Properly Extending the Right to Keep and Bear Arms to the States

I recently blogged about an interesting op-ed in which Ken Klukowski and Ken Blackwell of the American Civil Rights Union argue that the Supreme Court need not overturn The Slaughter-House Cases while “incorporating” the right to bear arms against the states. (Josh Blackman fisked the article in more depth here.) This piece was essentially a distillation of the ACRU’s amicus brief in McDonald v. City of Chicago, which ultimately argues, like Cato’s brief, that Chicago’s gun ban is unconstitutional.

It has come to my attention, however, that I mischaracterized one aspect of the Kens’ op-ed (sorry about that): while they are indeed against overturning Slaughter-House, the authors still seek to apply the Second Amendment right through the Privileges or Immunities Clause (like Cato and most libertarians), rather than through the Due Process Clause (like many conservatives and gun rights proponents). This is the ACRU’s main argument, and it is based largely on Ken Klukowski’s recent law review article – indeed, the brief’s body cites Klukowski article some 20 times, often for propositions that find no further support in case law or academic literature. (Josh has also provided a short critique of the ACRU brief/Klukowski article, so I won’t do that here.)

In any event, this clarification gives me an opportunity to name and outline the five possible ways a justice could come down in the McDonald case:

1. “Extreme Anti-Gun” — Affirm the lower court in its entirety, deciding that it correctly interpreted Supreme Court precedent, that reconsideration of this precedent is unwarranted, and therefore that neither the Second Amendment nor the right to bear arms it protects extends to people in the states (as opposed to in federal territories, like the District of Columbia). I can’t imagine that any justice will vote for this way; even those who dissented in Heller generally support the selective incorporation of rights against the states.
2. “Conventional Liberal” – Affirm the lower court in part but clarify that while the Second Amendment is indeed “incorporated” as against the states via the Due Process Clause, Chicago’s gun ban is still okay — possibly under a test weighing the individual right against the city’s interest in reducing gun violence. There may be one to four votes for this position: Justice Breyer likes balancing tests; Justice Stevens may feel that his hometown’s regulations are justified; and Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor may feel the same way about New York.
3. “Conventional Conservative” — Reverse the lower court, “incorporate” the Second Amendment via the Due Process Clause — adopting an analysis akin to that of Ninth Circuit Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain in the Nordyke case — and strike down Chicago’s gun ban. The NRA’s brief primarily advocates this position, as do many conservatives fearful of the Privileges or Immunities Clause. There may be one to eight votes for this position: The “minimalist” Chief Justice Roberts may be hesitant to overturn longstanding precedent; Justice Scalia may decide that the devil he knows (substantive due process) is better than the one he doesn’t (privileges or immunities); Justice Kennedy may feel vested in his own expansive “fundamental rights” jurisprudence under the Due Process Clause (see my review of a book analyzing that jurisprudence); Justice Alito may share one or more of the above sentiments; and one or more of the aforementioned liberals may decide to “bite the bullet” and go along with this position.
4. “Mend Slaughter-House, Don’t End It” — Reverse the lower court, overturn three old precedents — Cruikshank (1876), Presser (1886), and Miller (1894), which were decided at a time when none of the rights in the Bill of Rights was considered to apply to the states – “incorporate” the Second Amendment via the Privileges or Immunities Clause without touching Slaughter-House, and strike down Chicago’s gun ban. This is the ACRU position, and while I don’t think it’s textually or historically supportable – a scholarly consensus across ideological lines holds that Slaughter-House was both wrongly decided and forecloses any significant application of the Privileges or Immunities Clause — it could emerge as a political “compromise.” (If Justice O’Connor were still on the Court, I could maybe see her advancing this position.)
5. “Originalist/Libertarian” — Reverse the lower court, overturn Slaughter-House and the three aforementioned cases, extend the right to keep and bear arms to the states (which is technically distinct from “incorporating” the Second Amendment), and strike down Chicago’s gun ban. This is Cato’s position – as well as that of the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center on behalf of eight leading constitutional law professors from across the political spectrum – and there will be one and may be up to all nine of the justices here: Justice Thomas has long said that he’d like to revisit Slaughter-House in the appropriate case, and he surely led the push to grant a cert petition whose question presented called for briefing about the Privileges or Immunities Clause; any of the others who seriously grapple with the arguments in Alan Gura’s brilliant petitioners’ brief (and those of his amici, us included) will also have to go this way despite their various political qualms.

