Guns on Campus: Surveying a rugged post-Heller/ McDonald landscape

2013 ◽  
Vol 45 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 77-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leif Magne Lervik

In June 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees an individual the right to keep and bear arms. Two years later, this decision was also made applicable to state and local governments. Today, seven U.S. states have provisions allowing the carrying of concealed weapons on their public senior high school campuses. This article, introduced by a brief comment on the Second Amendment’s legal and academic history, traces several recent developments of legal change. It discusses relevant arguments and attitudes towards guns on campus, and explores issues of future concern for public colleges and universities within the realm of firearms and campus safety.

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 595-607
Author(s):  
David T. Konig

The controversy surrounding the Second Amendment—“the right of the people to keep and bear arms”—is, to a large extent, historical in nature, redolent of other matters in this country’s legal and constitutional past. But the historical analogies that might support the Amendment’s repeal do not permit easy conclusions. The issue demands that legal historians venture beyond familiar territory to confront unavoidable problems at the intersection of theory and practice and of constitutional law and popular constitutionalism. An interdisciplinary analysis of Lichtman’s Repeal the Second Amendment illuminates the political, legal, and constitutional dimensions—as well as the perils—of undertaking the arduous amending process permitted by Article V of the U.S. Constitution.


1997 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Troy D. Abel ◽  
J. Thomas Hennessey

Since 1970, much of state and local activity in environmental protection involved implementing or enforcing national mandates. Recent developments in the United States suggest that some subnational jurisdictions have taken and are taking significant steps to address local environmental problems within, and beyond, national mandates. This suggests that there may be opportunities for state and local governments to address emerging local environmental policy issues. With any opportunity to address emerging local environmental policy issues is the question, Can state and local governments effectively implement new strategies to address emerging environmental issues? This article examines two cases where state and local governments have taken and are taking a prominent role in addressing water quality problems. The cases, although different in time and focus, argue that state and local governments can, and have, provided leadership on such issues. Much of the early effort to push for national environmental mandates was based on the assumption that state and local governments were incapable of addressing the environmental challenges facing them. The two cases presented in this article suggest that more than national mandates are required to overcome local limits. Among the required components for successful state and local government efforts suggested by these cases are experimentation, innovative combinations of public and private organizations at the local and state levels, and flexible federal support for local action.


2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-171
Author(s):  
Kenneth C. Topping ◽  

The U.S. Congress passed the Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000 (DMA 2000) which requires adoption of multihazard mitigation plans as a precondition of local government eligibility for federal pre-disaster and postdisaster hazard mitigation grants. Its underlying purpose was to encourage local governments to systematically plan for reducing risks and future disaster losses before requesting federal grants to execute hazard mitigation projects. This paper examines the DMA 2000 legislation, its purposes, and the responses to it by state and local governments. Among other things the paper: 1) describes DMA 2000 statutory requirements, 2) assesses overall participation by region, 3) uses the State of California as a case study to examines hazard mitigation plan compliance issues, and 4) explores long-term implications of this broad national effort to use financial incentives to increase local resilience. By early 2009, 18,783 locally adopted hazard mitigation plans had been approved by FEMA. Although community resilience outcomes cannot be truly assessed without further research, the magnitude of this response implies substantial long-term local capacity building benefits within the U.S. This experience should also be the subject of comparative research regarding parallel efforts elsewhere.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Lee ◽  
Dominik Stecula

While the U.S. Congress has repeatedly failed to pass national legislation to address climate change over the years, there has been much more progress among state and local governments. But is this progress on climate change policy at the subnational level merely a reflection of the dominance of the Democratic party in certain regions of the country, or does it reflect successful bipartisan action? In this essay, we present novel evidence from two surveys of subnational policymakers, conducted in 2015 and 2017, to demonstrate that there is widespread bipartisan agreement among Republican and Democrat policymakers at the subnational level about (1) the existence of global warming and (2) what to do about it. Specifically, a majority in both parties believe global warming is happening and support the use of renewable energy mandates—rather than cap-and-trade, carbon tax, or emissions standards—to address the problem.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 127-133
Author(s):  
Olena Zelenko ◽  
Liudmyla Denyshchenko

