Freespace

To the person sitting in darkness

A very touching, very real, and very true post on suicidal thoughts.

How sad for Walter Koenig and his family.

D.C. bound

Early tomorrow morning I shall be exercising one of the few rights that the Slaughter-House Court recognized as protected by the privileges or immunities clause--I will be traveling to Washington, D.C., where I will be attending the oral argument in McDonald v. Chicago. That's on Tuesday.

On Monday, I'll be speaking about the case at the Cato Institute, and you can watch that talk live on CSPAN at 4 pm Eastern time. I believe the video will also be carried live on Cato's website.

On Wednesday I'll be speaking at a Capitol Hill briefing for Congressmen and their staffs, about McDonald and its possible effects on federalism and other matters.

Then on Thursday I'll be addressing the Congressional Western Caucus on the subject of property rights five years after Kelo.

Public service announcement

"Alright" is not a word. The term is written "all right." That is all.

Saturday cat

Privileges, Immunities, and Substantive Due Process

I've posted the latest revisions to my article, Privileges, Immunities, And Substantive Due Process on SSRN.

Revenge of the sidekick

[Originally posted on Positive Liberty on Aug 17th 2005 08:18 pm]

Revive 'privileges or immunities'

The National Law Journal has published my editorial on McDonald v. Chicago, just in time for the oral arguments on Tuesday. Excerpt:

One of the biggest cases the U.S. Supreme Court will decide this year involves the right to bear arms. But in the long run, its decision in McDonald v. Chicago may be far more important to America's entrepreneurs. It all depends on whether the justices decide to revive a constitutional provision it has neglected for more than a century.

When it was ratified in 1868, the 14th Amendment added several revolutionary new provisions to the Constitution, barring states from violating the "privileges or immunities" of citizens, or taking anyone's life, liberty or property without "due process of law," or depriving people of the "equal protection of the laws." But the first time it heard a case under that amendment — in the 1873 Slaughterhouse Cases — the Supreme Court basically erased the privileges or immunities clause, dramatically limiting the way the federal government would protect people against wrongful acts by state officials.

That case began when Louisiana passed a law forbidding butchers from slaughtering cattle anywhere in New Orleans except a single, privately owned facility. The beef industry was big business in New Orleans, and the new law put hundreds of butchers out of business overnight. The butchers sued, arguing that the law violated their right to earn a living without unreasonable government interference. Judges had recognized that right as far back as 1602, when England's highest court declared government-created monopolies illegal under the Magna Carta. The right to earn an honest living came to be recognized as one of the fundamental rights — or "privileges and immunities" — in the common law.

Yet in Slaughterhouse, the Court ruled against the butchers, holding, 5-4, that despite the new amendment's language, federal courts would not guarantee traditional rights against interference by states. With only minor exceptions, the Court declared, those rights were "left to the State governments for security and protection."

Read the rest.

Friday poem

My Fairy
by Lewis Carroll

I have a fairy by my side 
Which says I must not sleep; 
When once in pain I loudly cried 
It said "You must not weep." 
If, full of mirth, I smile and grin, 
It says "You must not laugh." 
When once I wished to drink some gin
It said "You must not quaff."

When once a meal I wished to taste
It said "You must not bite"
When to the wars I went in haste
It said "You must not fight."

"What may I do?" at length I cried, 
Tired of the painful task. 
The fairy quietly replied, 
And said "You must not ask."

Moral: "You mustn't."

California: no cursing next week

The California Assembly has passed a resultion calling for a curse-free week next week. I wish politicians would spend all their time doing relatively harmless stuff like this.

When the press used to press

Instapundit pointed to this cool old video of how books used to be made. Amazing anything ever got printed this way. (And a simple Google Books search turned up an interesting detail, mentioned in the comments.)