue today,
as they were
divided in
their own
time.
Talk-show
Hosts Amok:
That's the
title of my
latest
Rocky
Mountain
News
media
column,
addressing
the numerous
problems of
Bill
O'Reilly and
of the
Denver talk
show "Caplis
& Silverman"
in their
coverage of
a panel that
spoke at
Boulder High
School last
April. For a
good
collection
of primary
sources, and
links to
some of the
media
coverage,
the
BVSDwatch
website
is a good
start. My
column only
scratched
the surface
of the
disinformation
that has
been created
on this
controversy.
Later this
week, the
Independence
Institute
will be
publishing a
detailed
Issue Paper
on the many
and very
serious
ethical
violations
by the
O'Reilly and
Caplis &
Silverman on
the topic.
[David Kopel,
May 23, 2007 at 12:40pm]
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Taxation without
Representation: The Policy of the DC
Government:
This afternoon the
U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee is
holding a hearing on granting the
District of Columbia voting rights in the
U.S. House of Representatives; the hearing
will be webcast. As usual, D.C.'s campaign
is using the slogan "Ending Taxation without
Representation." As Paul Blackman and I
detailed in a
2003 article in National Review Online,
"taxation without representation" is in fact
a cherished objective of the extremely
incompetent D.C. government, as the D.C.
government seeks to impose a commuter tax on
residents of Maryland and Virginia, and
engages in various other schemes to take
money from people who cannot vote in D.C.
26 Comments
David Kopel,
May 22, 2007 at 4:28pm]
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The Peculiar Story of
United States v. Miller:
A fine
new article forthcoming in the NYU
Journal of Law & Liberty provides fresh
insights on the Supreme Court's last major
gun control case, U.S. v. Miller
(1939). For example, he shows that the case
was brought by the federal government as a
test case to quell Second Amendment popular
opposition to the Attorney General's efforts
to create federal handgun control. The
federal district judge who wrote the
one-sentence opinion declaring the National
Firearms Act to violate the Second Amendment
was a gun control advocate with strong
political connections. The prosecution of
Miller was perfect as a government-initiated
test case, since Miller had an established
record as "a pliable snitch" who would
cooperate with the government, ensuring that
the Supreme Court saw no meaningful
opposition to the government's position.
Frye also argues that although Miller was
written by the now-reviled Justice
McReynolds, the meaning of the opinion is
fairly clear, recognizing the individual
right to arms as a common law right
guaranteed by the Second Amendment, while
still permitting reasonable gun controls.
13 Comments
[David Kopel,
May 22, 2007 at 3:18pm]
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The Crime Against
Kansas:
On this day in
history, May 22, 1856, United States
Representative Preston Brooks criminally
attacked Senator Charles Sumner on the floor
of the Senate, beating Sumner on the head
with a heavy cane until the cane broke, and
incapacitating Sumner for four years. South
Carolina Rep. Preston Brooks was the nephew
of South Carolina Senator A.P. Butler, who
had been sharply criticized by
Massachusetts' Sumner in a May 19-20
speech, "The Crime Against Kansas."
Sumner had declared that while Butler
"believes himself a chivalrous knight, with
sentiments of honor and courage," he "has
chosen a mistress" who is "the harlot
slavery."
Among the elements of the crime against
Kansas was that guns belonging to the
free-soil settlers had been confiscated by
the pro-slavery territorial government.
Senator A.P. Butler had allegedly remarked
that the people of Kansas should be disarmed
of their Sharps rifles. (The Sharps rifles
were the main type which were being sent to
the free-soilers by anti-slavery groups in
the North, such as the Massachusetts
Emigrant Aid Society, led by Rev. Henry Ward
Beecher.)
Sumner thundered:
Really, sir, has it come to this? The
rifle has ever been the companion of the
pioneer and, under God, his tutelary
protector against the red man and the
beast of the forest. Never was this
efficient weapon more needed in just
self-defence, than now in Kansas, and at
least one article in our National
Constitution must be blotted out, before
the complete right to it can in any way
be impeached. And yet such is the
madness of the hour, that, in defiance
of the solemn guaranty, embodied in the
Amendments to the Constitution, that
"the right of the people to keep and
bear arms shall not be infringed," the
people of Kansas have been arraigned for
keeping and bearing them, and the
Senator from South Carolina has had the
face to say openly, on this floor, that
they should be disarmed--of course, that
the fanatics of Slavery, his allies and
constituents, may meet no impediment.
