Category Archives: District of Columbia v. Heller

Supreme Court To Consider D.C. Gun Ban Appeal Request Nov. 9th

SCOTUSBlog reports that the Supreme Court will consider the Writ Of Certiorari in the two cases appealing last year’s decision overturning Washington, D.C.’s handgun ban on November 9th:

The Supreme Court will consider two petitions growing out of the Second Amendment dispute over a District of Columbia ban on private possession of handguns at its Conference on Nov. 9, according to the Court’s electronic docket on Wednesday.

The two cases are the city’s appeal — District of Columbia v. Heller (07-290) — challenging a D.C. Circuit Court ruling last March striking down the handgun ban under the Second Amendment, and a cross-petition by five city residents — Parker v. District of Columbia (07-335) — seeking to join in the case to add their own legal complaints about the city gun control law.

Because the two sides have framed the Second Amendment question in different ways in their papers in 07-290, it is conceivable that, should the Court grant review, it might choose to rephrase the issue itself.

If the requests for appeal are granted in either case, the earliest argument would be heard is February or March, with a decision coming sometime before the Court’s term ends in June 2008.

Washington, D.C. Files It’s Appeal In Parker v. D.C.

The District Of Columbia today formally set forth the legal basis for it’s petition for an appeal of the decision earlier this year that struck down a decades-old gun ban as unconstitutional:

The District today asked the Supreme Court to uphold the city’s ban on private ownership of handguns, saying the appeals court decision that overturned the law “drastically departs from the mainstream of American jurisprudence.”

Most legal experts believe the court will accept the case, which could lead to a historic decision next year on whether the ambiguously worded Second Amendment to the Constitution protects private gun ownership or only imparts a civic right related to maintaining state militias.

The District argues in its petition for review that its law–one of the toughest handgun bans in the nation–should be upheld regardless of whether the court sides with the so-called “individualist” or “collective” legal theories.

“It is eminently reasonable to permit private ownership of other types of weapons, including shotguns and rifles, but ban the easily concealed and uniquely dangerous modern handgun,” states the petition, filed by District Attorney General Linda Singer. It adds: “Whatever right the Second Amendment guarantees, it does not require the District to stand by while its citizens die.”

“We’re going to fight to uphold a law that . . . has public support,” Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) said at a news conference outside D.C. police headquarters. “The only possible outcome of more handguns in the home is more violence. Our appeal will help the District of Columbia be able to continue to reduce gun violence.”

Because, you know, there’s been so much less gun violence in the District of Columbia in the thirty years that the handgun ban has been in effect.

Oh, never mind.

Parker v. District Of Columbia Headed To The Supreme Court

Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty announced today that the city will appeal the Appeals Court decision in Parker v. District of Columbia, which struck down the city’s gun control law:

D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty announced today that the city will appeal to the Supreme Court to uphold a long-time ban on handguns that was overturned by a lower court in March.

“We have made the determination that this law can and should be defended,” Fenty said in a statement.

In a 2-1 decision, a panel of judges for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit found in March that the city’s prohibition against residents keeping handguns in their homes is unconstitutional. The panel’s decision was upheld by the full court in May.

The Supreme Court could, of course, decline to hear the appeal but that seems unlikely given the breadth of the Parker decision and the fact that a split exists in the Circuit on whether the Second Amendment grants an individual or collective right to keep and bear arms.

D.C. Appeals Court Refuses To Rehear Gun Ban Case

The District of Columbia Court of Appeals has refused to revisit the decision of a three-judge panel in Parker v. District of Columbia, the case that struck down the District of Columbia’s gun ban:

A federal appeals court in Washington yesterday let stand a ruling that struck down a restrictive D.C. ban on gun ownership, setting the stage for a potentially major constitutional battle over the Second Amendment in the Supreme Court.

D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty said at a news conference that he was “deeply disappointed” by the court’s decision not to reconsider the city’s arguments that the three-decades-old gun ban was constitutional. Fenty (D) said the city will now mull over whether to take the risk of pressing to defend the D.C. gun law before the Supreme Court or to rewrite gun regulations for keeping guns in private District homes.

(…)

Fenty and other officials had asked the full appeals court to review a ruling issued by a three-judge panel that struck down a part of the D.C. law that bars people from keeping handguns in homes. With its 6 to 4 vote to reject a hearing by the full court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit sped up the timetable for a showdown. Experts said that timetable favors gun rights advocates and the D.C. residents who first challenged the law.

As I’ve said before, taking this to the Supreme Court does have risks for both sides, but the consequences of a victory for gun rights at that level would be felt around the nation.

How Liberal Law Professors Saved The Second Amendment

The New York Times has an interesting article about how a shift in views on the Second Amendment by leading law professors normally associated with the left led to the case that could transform the debate over gun control:

In March, for the first time in the nation’s history, a federal appeals court struck down a gun control law on Second Amendment grounds. Only a few decades ago, the decision would have been unimaginable.

There used to be an almost complete scholarly and judicial consensus that the Second Amendment protects only a collective right of the states to maintain militias. That consensus no longer exists – thanks largely to the work over the last 20 years of several leading liberal law professors, who have come to embrace the view that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own guns.

In those two decades, breakneck speed by the standards of constitutional law, they have helped to reshape the debate over gun rights in the United States. Their work culminated in the March decision, Parker v. District of Columbia, and it will doubtless play a major role should the case reach the United States Supreme Court.

The article goes on the profile two legal scholars, Laurence Tribe from Harvard and Sanford Levinson from the University of Texas, who have abandoned their previous view that the Second Amendment protects only a “collective” right:

If only as a matter of consistency, Professor Levinson continued, liberals who favor expansive interpretations of other amendments in the Bill of Rights, like those protecting free speech and the rights of criminal defendants, should also embrace a broad reading of the Second Amendment. And just as the First Amendment’s protection of the right to free speech is not absolute, the professors say, the Second Amendment’s protection of the right to keep and bear arms may be limited by the government, though only for good reason.

And it was this shift in consensus that led to cases such as Parker v. District of Columbia:

Robert A. Levy, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian group that supports gun rights, and a lawyer for the plaintiffs in the Parker case, said four factors accounted for the success of the suit. The first, Mr. Levy said, was “the shift in scholarship toward an individual rights view, particularly from liberals.”

In other words, ideas have consequences.

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