Adam Winkler

by Jeremy Leaming

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) may believe the president has turned the Second Amendment on its head with a push for proposals to curb gun violence, but he’d do well to learn a bit more about the parameters of the amendment.

A good place to start would be a succinct letter signed by some of the nation’s leading constitutional law scholars that notes the Supreme Court has acknowledged the “presumptive constitutionality of laws designed to prevent gun violence, including restrictions on who has access to firearms and what types of firearms that they may have ….”

Grassley’s comments about the president’s call for new gun control measures came during today’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on gun violence. Grassley revealed his opposition to proposals to limit high-capacity ammunition magazines and suggested that violent video games are more responsible for mass shootings in the nation than easy access to military-style weapons.

UCLA Law School Professor Adam Winkler and University of Chicago Law School Professor Geoffrey R. Stone crafted a statement on the constitutionality of certain measures to curb gun violence. As this blog has noted on more than one occasion the Second Amendment does not provide for an unlimited individual right to bear arms. The professors’ statement, signed by more than 45 law school professors, notes that as well. (Winkler is the adviser to the ACS UCLA law student chapter, and Stone is former chair of the ACS Board of Directors. Winkler is also author of the influential book, Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America.)

Citing D.C. v. Heller, in which the high court found an individual right to own guns, the professors’ statement says in Heller Justice Antonin Scalia recognized that like other constitutional rights, “the Second Amendment is not absolute. The First Amendment, for example, provides that ‘Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech,’ but the Supreme Court has long and consistently held that some types of speech – for example, defamation, obscenity and threats – can be regulated; that some people – for example, public employees, members of the military, students and prisoners – are subject to greater restrictions on their speech than others; and that the government can reasonably regulate the time, place and manner of speech. As Justice Scalia explained in Heller, the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment are likewise subject to appropriate regulation in order to enhance public safety.”

The statement, available here, goes onto to argue that proposals like universal background checks, regulation of high-capacity ammunition magazines and military-style assault weapons are “clearly consistent with the Second Amendment.” The professors, add that they have “no view on the effectiveness or desirability of the policies reflected in the various proposals, but we all agree that none infringes on the core right identified in by the Court in Heller.”

By Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor at UCLA School of Law

The age of judicial activism - err, I mean "judicial engagement" - is upon us. Having realized that they don't always win with voters, leading conservatives are abandoning their traditional emphasis on judicial restraint and respect for the decisions of democratically elected officials. After years of berating liberal judges for overturning laws in the name of controversial constitutional principles, conservatives are now embracing the notion of an active, "engaged" judiciary. Only they want one that aggressively protects those rights conservatives prefer: property rights, rights of religious expression, the liberty of contract, the right not to buy broccoli - regardless of decades of established case law.

For evidence of this trend, one need not look further than startling concurring opinion by D.C. Circuit Judge Janice Rogers Brown in Hettinga v. United States. Brown, who is often mentioned as a potential Supreme Court nominee in a Republican administration, used her opinion to audition for a leadership role in this new movement. The time has come, she wrote, to end the pernicious practice of allowing legislatures to regulate the economy. "America's cowboy capitalism was long ago disarmed by a democratic process increasingly dominated by powerful groups with economic interests antithetical to competitors and consumers. And the courts, from which the victims of burdensome regulation sought protection, have been negotiating the terms of surrender since the 1930s." The proof? The "Supreme Court allowed state and local jurisdictions to regulate property, pursuant to their police powers, in the public interest, and to adopt whatever economic policy may reasonably be deemed to promote the public welfare."

Besides Brown’s Bizarro world premises in which things like consumer protection laws harm consumers, her ode to the Lochner era reminds us of the importance of judicial appointments. For decades, Republican presidents have used the lower federal courts as a farm team for the Supreme Court, smartly filling positions with potential stars to see how they perform. This is a smart strategy, though one Democrats haven’t followed. Instead, Democratic presidents have tended to name competent, diverse people who aren’t likely to be controversial. But in the current political climate, even these clear consensus nominees are held up in the Senate, leaving the federal courts with a critical number of vacancies and a troubling imbalance in our courts. To counter the newly “engaged” judicial conservatives like Brown, legal liberals need to be fighting for judges, particularly those judges with the intellectual fortitude to go toe-to-toe with the leading lights of conservative constitutionalism. Respect for our Constitution and settled precedent demands nothing less.