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Many scholars and courts have written about the historical background of the Second Amendment, either to emphasize its connection to state-level citizen militias or to argue that the Amendment protects an individual right to own and carry guns for self-defense. While many authors have mentioned the original congressional debates about the Second Amendment, the literature is missing a thorough, point-by-point analysis of those debates, situating each statement in Congress within the context of the speaker's background and political stances on issues overlapping with the right to keep and bear arms. This Article attempts to fill this gap by providing a methodical discussion of each comment or argument made in Congress when the Second Amendment was under consideration. This discussion addresses how each of the congressmen's comments connect to public statements made by the same members of Congress in the months that followed on related topics: taxation and public debt related to militias, the supply of available firearms and their legal status as private or public property, the institution of slavery, westward expansion, and especially the complications for each of these issues posed by the Quakers, who became the center of attention during the debates about the Second Amendment. These original congressional debates have taken on more importance following the Supreme Court's recent holding that courts should decide Second Amendment challenges based on historical evidence from the years immediately preceding and following ratification. While this Article does not take a position on current litigation over modern firearm regulations, the discussion here can offer courts and commentators new insights into the original public meaning of the Second Amendment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Folklore about Operation Choke Point, a regulatory enforcement initiative in the second term of the Obama Administration, continues to come up as a talking point among political conservatives when criticized regulatory agencies or attacking nominees for agency directorships. When several national banks announced in 2018 that they were backing away from the gun industry in various ways (in response to horrific mass shootings), the gun lobby reinvented Operation Choke Point as a conspiracy among bankers to defund gun dealers. This new, more fanciful narrative about Operation Choke Point has become the stated premise for new antiboycott laws that punish banks if they do not lend to the gun industry, such as Texas Senate Bill 19, enacted in 2021. This Article is an attempt to set the record straight. Operation Choke Point was a benign initiative involving a small task force at the Department of Justice and officials from a variety of regulatory agencies that oversee the banking and consumer finance systems. Enforcement actions for consumer fraud targeted unscrupulous payday loan companies engaged in illegal activities, and exhortations from bank regulators reminded executives and compliance officers at financial institutions about their legal duties to screen business customers that presented elevated risks for fraud and money laundering. Backlash erupted when banking lobbyists and industry spokespersons claimed, with only anecdotal evidence, that banks were pressured to close accounts for bank customers who operated lawful businesses that were unpopular with Democrats. The gun industry also entered the fray, with vociferous but unsubstantiated claims that Operation Choke Point was a sinister conspiracy to defund (de-bank) firearm manufacturers and dealers, and was aimed at depriving the citizenry of the Second Amendment rights. Congressional hearings followed, along with investigations and reports by the FDIC’s Office of Inspector General and class action lawsuits against several regulatory agencies, which were dismissed or settled. The Office of Inspector General reports, however, were underwhelming compared to the alarmist rhetoric characterizing the public discourse on the subject. The federal agencies at the center of the firestorm—DOJ and the FDIC— backpedaled on their regulatory guidance to financial institutions and wound down their enforcement activities, and whatever vestiges of Operation Choke Point ceased to exist when President Trump took office. Yet the myths surrounding Operation Choke Point continue to have political salience and real-world adverse impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

INTRODUCTION Criminal law goes through phases. The criminal justice system in the common law era evolved from medieval law emphasizing retribution and moral culpability, with a list of felonies that [...]

The article presents the discussion on gun rights and gun control. Topics include recent estimates of the number of Americans with felony convictions disqualifying from gun use or ownership; and focusing on the law's significant contribution to the mass incarceration crisis and the disturbing racial disparities besetting the carceral system overall.

Gun violence has long been an intractable policy problem in the United States, pitting gun rights advocates against public health experts against a backdrop of modern Second Amendment jurisprudence. The Supreme Court's 2008 decision in Heller had the long-term effect of freezing federal firearm statutes in place, even as the number of guns in circulation continues to spiral upward, and mass shootings, gun accidents, and suicides have a detrimental impact on our communities. This Article reexamines longstanding proposals for minimally intrusive regulatory approaches, such as universal background checks and restrictions on certain military-style rifles, which have the pedigree of popular support in an otherwise divisive area. More importantly, this Article revisits the issue of tort liability for gun manufacturers and dealers, and the new wave of court decisions allowing such cases to move forward in spite of a federal statute designed to grant the firearms industry immunity from such lawsuits. An area of tort litigation that was mostly dormant for fifteen years has now become increasingly active, with far-reaching implications for gun policy. As courts find workarounds for the federal immunity statute or apply the statutory exceptions more broadly, gun manufacturers and retail distributors alike may need to rethink their product lines, marketing, and relationship to the secondary market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses legislative and judicial developments in the U.S. which force employers to permit employees to carry firearms in the workplace. It tackles the increase in prevalence of workplace shootings in the country, the growth in Parking Lot laws, the emergence of specialized insurance policies and the effect of firearm policies on overall crime rates or gun-related deaths.

