November 2010

Seth Stern, co-author of the recently published biography Justice Brennan: Liberal Champion, shared his insights about the influential justice with ACSblog in an interview. Stern, who is a lawyer and legal reporter for Congressional Quarterly, was brought into the long-term project four years ago. A number of years before, Brennan had given Stern’s co-author, American University law professor Stephen Wermiel, exclusive permission to write his biography, giving Wermiel exclusive access to the Justice’s papers and sitting for more than 60 hours of interviews. Stern reviewed these materials and also conducted additional research, in joining with Wermiel to complete the book.

In this video podcast interview, Stern addresses a number of different topics, including why Brennan remains such an appealing figure to many lawyers and law students today, the Justice’s role in the continuing debates over constitutional interpretation, Brennan’s role as both a consensus builder and a caustic dissenter, how Justice Brennan’s success might have been affected if he sat on today’s divided court with its conservative majority, and the tension between Brennan’s personal life and judicial philosophy.

As he comments, Brennan’s philosophy was “the opposite of the critique of liberal activism—that liberal judges read their personal preferences into the Constitution. At least with Justice Brennan you have to draw a line between what his personal preferences might have been and … his legal or philosophical preferences. But he certainly wasn’t reading his personal predilections into the Constitution.”

To watch the interview, click the picture below or here, to download the interview as a podcast. To download or listen to an earlier two part interview with Stern’s co-author, Stephen Wermiel, click here and here. To read an ACS Book Talk in which the authors discuss their work, click here

A number of Tea Party-backed candidates are likely to win congressional seats in today's midterm elections if pundits and polls are correct, and those candidates will bring with them a "radical gun agenda," writes constitutional law scholar and professor Adam Winkler.

In a recent piece for The Daily Beast, Winkler, a law professor at UCLA, notes that many Tea Party candidates have loudly pushed their economic platforms, which largely consist of vague calls for cuts in government spending. But, he writes, those candidates also harbor strikingly extreme positions on gun rights and gun control.

Winkler writes:

In state after state, Tea Party candidates like Rand Paul in Kentucky and Joe Miller in Alaska advocate for the adoption of radical the so-called ‘Firearms Freedom Acts.' These laws, which declare that the federal government has exceeded its constitutional authority by regulating gun sales, are intended to nullify the federal Brady Act, which requires background checks for most gun purchases. Eight states in the throes of Tea Party fervor, including Arizona, Utah, and South Dakota, have already enacted such laws - even though, as a federal court held last month, these laws are clearly unconstitutional.

Winkler also notes that Tea Party candidates have enthusiastically embraced a group called Gun Owners of America, which was founded by Larry Pratt, who is "usually credited with starting the crazed patriot militia movement in the 1990s." Pratt, as Winkler writes, has criticized the nation's largest gun lobby, the NRA, for not being pro-gun enough.

These candidates are all about eradicating all gun control laws, there is no middle ground for them, even though many of the candidates claim to worship President Ronald Reagan, the professor continues. (And as Winkler notes, Reagan did support some gun control regulation. He signed a bill as governor of California outlawing people from carrying loaded guns, and "vigorously endorsed the Brady Act.")

In Nevada, the Tea Party candidate Sharron Angle, again if polls are to be believed is likely to topple Senator Harry Reid, "gave voice to the militia movement's views in January when, in a radio interview, she warned if elections don't force officials like Harry Reid out of office, the people may be forced to turn to Second Amendment remedies."

For Winkler these candidates are far removed from the mainstream, and he cites ample evidence that what they're really pushing is a revolution.

Winkler recently talked with ACSblog about gun control regulation in the wake of the landmark Supreme Court decisions on the Second Amendment, and also his forthcoming book, Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America. His interview is available here.