In short, I see at least five votes in favor of extending the right to keep and bear arms to the states, but it’s an open question as to whether the Court will do that via the Due Process of Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Now, you may ask why, if I’m so confident that the fifth option above is correct, don’t all conservatives qua self-professed “originalists” gravitate towards it (and, conversely, why some liberals qua “living constitutionalists” do). That’s an unlawyerly matter of policy preferences: as the Kens’ op-ed details, conservatives (and some libertarians), while wanting to extend Heller’s interpretation of the Second Amendment to the states, are wary of opening a Pandora’s Box of positive rights (health care, housing, welfare, etc.), as well as the perpetual culture-war bogeymen (abortion, gay marriage, pornography, etc.). Liberal intellectuals, meanwhile, are holding their nose at having to extend gun rights because they feel that’s the only concession they have to make to achieve their utopic constitutionalization of the entire progressive agenda.

While libertarians share the conservative concern about positive rights — as well as legal, if typically not policy, qualms about courts’ handling of social issues (e.g., that Roe v. Wade is bad law even if some libertarians are pro-choice; that Lawrence v. Texas is good law but achieved through Kennedy-esque hand-waving rather than sound legal reasoning) – many of us see the benefits of being able to protect economic liberties and other natural rights. For example, unlike conservatives, we generally like Lochner, the 1905 case that struck down on “liberty of contract” grounds a New York law limiting bakers’ hours.

Yes there’s a danger — particularly if President Obama gets to replace not only Justices Stevens and Ginsburg, but also Scalia and Kennedy – that overturning Slaughter-House will open the aforementioned Pandora’s Box, but: 1) that danger isn’t necessarily mitigated by somehow managing to use the Privileges or Immunities Clause without overturning Slaughter-House; 2) the danger is no different than under the current substantive due process doctrine; and 3) if we are to remain originalists not just in overturning Slaughter-House but in future jurisprudence, the progressives’ arguments fail, the danger is averted, and the Box stays sealed. Josh Blackman and I wrote our article, “Keeping Pandora’s Box Sealed: Privileges or Immunities, The Constitution in 2020, and Properly Extending the Right to Keep and Bear Arms,” in part to address the valid concerns (sketched in the Kens’ op-ed) about the consequences of truly reviving the Privileges or Immunities Clause.

While we won’t assuage the staunchest social conservatives – (adult) pornography is protected speech (but even more so is political advertising!) – we should mollify many faint-hearted originalists. Anyone who thinks the Constitution is a “dead” document, whose text is to be interpreted according to its original public meaning, has to admit that the Privileges or Immunities Clause protects something more than what Slaughter-House said it did.

To see how all this works in greater detail, read our Pandora’s Box article, which I’ve previously discussed here , here, and here. And again, Cato’s amicus brief is here; see also this law review article by its principal author, Cato adjunct scholar Timothy Sandefur.

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Vague Laws Defy the Rule of Law

Following Enron’s downfall, the federal government charged company CEO Jeffrey Skilling with “honest services fraud” connected to the alleged manipulation of Enron’s market value (and other securities irregularities). This charge — also at issue in two other cases before the Court this term — is based on a statute which says, in its entirety: “For the purposes of this chapter, the term ‘scheme or artifice to defraud’ includes a scheme or artifice to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services.”

Skilling was convicted, and his conviction was upheld by the Fifth Circuit. The Supreme Court agreed to review the application of the “honest services fraud” statute to Skilling (as well as the issue of potential jury bias stemming from pretrial publicity in Houston). Cato, joined by the Pacific Legal Foundation, filed an amicus brief supporting neither party, arguing simply that vague statutes such as the one at issue here offend due process.