Sir, the Senator is venerable . . . but
neither his years, nor his position,
past or present, can give respectability
to the demand he has made, or save him
from indignant condemnation, when, to
compass the wretched purposes of a
wretched cause, he thus proposes to
trample on one of the plainest
provisions of constitutional liberty.
Senator Butler indignantly replied that he
had never proposed disarming the people of
Kansas. He had simply proposed bringing
before appropriate judicial authority "an
organized body" who possessed Sharps rifles.
But even if Senator Butler could claim that
his remarks were misunderstood, antislavery
Congressmen had no doubt about the
atrocities being perpetrated in Kansas. On
May 21, 1856, the "Sack of Lawrence" took
place, in which the Kansas territorial
militia, bearing arms supplied by the United
States government and under the command of a
deputy federal marshal, confiscated the guns
of a group of free-soilers. On June 30,
1856, Representative G.A. Grow of
Pennsylvania listed the constitutional
abuses of the proslavery government in
Kansas, including: "With the shout of law
and order you disarm the citizen, while the
Constitution of his country declares that
the right 'to keep and bear arms shall not
be infringed.'".
The 1856 national Republican Convention
resolved that "the dearest constitutional
rights of the people of Kansas have been
fraudulently and violently taken from them .
. . the rights of the people to keep and
bear arms have been infringed."
The federal government, obviously, had done
nothing to interfere with the official
militia of the proslavery government in
Kansas. Yet the Republicans still saw a
violation of the Second Amendment: some of
the state's citizens were being disarmed
because they considered the current state
government illegitimate.
There is no known evidence of any
pro-slavery Democrats, or anyone else,
defending the Sack of Lawrence or other arms
confiscations on the grounds that the Second
Amendment did not guarantee the right of
individual citizens of Kansas to possess
personal firearms for non-militia purposes.
34 Comments
[David Kopel,
May 18, 2007 at 1:24am]
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Hate Crimes Laws:
Dangerous and Divisive:
The "Hate Crimes"
bill currently moving through Congress
involves an unwise, and arguably
unconstitutional expansion of federal
criminal jurisdiction. But even at the state
or local level, hate crimes are a bad idea.
The whole debate of whether homosexuals
should be included in hate crimes statutes
is but one example of how hate crimes
statutes undermine the principle of equal
protection of the laws, by encouraging
fights over whether some groups are or are
not deserving of unequal, special
protection.
The best argument for hate crimes
laws is that a hate crime causes more harm
than an ordinary crime, because it causes
many other people to fear being victimized.
This is true for some hate crimes (e.g.,
public vandalism of a synagogue), but
certainly not all of them (e.g., a dispute
between neighbors in which an epithet is
used). Moreover, there are plenty of
ordinary crimes (such as highly-publicized
serial attacks on random victims), which
also cause fear in many people besides the
immediate victims. I suggest that judicial
sentencing discretion allows for appropriate
punishment for crimes which have unusually
large secondary impacts.
As long as hate crimes statutes stay on the
books, every hate crime statute should
include a provision providing for extra
punishment for hate crime hoaxes. (Above the
level of punishment for ordinary hoaxes
about non-existent crimes.) Just as a hate
crime may cause heightened community fear,
so does a hate crime hoax.
All the above points are elaborated in
an Issue Paper I wrote for the
Independence Institute.
Related Posts (on
one page):
- Hate Crimes Laws:
Dangerous and Divisive:
-
Bush to veto expanded hate-crimes
law:
The Hate Crimes Temptation:
52 Comments
[David Kopel,
May 18, 2007 at 1:02am]
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Contingent Fee
arrangements for government lawyers:
Yesterday President
Bush
issued an
Executive Order banning contingent fee
arrangements for private attorneys who are
hired to represent the government. The order
is long overdue. Given that Senator
Clinton's brother was the beneficiary of a
manifestly corrupt government contingent
fee, there is a risk that President Bush's
Order might be overturned by a future
President. Given the avowed determination of
both parties in Congress to clean up
government corruption, a bill to outlaw
public contingent fees ought to attract wide
bipartisan support.
In
an Issue Backgrounder for the
Independence Institute, I suggested that
states should also consider enacting similar
bans. At the very least, states should
impose some sort of hourly-rate caps on
contingent fees, to prevent
politically-connected attorneys from
receiving enormous windfalls for performing
a trivial amount of legal work.
