In response to the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, some legislatures are considering proposals to require all gun owners to purchase liability insurance. Although this idea is not without merit, a mandatory insurance regime could easily be designed (either deliberately or...

A distinguished federal appellate judge, J. Harvie Wilkinson III, has an exasperated message for constitutional theorists: A plague on all your houses! This short review demonstrates that Judge Wilkinson's proposed alternative to all constitutional theories, which he calls “judicial...

This short comment responds to Michael Stokes Paulsen's “The Uselessness of Constitutional Law.” Paulsen makes the provocative suggestion that Constitutional Law be removed from the required curriculum at every law school in the country, and offered only as a Great Books/Great Cases...

Reva B. Siegel and Joseph Blocher have focused attention on an underappreciated dimension of the debate about the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. They reject a narrow concept of “public safety” that evaluates regulations solely in terms of physical safety, without adequately...

Writing in the Virginia Law Review, a distinguished federal judge maintains that true conservatives are required to substitute principles of judicial restraint for an inquiry into the original meaning of the Constitution. Accordingly, argues J. Harvie Wilkinson, III, the Supreme Court's Second...

“Missouri Plan” judicial selection mechanisms, which many states have adopted, seek to ensure that judges are appointed on the basis of “merit” rather than “politics.” These devices typically feature a judicial nominating commission comprising some lawyers and some lay members. The...

<DIV>This interdisciplinary review series provides an economic analysis of cases decided by the United States Supreme Court, the implicit or explicit economic reasoning employed by the Court, and the economic consequences of the Court's decisions. <BR>

<DIV>This interdisciplinary review series provides an economic analysis of <BR>the situations and events that generate a case or group of cases decided <BR>by the United States Supreme Court, the implicit or explicit economic <BR>reasoning employed by the Court to reach its decisions, and the economic...</div>

Until recently, the federal courts agreed that the Second Amendment protects the interest of states in maintaining their own militias. In United States v. Emerson, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit rejected this consensus, and held that the Constitution protects a right of private...