We take no position on whether Skilling committed a crime, or even the crime at issue here (whatever that may be). Instead, we argue that the Court should clarify that the constitutional prohibition on vague laws protects sophisticated and unsophisticated defendants alike in the realm of economic regulation, as well as in criminal law. The due process requirements of fair warning and definiteness apply equally in the contexts of white collar business crimes, business torts, and civil regulations.

Vague laws involve three basic dangers: First, they may harm the innocent by failing to warn of the offense. Second, they encourage arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement because vague laws delegate enforcement and statutory interpretation to individual government officials. Third, because citizens will take extra precautions to avoid violating the law, vague laws inhibit our individual freedom.

For more on this issue, see Tim Lynch’s posts here and here, Gene Healy’s op-ed, or the related policy forum and podcast.

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Supreme Court Erases Legal Precedent for Auto Bailout

On Monday the Supreme Court released its last orders for the calendar year. Of particular note — apart from the non-release of the long-awaited decision in the Citizens United campaign finance case — the Court dismissed the cert petition in Indiana State Police Pension Trust v. Chrysler LLC as moot and vacated the underlying Second Circuit opinion. While this is not the ideal outcome – particularly for the Indiana creditors — it is in its own way an important decision preserving the integrity of bankruptcy law.

To recap: In January, Chrysler stood on the brink of insolvency. Purporting to act under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, the Treasury Department extended the car company a $4 billion loan using funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Still in a bad financial situation, Chrysler initially proposed an out-of-court reorganization plan that would fully repay all of Chrysler’s secured debt.

The Treasury rejected this proposal and instead insisted on a plan that would completely eradicate Chrysler’s secured debt, hinging billions of dollars in additional TARP funding on Chrysler’s acquiescence. When Chrysler’s first lien lenders refused to waive their secured rights without full payment, the Treasury devised a scheme by which Chrysler, instead of reorganizing under a chapter 11 plan, would sell its assets free of all secured interests to a shell company, the New Chrysler.

Chrysler was thus able to avoid the “absolute priority rule,” which provides that a court should not approve a bankruptcy plan unless it is “fair and equitable” to all classes of creditors. The forced reorganization amounted to the Treasury redistributing value from senior, secured creditors to debtors and junior, unsecured creditors. The government should not have been allowed, through its own self-dealing, to hand-pick certain creditors for favorable treatment at the expense of others who would otherwise enjoy first lien priority.

While the Court’s ruling prevents the creditors from collecting what would have otherwise been considered their rightful portion of the liquidation, it also erases a terrible precedent from the federal judiciary’s books and reaffirms years of settled bankruptcy law. A decision upholding the Second Circuit’s ruling would have undercut the established practices of bankruptcy and introduced even more uncertainty into a still-uneasy market.

To put it more broadly, the bankruptcy laws are in place to ensure that debts are paid in an established and fair manner and not at the whim of whatever political actors happen to be in power at the time. Taking away that assurance stifles investment and thereby hurts the economy.

Cato joined the Washington Legal Foundation, the Allied Educational Foundation, and George Mason law professor Todd Zywicki on a brief supporting the creditors’ petition that you can read here. And you can watch Cato’s policy forum on the auto bailout here.

Keeping Pandora's Box Sealed

In today’s Washington Times, Ken Klukowski and Ken Blackwell co-authored an op-ed about McDonald v. Chicago and the Privileges or Immunities Clause titled, “A gun case or Pandora’s box?”

If that title sounds familiar, it should. Josh Blackman and I have co-authored a forthcoming article called “Opening Pandora’s Box? Privileges or Immunities, The Constitution in 2020, and Properly Incorporating the Second Amendment." As Josh put it in his reply to the Kens, “imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.”

Going beyond the title, there are several errors in the piece, which I will briefly recap:
First, the Kens argue that the Supreme Court should uphold the Slaughter-House Cases, out of a fear that reversal — and thereby a reinvigoration of Privileges or Immunities — would empower judges to strike down state and local laws. What they neglect to mention is that it has been the role of the judiciary since Marbury v. Madison to strike down laws that violate the Constitution. There is near-universal agreement across the political spectrum that Slaughter-House was wrongly decided, causing the Supreme Court to abdicate its constitutional duty by ignoring the Privileges or Immunities Clause for 125 years. The Kens want to continue this mistaken jurisprudence.