27 Comments
[David Kopel,
May 14, 2007 at 3:11am]
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Video of Nicolas
Sarkozy in 1981: the leader of Youth for
Chirac:
Thanks to the
educational
French station TV 5, internauts can
watch a
1981 TV news story on the Youth for
Chirac movement ("the Young Chiracians"),
including interviews with a very youthful
Nicolas Sarkozy. Chirac himself is shown
briefly, at the end. He too looks very
different from the man we know today.
1 Comments
[David Kopel,
May 9, 2007 at 12:51am]
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The Dangers of
Newspapers Publishing the Names and
Addresses of Citizens with Handgun Permits:
Andrew Sullivan
has asked "If gun rights are civil
rights, why would anyone feel the need to
hide the fact that they own one?" A post by
Eugene provides a commonsense list of a wide
variety of circumstances in which a person
exercising her civil rights would have good
reasons for preferring that newspapers not
publish a list of all the people in an area
who exercise a particular right.
In a
recent article in America's 1st
Freedom, Paul Gallant, Joanne Eisen and
I addressed the controversy of newspapers
publishing lists of people with handgun
permits. We discuss various ways in which
the publication can assist criminals. One
newspaper which was considering publishing a
list was The News Sentinel of Fort
Wayne, Indiana:
When the newspaper surveyed its readers,
the paper was informed of a situation in
which one licensee was living a
reclusive, secretive life because of
fear of a violent ex-spouse. If the
paper published the CHL [concealed
handgun license] list, the woman’s life
would be endangered. The newspaper’s
final decision was in favor of the
immediate safety of that one woman, and
thus against publishing the list.
Victims who are hiding from violent stalkers
are one group of people with handgun
licenses who have a special need for
confidentiality; another group is retired
police officers, who are at risk of being
targeted by revenge-minded criminals.
Related Posts (on
one page):
-
The Dangers of
Newspapers Publishing the Names and
Addresses of Citizens with Handgun
Permits:
-
"If Gun Rights Are Civil Rights,"
36 Comments
[David
Kopel,
May 8, 2007 at 12:32pm]
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DC Circuit denies en
banc rehearing for
Parker case:
In the Parker case, a
2-1 majority of the D.C.
Circuit found that the
DC city council's
prohibition on handguns,
and its ban on using any
firearm for lawful
self-defense, were
violations of the Second
Amendment. Today, the
full Circuit denied the
DC government's petition
for a rehearing en banc.
The decision states: "Appellees'
petition for rehearing
en banc and the response
thereto were circulated
to the full court, and a
vote was requested.
Thereafter, a majority
of the judges eligible
to participate did not
vote in favor of the
petition. Upon
consideration of the
foregoing and appellees'
Fed. R. App. P. 28(j)
letter, it is ORDERED
that the petition be
denied."
A footnote to the order
states: "Circuit Judges
Randolph, Rogers, Tatel,
and Garland would grant
the petition for
rehearing en banc." The
following is the list of
judges who voted on the
petition, with
affirmative votes marked
by an asterisk:
"Ginsburg (Chief Judge),
Sentelle, Henderson,
Randolph,* Rogers,*
Tatel,* Garland,* Brown,
Griffith, and Kavanaugh."
Related Posts (on
one page):
-
The Second
Amendment in the
Supreme Court:
-
DC
Circuit denies
en banc
rehearing for
Parker case:
19 Comments
[David
Kopel,
May 8, 2007 at 11:54am]
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Bleg for Laws regarding
licensed carry in
educational
institutions:
I
would like to ask
commenters to supply
specific information
regarding state laws
which ban (or do not
ban) persons with
concealed handgun
permits from carrying in
K-12 schools, day care
centers, or
colleges/universities.
If the law is silent on
the subject (as, for
example, in Virginia and
Colorado regarding
universities), it would
be helpful to also cite
any other information
that is available about
practices in the
relevant state. (E.g.,
Virginia's legislative
defeat of an attempt to
outlaw the college ban;
the Colorado Attorney
General opinion that the
University of Colorado
regents have the
authority to enact a gun
ban, unless there is a
specific statute saying
that they cannot.) If
possible, please supply
the relevant statutory
or case law cites.
Please do not rely on
newspaper articles. My
guess is that statutory
college bans are much
less common than people
might think, and that
even though K-12 bans
are common, there may be
exceptions in states
other than Utah.
