Telling Miller’s Tale: A Reply to David Yassky

A recent article by Professor David Yassky suggests that there is a segment of legal academia that dissents from the Standard model and has started to generate alternatives to the Standard Model. Denning and Reynolds critique that part of Yassky\u27s theory dismissing United States v. Miller as providing the basis for an individual rights interpretation of the Second Amendment

Heller\u27s Future in the Lower Courts

The Supreme Court\u27s recent decision in District of Columbia v. Heller not only established an individual right to gun ownership, but also overturned - by a 9-0 margin - lower-court caselaw based on a collective right interpretation of the Second Amendment. This article looks at how Heller is likely to fare in the lower courts, based on experience with other recent Supreme Court decisions, and incorporates new scholarship on decision rules and the so-called new doctrinalism

National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius: Five Takes

In National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, the Supreme Court found that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act-popularly known as Obamacare -was an unconstitutional assertion of Congress\u27 power to regulate commerce among the several states, but was nonetheless sustainable under Congress\u27 power to tax. This piece looks at some possible meanings and implications of the Supreme Court\u27s decision. Takes One and Two analogize Sebelius and two other famous cases-Marbury v. Madison and Regents of the University of California v. Bakke-whose opinions are held out as deftly straddling the line between principle and prudence. Takes Three and Four examine the opinion though the lens of constitutional theory, considering in particular whether the decision-Chief Justice John Roberts\u27 opinion especiallyserved what Charles Black called the Court\u27s legitimating function: quelling doubts about the Act\u27s constitutionality and, thus, its legitimacy. Finally, in Take Five, this piece considers whether the opinion\u27s peculiar construction handed the Administration a somewhat Pyrrhic victory while laying the foundation for robust judicially enforced limits on congressional power

Retconning Heller: Five Takes on New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen

New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen was the first significant Second Amendment case that the Supreme Court had heard in nearly fifteen years since its decision in District of Columbia v. Heller. This Article offers some preliminary observations about the opinion itself, as well as its likely effects, some of which are starting to manifest. Our first take concerns the question of opinion assignment. Why did Chief Justice Roberts—whose support for the Second Amendment has been suspect—assign the opinion to Justice Thomas? Takes Two and Three concern Justice Thomas’s substitution of text, history, and tradition for tiered security, and his call for courts to adopt analogical reasoning should the former fail to provide answers to resolve particular cases. In rejecting tiered scrutiny, Thomas argued that the lower courts had misread the Heller decision itself; that Heller rejected tiered security in favor of a textual, historical, and traditional inquiry. To make Bruen seem less like an abrupt departure, we argue, Justice Thomas had to “retcon” Heller—reading back into the latter decision the analytical framework adopted in Bruen. We also question how helpful his explanation of the method for analogizing to other extant gun regulations when history and tradition have run out is likely to be to lower courts who must rehear cases involving dozens of these laws in light of Bruen’s new standard. Take Four wonders about the status of what we earlier termed “the Heller safe harbor”—the list of “presumptively lawful” regulations that the Court said were not called into question by the decision. Critics at the time questioned whether these could be squared with the self-conscious originalism of the rest of the opinion. This tension is only heightened by Bruen’s text-history-tradition only approach. Finally, we look at the reaction of the lower courts post-Bruen. While approaches differ, a surprising number of these opinions seem to recognize Bruen for the sea change it portends and are attempting to implement it in good faith. Although, as was true with cases like United States v. Lopez and Heller itself, some courts are also trying to avoid the wider implications of Bruen using any available argument, however specious, and we detect in some an “uncivil obedience” intended to raise the Supreme Court’s costs of holding the line laid down in Bruen

Wider Role for Our Miners in Africa

The Australian government is rapidly increasing aid to Africa. But the real story about the country\u27s engagement in Africa is the massive investment by Australian companies in extractive industries. More than 150 Australian resource companies are active in more than 40 African countries with a total investment greater than $20 billion, including in coal in Mozambique, copper and uranium in Zambia, gold in Eritrea and uranium in Malawi

Investing in Agriculture to End Hunger and Extreme Poverty

Lecture for International Affairs U6043 (Integrated Approaches to Development Practice), fall 2009

IPO Underpricing Firm Quality, and Subsequent Reissuance Activity

A signaling argument has recently been developed whereby IPO underpricing is a signal of future firm value. Only higher quality firms can be expected to recover the cost of this signal through subsequent offerings of seasoned equities. This study uses three proxies for firm quality and finds evidence of a positive relationship between these measures of firm quality and reissuance activity. Greater IPO underpricing is also found to be associated with greater levels of future equity selling and higher levels of earnings per share

Ten Forces Shaping the Global Food System

This chapter provides a general introduction to this book, and adumbrates many topics that are found in the following pages. It focuses on ten forces which have a pivotal influence on the global food system

Heller and Public Carry Restrictions

A discussion of how lower courts have applied Heller to various restrictions on the carrying of firearms in public places, with special attention given to the District of Columbia Circuit’s decision in Wrenn v. District of Columbia, the Ninth Circuit’s en banc decision in Peruta v. County of San Diego, and the Fourth Circuit’s decision in Woollard v. Gallagher