Next, the Kens describe the Privileges or Immunities Clause as a general license for courts to strike down any law they do not like. This is not accurate. Neither the Privileges or Immunities Clause nor any other part of the Fourteenth Amendment empowers judges to impose their policy views. Instead, “privileges or immunities” was a term of art in 1868 (the year the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified) referring to a specific set of common law, pre-existing rights, including the right to keep and bear arms. The Privileges or Immunities Clause is thus no more a blank check for judges to impose their will than the Due Process Clause — the exact vehicle the Kens would use to “incorporate” the Second Amendment.

To set the record straight, Josh and I are working on an op-ed — not so much to respond to the Kens’ flawed analysis but to present the correct historical and textual view of the Privileges or Immunities Clause. To see our arguments in greater detail, read our article and Cato’s McDonald brief, both of which I’ve previously blogged about here , here, and here.

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Health Care Mandate Is Unconstitutional — and Don’t Leave Home Without the Cato Constitution

Yesterday the Heritage Foundation released a new paper on the unconstitutionality of the proposed health care mandate. Think tanks aren’t normally in the habit of promoting their peer institutions’ work, but this paper is incredibly timely and its lead author is Cato senior fellow Randy Barnett. You really should go read it.

Interestingly, at the event unveiling the paper, Eugene Volokh (of UCLA Law School and the Volokh Conspiracy blog) at one point wanted to quote the Constitution and realized he wasn’t carrying one! Eugene asked if anyone had a Heritage Constitution. Former Attorney General Ed Meese, now chairman of Heritage’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, saved the day by passing Eugene his… handy, dandy, Washington Post-bestselling Cato Constitution. It seems that General Meese likes our version because it’s smaller and so fits easier into your pocket. (I would add that it also features the Declaration of Independence — as does Heritage’s — as well as a preface by my boss, Roger Pilon.)

You can watch the entire health care event, which features Senator Orrin Hatch along with Randy and Eugene, here (the Constitution bit starts at about 40:15; I ask a question at 1:04:46). The bottom line — beyond the health care abomination — is that you should always carry your Cato pocket Constitution wherever you go. Like Josh Blackman, I keep one in every suit jacket (as well as backpacks, totebags, briefcases, and roll-aboards). You never know when you — or someone else — may need it.

They also make great stocking stuffers and gifts for any night of Hanukkah (as does the latest Cato Supreme Court Review, though you may need a slightly larger stocking).

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Supreme Court Wastes Time, Money, and Opportunity to Protect Property Rights and Due Process

Yesterday the Supreme Court released its first four opinions in cases argued this term, the latest first-opinion release in recent history. The only one that interests me — and it’s not Justice Sotomayor’s maiden effort — is the civil forfeiture case, Alvarez v. Smith.

Civil forfeiture, the practice in which the police seize cars, money and other kinds of property that they say has some connection to crime, can raise various legal and policy issues — from property rights to due process. The question in Alvarez was the basic one of whether people seeking to get their property back are entitled to a prompt hearing before a judge.

I blogged about the case here, and Cato adjunct scholar Ilya Somin wrote about it here. Cato’s also filed a brief in the case supporting the individuals whose property was seized.

Unfortunately, because all underlying disputes had been resolved by the time of oral argument — cars had been returned and the individuals have either forfeited their cash or accepted the state’s return of some of it — the Court determined the case to be moot. It thus vacated the lower court’s opinion and remanded with instructions for that court to dismiss the case.

And that’s a shame. While the dispute does seem to be moot with respect to the particular petitioners, this is obviously a situation “capable of repetition” but “evading review” — along the lines of that little-known case of Roe v. Wade. That is, just like the case of a pregnant woman is moot within nine months, disputes over civil forfeiture get resolved one way or the other long before the slow turn of litigation reaches the Supreme Court. By avoiding the merits of this case, the Court guarantees that the important constitutional questions presented by this case remain perpetually unresolved.