My request applies not
only to the 40 shall
issue/do issue states,
but also to the 8 states
with capricious issue,
plus Illinois (no
process for permits, but
certain classes of
people are automatically
entitled to concealed
carry).
30 Comments
[David
Kopel,
May 8, 2007 at 2:11am]
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Bush and Israel: The
Greatest Threats to
World Peace:
The Winter 2006-2007
issue of
egards, a
French-Canadian
conservative journal,
contains an article by
editor Jean Renaud, "The
conservative
French-Canadians and the
Destiny of America: The
lesson of Edmund Burke."
The article analyzes
what the author sees as
the various contemporary
intellectual
pathologies, including
the belief, according to
opinion polls, of the
English, Canadians and
Mexicans that George
Bush is a greater threat
to world peace than is
Iran's president Ahmadinejad. But then
Renaud acknowledges that
they are right, and his
argument seems
convincing:
In the 1930s
also, persons of
good intentions
accused this
flamethrower [lit.
cannon-igniter]
Winston Churchill of
being the principal
danger towards world
peace. In a sense,
these people were
correct. Churchill,
in opposing Nazism,
menaced world peace,
a peace of which the
terms had been
defined by Hitler.
The rejection of
tyranny and the
resistance to
totalitarianism have
always been a grave
menace to world
peace.
(My translation for
the text and the title.)
Many thanks to the VC
readership for informing
me, and, I hope, others,
about the fine journal,
with which I do not
always agree, but which
does have a vivid
appreciation of the
importance of Western
Civilization resisting
Islamofascism. BTW, the
article never discusses
Israel, but it seems to
me that the point about
polls regarding Bush as
a menace is also apt
regarding the polls
showing that many
Europeans regard Israel
as a greater threat to
world peace than Iran
(or, more precisely,
than Iran's
dictatorship).
68 Comments
[David
Kopel,
May 2, 2007 at 5:24pm]
Trackbacks
Wisconsin Right to Life
vs. FEC
This is the case,
recently heard by the
Supreme Court, that may
place some First
Amendment limits on
McCain-Feingold's
speech-suppression laws.
The amicus brief in
which the Independence
Institute participated
is here. A
collection of other
briefs and documents
is here. It is a
good test case because
the advertisement in
question (urging
Wisconsin citizens to
tell Senator Feingold
stop supporting the
filibusters of
Bush-nominated judges)
was plainly a
communication about the
business of Congress,
rather than a
thinly-disguised
campaign advertisement
(e.g., "Tell Senator
Snort that you're upset
that he was arrested for
domestic violence 10
years ago.") Yet the
advertisement was
claimed to be illegal by
the FEC because it was
aired within 60 days of
the general election.
21 Comments
[David
Kopel,
May 1, 2007 at 9:02pm]
Trackbacks
Pre-1966 Deaths from
Illegal Abortion:
An April 24
article in the
Rocky Mountain News
states:
The University of
California School of
Public Health
estimated that
before 1966, an
estimated 5,000 to
10,000 women died
each year in the
U.S. from
complications of
illegal abortions.
Trying to find out more
about this study, I
found that it was cited
in a 1966 book by
Lawrence Lader,
Abortion. (See
note 21 here for a
secondary citation.)
Do any readers have
additional information
about this study, or
know of additional
research on the levels
of pre-1967 maternal
deaths from illegal
abortion in the U.S.?
Please confine your
comments to this factual
issue, and do not argue
the broader pro/con
merits of the abortion
question.
32 Comments
[David
Kopel,
May 1, 2007 at 6:44pm]
Trackbacks
Alexander Hamilton and
Infanticide:
A
blogger for a weekly
local community insert
the Denver Post/Rocky
Mountain News
wrote:
If you look hard
enough you can find
the transcript of a
young State Senator
Alexander Hamilton
of New York arguing
eloquently and
effectively against
a bill that would
require a witness be
present at birth to
ensure the mother
did not kill her
baby. His reasoning?
Her fundamental
right to privacy.
Do any readers have
more information on
this? Hamilton never
served in the New York
State Senate, but he did
serve in the N.Y.
Assembly in 1787, before
joining the Continental
Congress in 1788. The
author claims that
Roe v. Wade based
itself on the Fourth
Amendment (rather than
14th), so I am not
confident about his
factual meticulousness.
36 Comments
[David
Kopel,
May
1,
2007
at
1:41am]
Trackbacks
"We
do
not
inherit
the
Earth
from
our
ancestors:
we
borrow
it
from
our
children."