Federal narcotics policy and firearms regulation intersect at several points. One of these junctures is 18 U.S.C. §922(g)(3), which incorporates the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) by reference and thereby prohibits violators of the CSA from possessing a firearm. This statutory intersection results in more than 14,200 individuals per year failing a background check for gun purchases, and more than 600 convictions per year for possession of guns by drug users. At the same time, the federal NICS background check database contains only 67,000 or so records of drug users, due to widespread underreporting by state law enforcement agencies, courts, correctional institutions, and drug treatment facilities. Circuit courts have consistently upheld the constitutionality of §922(g)(3). Incorporation of the CSA into firearm prohibitions poses difficult policy tradeoffs. On the one hand, longstanding problems with the CSA, including the trending conflict between federal and state marijuana laws, spill over into prosecutions for weapons violations and denials of prospective firearm purchases. Moreover, other substance abuse categories with higher correlations to gun violence, such as alcoholism, are entirely missing from the regulatory framework. On the other hand, the CSA has ended up playing a vital role in the firearm regulatory regime, and in gun violence prevention. This paper will explore the interplay between the CSA and gun control from both an ex ante perspective (background checks for gun purchases) and an ex post perspective (arrests and convictions for users-in-possession of firearms). It also proposes legislative and administrative refinements that could resolve some of the problems with the existing regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smart guns, which originally meant personalized guns that only the owner could fire, had a false start as a promising new technology several years ago. Nevertheless, policymakers have shown renewed interest in the wake of highly publicized incidents of gun violence, as well as advances in technology. The first generation of smart guns foundered on problems with the reliability of the technology, as well as a legislative misstep that would have banned all other guns as soon as smart guns appeared in the retail market. This proposal triggered massive boycotts of certain manufacturers and dealers and a subsequent abandonment of the project by the gun industry overall. Newer technologies, however, such as improved biometric grip identifiers, precision-guided rifles that rarely miss, blockchain or "glockchain" automated tracking, and optical scopes that send videos to smartphones, have revived interest in smart gun products. At least one state in 2019 (New Jersey) passed carefully drafted legislation promoting the introduction of personalized guns, while another (Arizona) passed legislation discouraging the adoption of digital ledgering technology for firearms. In addition, some leading candidates in the 2020 primary advocated for smart guns as a solution to gun violence. This paper will explore the emerging second-generation smart gun technology, its potential for adoption by the military, law enforcement, and civilian markets, and the realistic prospects for improvements in safety or reduction in gun violence. This discussion will include the disconnect between policy agendas regarding firearm safety and technological enhancements driven by current consumer demand--and the murky moral assumptions that undergird both. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Restrictions on federal funding for research pertaining to firearm policy have stymied academic inquiry by social science and public health researchers for over two decades. As a result, most researchers agree that our public discourse about this urgent issue is woefully under-informed, or even ill-informed, on both sides of the debate. Legal academia, which does not operate under the same grantwriting regime as most other disciplines, can and should help fill this gap in researching and theorizing the unresolved questions related to firearm policy. In fact, theoretical development and clarification from the legal academy is often a necessary antecedent for empirical researchers in other fields to frame and develop their own studies properly, especially about the real-world effects of competing policy approaches to firearms. This Essay sets forth a plea to law professors to undertake much-needed research in this area and offers suggestions of understudied topics with low entry barriers for legal commentators. Recommendations for interdisciplinary collaborative efforts round out this discussion. A brief conclusion reaches the endgame issue: ensuring access to the work we produce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attorney bargaining has traditionally taken place in the shadow of trial as litigants adjust tactics--and their inclination to negotiate a settlement--based on their forecast of the outcome of a trial and its associated costs. Lawyers bargaining on the verge of trial have traditionally relied on their intuition, knowledge of precedent, and previous interactions with the presiding judge and opposing counsel to forecast trial outcomes and litigation costs. Today, however, technology that leverages legal data is moving the practice of law into the shadow of the trends and patterns apparent in aggregated litigation data. This Article describes the tools that facilitate this paradigm shift and examines how lawyers use these tools to forecast litigation outcomes and reduce Coasean bargaining costs in both litigation and transactional fields. This Article also explores some of the risks associated with bargaining in the shadow of big data, and it offers guidance to lawyers leveraging these tools to improve their practice. This discussion pushes beyond the cartoonish image of big data as a mechanical fortuneteller--predicting who will win or lose a case, supposedly eliminating research or deliberation. This Article also debunks the alarmist clichés about newfangled technologies eliminating jobs. Demand for lawyers who are capable of effective bargaining when confronted by big data will continue to increase as the legal profession catches up to the data-centric approach found in other industries. Ultimately, this Article paints a portrait of what big data really means for practicing attorneys, and it provides a framework for exploring the theoretical implications of lawyering in the era of information analytics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Confidentiality rules enjoy a sacrosanct place in the ethical codes for lawyers. The conventional wisdom is that strict confidentiality rules are necessary to foster client-lawyer communication, thereby providing lawyers with information they need for effective representation. Yet this premise is demonstrably false -- clients withhold information or lie to their lawyers, despite the rules. Using analytical tools from economics, including the Coase Theorem, this Article goes beyond previous piecemeal criticisms of the rules to analyze the social costs -- and oversold benefits -- of the ethical rules that compel lawyers to conceal client secrets, and finds that the rules do more harm than good. The social costs imposed by confidentiality rules are significant -- direct externalities, lemons effects, and increased transaction costs. Perhaps most disturbingly, the rules facilitate wrongful convictions of innocent third parties, and allow physical injuries to occur unchecked. The current rules also undermine public trust in the legal system and diminish transparency and cooperation in society. In relation to the other ethical rules, confidentiality rules strain against rules designed to foster candor, fairness, and integrity. At the same time, the purported benefits of the rules merely duplicate the protections of clients provided by existing evidentiary doctrines and privileges, rules addressing conflicts of interest, and well-functioning market mechanisms. The Article provides specific normative proposals for revising or repealing the rules, and offers suggestions for lawyers to facilitate more disclosure in practice. The conclusion challenges other writers to answer the foregoing arguments with objective evidence (not mere anecdote), and to justify the rules in the face of these obvious externalities and social costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the challenges of codification of law in the U.S along with its effects on legislatures. Topics discussed include the history of U.S. codification, the changes brought by codification to court by changing the way of judges' interpretation of statutes, and the problem of over criminalization fostered by codification. It mentions the U.S Supreme Court decisions in case Citizens United v. F.E.C and legislators' transaction costs.

