The Firearm-Disability Dilemma: Property Insights into Felon Gun Rights

Judge Paul Matey's recent concurrence in Range v. Attorney General, decided en banc by the Third Circuit, stands out for its adoption of a “classical legal” approach to the Second Amendment based in natural law. Judge Matey goes beyond his colleagues’ focus on history to examine what he calls classical legal principles, gleaned from the ancient Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero, Roman law, and the writings of Aquinas.

This Essay is among the first to critically analyze a form of common good constitutionalism in judicial practice. It takes a critical view of the opinion and its method and argues that—regardless of whether one is persuaded by the concurrence's common-good theory as a substantive account of our constitutional law—the opinion's reliance on natural-law principles is unjustified and undesirable as a method of adjudication. Specifically, the Essay argues that the concurrence's method departs from precedent without justification; suffers from significant practical problems in attempting to use ancient sources; and produces highly abstract natural-law principles that fail to resolve close constitutional cases, leading to decision by ipse dixit.

This Comment creates the first comprehensive taxonomy of state eminent domain regimes’ treatment of private-to-private takings for the purpose of preventing future blight. Following the Supreme Court’s expansion of the Public Use Clause, many states moved to limit takings justified solely by economic development, yet maintained broad blight statutes that continued to authorize the condemnation of property to eliminate or prevent blight. The Comment exposes the indeterminate contours of the future-blight takings landscape, urging legislatures and courts seeking to cabin sweeping public use determinations to find the prevention of future blight an invalid public use.

Each year, more than half of criminal defendants subject to the career offender sentencing enhancement are those with prior drug convictions. Because the goal of the Sentencing Guidelines is to “inject transparency, consistency, and fairness” into federal sentencing, clarity on how courts should assess decriminalized drug offenses as § 4B1.1 predicates is needed to restore uniformity to the system and satisfy the Guidelines’ original goals. This Essay calls upon the Sentencing Commission to clarify its intent, place time limits on decriminalized drug predicates for § 4B1.1, and restore greater uniformity to the system.