This
quote,
along
with
some
close
variants,
is
sometimes
labeled
as
an
Indian
proverb,
or
attributed
to
Antoine
de
St.
Exupery,
or
to
Ralph
Waldo
Emerson
or
to
David
Bower.
Like
Chief
Seattle's
famous
environmental
speech
from
1854
(which
was
actually
written
by a
screenwriter
in
1971),the
quote
strikes
me
as a
late-20th
century
idealization
of
what
some
revered
figure
in
the
past
must
have
thought,
supposedly.
Does
anyone
know
the
actual
origin
of
this
quote?
Does
it
appear
in
any
reliable
collection
of
famous
quotes?
43
Comments
[David Kopel, April 30, 2007 at 2:24pm] Trackbacks
The Human Right of Self-Defense
Paul Gallant, Joanne Eisen, and I have a new article (PDF) forthcoming in the BYU Journal of Public Law. Here's the abstract:
Does a woman have a human right to resist rape or murder? Do people have a human right to resist tyranny? The United Nations Human Rights Council has said “no”—that international law recognizes no human right of self-defense. To the contrary, the Human Rights Council declares that very severe gun control—more restrictive than even the laws of New York City--is a human right.
Surveying international law from its earliest days to the present, this Article demonstrates that self-defense is a widely-recognized human right which no government and no international body have the authority to abrogate.
The issue is especially important today, as many international advocates of international gun prohibition are using the United Nations to deny and then eliminate the right of self-defense. For example, the General Assembly is creating an "Arms Trade Treaty" which could define arms sales to citizens in the United States as a human rights violation, because American law guarantees the right to use lethal force, when no lesser force will suffice, against a non-homicidal violent felony attack.
The Article analyzes in detail the Founders of international law--the great scholars in the fourteenth through eighteenth centuries who created the system of international law. The Article then looks at the major legal systems which have contributed to international law, such as Greek law, Roman law, Spanish law, Jewish law, Islamic law, Canon law, and Anglo-American law. In addition, the article covers the full scope of contemporary international law sources, including treaties, the United Nations, constitutions from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, and much more.
The Article shows that international law—particularly its restraints on the conduct of warfare—is founded on the personal right of self-defense.
As always, thoughtful comments are welcome. You don't have to read all 119 pages in order to comment, but you do need to read enough to be able to offer a comment about the article itself, rather than abstract thoughts about the gun issue in general.
16 Comments
[David Kopel, April 27, 2007 at 6:19pm] Trackbacks
Kansas Legislature over-rides
licensed carry veto
The
Wichita Eagle
reports that the Kansas State Senate this
afternoon successfully voted to over-ride Governor
Kathleen Sebelius' veto of a preemption law for
concealed handgun carrying. The House over-rode the
veto yesterday.
Last year, Kansas enacted a "shall issue" law for the
licensed carrying of handguns for lawful protection.
The new bill specifies that local governments may not
create pretend "gun free zones" which exclude licensed
carry.
Under
the bill, public or private entities may still ban
guns in buildings or enclosed fenced areas (but not in
parking lots, parks, or other open spaces) if they
post a notice. The bill also preempts local laws on
transportation or storage of firearms, to the extent
that they are inconsistent with state law. In
addition, the bill requires that relevant mental
health adjutications from Kansas courts be reported to
the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.
Congratulations to Kansas State
Senator Phil Journey, the leader of the pro-rights
forces in the legislature.
0
Comments
[David Kopel,
April 27, 2007 at 4:47pm]
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Kopel vs. The Economist, Round
5
In
the finale of my
Los Angeles Times on-line
debate with Christopher Lockwood, the U.S. editor of
The Economist, we each get a magic wand with
which to create whatever gun laws we would like. He
offers some proposals which, he frankly admits, are
politically impossible. Waving my Wand of Sensible
Consensus I propose:
1. Don't disarm people whom the government will
not/cannot protect.
2. Good policemen don't own bad guns. So if a gun
ban has a police exemption, its premises are
probably flawed, as I show with some examples.
3. Obey the Constitution. If it's too hard to do
that all at once, start with Article I. So
"interstate commerce" is not equivalent to
"everything," and so Congress stops exercising the
usurped power to regulate/prohibit things like
simple intrastate possesion of guns.
4. Recognize that guns can be used for good and for
bad. Make sure that gun policies enhance, rather
than destroy, the widespread social benefits which
flow from guns in the right hands.
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