What is more, by vacating the Seventh Circuit’s opinion – an extraordinary remedy — the Court deprives Illinoisans of a well-reasoned and just ruling that could be used as precedent in future cases. It also – and this is no small matter — wastes the time, effort, and resources of the parties and their attorneys, taxpayers (who obviously paid for the petitioners’ legal work here, as well as that of the judiciary), and, of course, amici (including Cato).

Justice Stevens was correct in his partial dissent: if the Court disagrees with the argument I made in the preceding paragraph, it should have applied the general rule against vacating judgments that have become moot because the parties settled. The proper disposition here would have been to DIG the case — dismiss the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted (which allows the lower court ruling to remain on the books undisturbed).

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Big Out-of-Control Government Has Had Better Days at the Supreme Court

This morning at the Supreme Court, the federal government argued for the continued existence of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB, pronounced peek-a-boo) — and by extension the nefarious financial regulatory scheme known as Sarbanes-Oxley. Cato filed a brief supporting a free market advocacy group and an accounting firm, who sued PCAOB for violating both the Appointments Clause and general constitutional separation-of-powers principles.

Passed with scant deliberation in the wake of the Enron and WorldCom scandals, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 established PCAOB to oversee the accounting practices of the nation’s public companies. As my piece with Cato legal associate Travis Cushman details today, PCAOB enjoys the rare authority to make its own laws, collect taxes, inspect records, prosecute infractions, make judgments, and impose sanctions.

Traditionally, independent agencies that serve such executive functions must be accountable to the president. PCAOB members, however, may only be removed “for cause” by members of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who in turn may only be removed “for cause” by the president. I previously blogged about the case, Free Enterprise Fund v. PCAOB, here, here, and here.

As far as how the argument went, I think the forces of limited constitutional government have eked out a 5-4 victory. Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor were extremely hostile to the challengers’ argument, while the Chief Justice and Justices Scalia and Alito were supportive. (Scalia at one point joked that he had no less power than the president — meaning not very much — to influence PCAOB.) Justice Stevens only spoke up once but seemed to show a leaning towards the government position. Justice Thomas, while remaining silent, can be expected to support the view of D.C. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh — whose blistering yet scholarly dissent likely prompted the Court to take up the case.

And so the ruling rests, as often happens with the most interesting cases, on the shoulders of Justice Kennedy. I remain cautiously optimistic that Kennedy will decide to uphold constitutional checks and balances and strike down what has become an unholy new branch of government.

Two curious notes from the argument: 1. Petitioners’ counsel Michael Carvin referenced Cato’s brief in discussing PCAOB’s overreach internationally — seeking to regulate even foreign accounting standards – without oversight from the State Department or the SEC, let alone the president; 2. PCAOB brought its own lawyer to argue alongside the solicitor general, begging the question: if PCAOB is subservient to the SEC and/or the president, why does it need its own counsel to represent its own views?

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Adding Free Speech Insult to Property Rights Injury

My friend and former law firm colleague Mark Sigmon — who co-authored Cato’s brief in the New Haven firefighters case — is representing a man facing daily fines for displaying a large political message on his house.

David Bowden was upset about the way he had been treated by the town of Cary, NC, regarding damage to his property during a road-widening project. This past July, Bowden hired someone to paint “Screwed By The Town of Cary” on the front of his house. A few weeks ago, the town gave Bowden seven days to remove the sign or face daily fines — $100 for the first day, $250 for the second, $500 for each subsequent day – for violating a local sign ordinance. That’s when Mark, who’s affiliated with the ACLU of North Carolina, filed a lawsuit on Bowden’s behalf. The complaint alleges that the town violated Bowden’s rights to free speech and to petition his government under the First Amendment and similar provisions of North Carolina’s constitution.

While the facts of this case are a bit colorful – and I’m sure Mark is enjoying the notoriety (here’s his appearance on Fox & Friends) — this is no laughing matter. The town appears to be compounding the damage it did to a resident’s property rights by now violating his rights to speech and political expression. At least now the town has agreed to refrain from enforcing its ordinance and levying fines until the case is resolved — which is essentially a capitulation to Bowden’s request for a preliminary injunction.