The article discusses judicial deference to the legislative branch in cases involving constitutional analysis in North Carolina as of September 2012, focusing on concerns regarding federalism and the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in relation to state actions. The Supreme Court of North Carolina case Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, which deals with consent to search under the state's General Statutes, is also addressed. The legal theory of informed consent is also examined.

An essay is presented which focuses on the Coase theorem, which analyzes the impact and factors involved in jury selection procedures. It discusses the ineffectiveness in policy objectives and the defendants' ability to have jurors to analyze the choice of peremptory strikes. It provides information on the isolation of the Batson rule for preventing illegal discrimination from the rules governing jury selection, based on the U.S. Supreme Court case Batson v. Kentucky.

The article discusses various jury systems and the concept of uncertainty, focusing on the U.S. jury system in 2012 and the ancient Greek system, as well as jury selection processes and the fairness of jury verdicts. It states that the Greek system was designed to ensure a fair representation of the Greek community. In the U.S. system, juries tend to be more unpredictable than their ancient Greek counterparts. The ancient Greek system reportedly forbade the use of jury deliberations.

IOLTA (Interest on Lawyers' Trust Accounts) is a popular mechanism for funding legal services for the poor, and such programs now operate in every state. IOLTA programs suffer from badly depleted resources due to the current financial environment, causing painful cutbacks at the nonprofit legal aid entities that depend on IOLTA for their operating expenses. This shortfall casts doubt on the wisdom of widespread dependence on IOLTA. The previous academic literature about IOLTA focused on input-side issues: the original owners' property rights in the interest taken to fund the programs, the compliance of lawyers with the program's requirements, and the role of banks as intermediaries. Instead, this Article focuses on the output side, analyzing some unconsidered consequences of IOLTA programs. This Article analyzes five previously ignored policy concerns about IOLTA: crowding out effects, monopoly and monopsony effects, agency problems, and moral hazard problems. Finally, the Article offers some modest policy reforms in response to these issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes several trends in entrapment law and its functions in the legal setting as of April 2005. Description of traditional entrapment rules; Comparison of sentencing entrapment and entrapment by estoppel; Significance of Internet-entrapment in reducing the search and transaction costs for sexual predation on minors.

Analyzes privatized welfare services from the standpoint of the nondelegation doctrine in constitutional law and economic incentive theories in the U.S. Special constitutional concerns for the courts presented by delegations of governmental power to administrative agencies; Controversial issues raised by the relatively new practice of making governmental delegations via commercial contracts with private vendors; Caution recommended in pursuing public-private partnerships for the administration of welfare services.