For more news on this story go here, here, and here. And you can read the ACLU’s press release and access all the legal pleadings in the case here.

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Cato's Legal Arguments Worry U.S. Government

Last month, Cato (joined by Cato senior fellow Randy Barnett) filed a brief in United States v. Comstock, a case regarding the constitutionality of a law authorizing the federal government to civilly commit anyone in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons whom the attorney general certifies to be “sexually dangerous.” The effect of such an action is to continue the certified person’s confinement after the expiration of his prison term, without proof of a new criminal violation.

As I wrote in a previous blog post, “the use of federal power here is unconstitutional because it is not tied to any of Congress’s limited and enumerated powers.” Moreover, the government’s reliance on the Necessary and Proper Clause (Article I, Section 8), “is misplaced because that clause grants no independent power but merely ‘carries into execution’ the powers enumerated elsewhere in that section.” The commitment of prisoners after their terms end simply cannot fit into one of the enumerated powers.

While we of course hope that the Supreme Court pays attention to our brief, we know that Solicitor General Elana Kagan, at least, is concerned enough about our arguments to spend several pages of the government’s reply brief addressing them (see pages 5-9).
For more on Comstock, see its case page on SCOTUSwiki, which now has all the briefs and will around the Jan. 12 argument date be populated with argument previews and reviews, as well as links to media coverage.

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Likely Supreme Court Tie Would Be a Loss to Property Owners

Today the Supreme Court heard argument in Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection, a Fifth Amendment Takings Clause challenge involving beachfront property that I previously discussed here.

Essentially, Florida’s ”beach renourishment” program created more beach but deprived property owners of the rights they previously had — exclusive access to the water, unobstructed view, full ownership of land up to the “mean high water mark,” etc. That is, the court turned beachfront property into “beachview” property. After the property owners successfully challenged this action, the Florida Supreme Court – “SCOFLA” for those who remember the Bush v. Gore imbroglio – reversed the lower court (and overturned 100 years of common property law), ruling that the state did not owe any compensation, or even a proper eminent domain hearing.

As Cato adjunct scholar and Pacific Legal Foundation senior staff attorney Timothy Sandefur noted in his excellent op-ed on the case in the National Law Journal, “[T]he U.S. Constitution also guarantees every American’s right to due process of law and to protection of private property. If state judges can arbitrarily rewrite a state’s property laws, those guarantees would be meaningless.”

I sat in on the arguments today and predict that the property owners will suffer a narrow 4-4 defeat. That is, Justice Stevens recused himself — he owns beachfront property in a different part of Florida that is subject to the same renourishment program — and the other eight justices are likely to split evenly. And a tie is a defeat in this case because it means the Court will summarily affirm the decision below without issuing an opinion or setting any precedent.

By my reckoning, Justice Scalia’s questioning lent support to the property owners’ position, as did Chief Justice Roberts’ (though he could rule in favor of the “judicial takings” doctrine in principle but perhaps rule for the government on a procedural technicality here). Justice Alito was fairly quiet but is probably in the same category as the Chief Justice. Justice Thomas was typically silent but can be counted on to support property rights. With Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor expressing pro-government positions, that leaves Justice Kennedy, unsurprisingly, as the swing vote. Kennedy referred to the case as turning on a close question of state property law, which indicates his likely deference to SCOFLA.

For more analysis of the argument, see SCOTUSblog. Cato filed an amicus brief supporting the land owners here, and earlier this week I recorded a Cato Podcast to that effect. Cato also recently filed a brief urging the Court to hear another case of eminent domain abuse in Florida, 480.00 Acres of Land v. United States.

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Virginia Messes With Yoga Instructors' Chi

Not to be too much of a megaphone for the Institute for Justice, but the “merry band of litigators” has struck again, this time going after the rigid rules stopping Virginians from finding inner peace. It seems that in the fair commonwealth, you need a permit to teach yoga, which process entails paying $2500 and getting your “curriculum” approved by state bureaucrats, as well as other barriers to entry. For more details, see IJ’s case page and read this editorial in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Also, check out IJ’s video.

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