The purpose of this study is to determine the peculiarities of the development of local budgets in Ukraine in the frame of decentralization reform in the context of established trends in local budgeting in other countries. The research methodology is based on the theory of financial globalization and involves methods of dialectics, methods and principles of scientific knowledge, tools of analysis and synthesis, expert evaluation, generalization and analogy. As a result of the research, the foreign experience of forming local budgets is highlighted and the peculiarities of this process in different countries of the world are determined; a review of existing publications and an analysis of the dynamics of the structure of local budgets and Ukraine are done; qualitative characteristic of the current situation and recommendations for further development of the local budgeting process in Ukraine in the current conditions of globalization are provided. Among the main recommendations for increasing the revenue part of local budgets there are the following: creation of additional conditions by the state and local governments to improve the business climate in communities; inventory and arrangement of community land funds; creation and arrangement of the real estate register; audit of the communal enterprises activities of the community in order to find additional opportunities to increase the efficiency of their activities; support and motivation of local business for further activity and development; intensification of the centers of administrative services and search for opportunities which will improve the provision of paid services of any complexity in the short term; promoting the development of domestic tourism. The practical value of the results of this research is that the proposed recommendations are general, relevant and can be used for all territorial communities of Ukraine with no exception. The analysis of trends in the context of local budgeting development processes in other countries and the current situation regarding decentralization reform allowed us to conclude that Ukraine has chosen the right direction, which has a positive impact on the financial capacity of local communities. Ukraine’s path towards transforming the role of local budgets, despite the similarity of the general features of local budget restructuring, should be unique. The implementation of the presented proposals will contribute to the successful completion of the decentralization reform and the full implementation of the role of local budgets – ensuring sustainable financial capacity and meeting all the needs of the inhabitants of a particular area.


Author(s):  
Mark J. Rozell ◽  
Clyde Wilcox

“Fiscal federalism” describes how during the early decades of the republic, Congress gave states money to help pay for new roads and canals, to support their militia, and to build colleges and universities. But the system of granting money to the states grew in the twentieth century, especially after the Sixteenth Amendment gave the national government the right to impose an income tax in 1913. The chapter discusses the federal grants program, which now provides about 30 percent of the average operating revenues of state and local governments. It also considers how the national government uses mandates to influence state policymaking, how states raise revenue through taxation, and the differences in state spending programs.


2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-136
Author(s):  
Izabela Kraśnicka

Abstract The original text of the Constitution of the United States of America, written over 200 years ago, constitutes the supreme source of law in the American legal system. The seven articles and twenty seven amendments dictate understanding of fundamental principles of the federation’s functioning and its citizens’ rights. The paper aims to present the evolution of the U.S. Constitution’s language interpretation as provided by its final interpreter - the Supreme Court of the United States. Example of the Second Amendment will be analyzed to present the change in understanding of the language grammar and, as a consequence, the sense of the right to keep and bear arms in the light of the Supreme Court’s decision in the case of District of Columbia v Heller (554 U.S. 570 (2008)). It will argue for the accuracy of statement of Charles Evans Hughes, former Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court: “We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is...”


2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (S1) ◽  
pp. 84-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon S. Vernick

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Until recently, no federal appellate court had ever struck down any gun law as a violation of the Second Amendment. In fact, even laws outlawing most handgun possession, or restricting other types of firearms, had been upheld, in part, because the laws did not interfere with the functioning of state militias.Then, in 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court — for the first time in nearly 70 years — decided a case squarely addressing the meaning of the Second Amendment. In District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court concluded that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to own handguns in the home, invalidating a Washington, D.C. law.But Heller left many issues undecided, including the precise scope of the Second Amendment.


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 428-456
Author(s):  
Sarena Goodman ◽  
Alice Henriques Volz

Between 2000 and 2010, U.S. public colleges and universities experienced widespread and uneven changes in funding from state and local appropriations. We find that over this period annual decreases in statewide appropriations led to lower public enrollment and higher for-profit enrollment (with no effect on enrollment overall), as well as increased student borrowing. In an analysis of mechanisms, we detect effects on spending, tuition, and capacity in the public sector. Altogether, the results reveal that core institutional resources affect the types of schools that students attend and yield new evidence of substitution between the public and for-profit sectors.


Author(s):  
Robert Inman ◽  
Daniel L. Rubinfeld

Around the world, federalism has emerged as the system of choice for nascent republics and established nations alike. This book considers the most promising forms of federal governance and the most effective path to enacting federal policies. The result is an essential guide to federalism, its principles, its applications, and its potential to enhance democratic governance. The book assess different models of federalism and their relative abilities to promote economic efficiency, encourage the participation of citizens, and protect individual liberties. Under the right conditions, the book argues, a federal democracy—including a national legislature with locally elected representatives—can best achieve these goals. Because a stable union between the national and local governments is key, the book also proposes an innovative method for evaluating new federal laws and their possible impact on state and local governments. Finally, to show what the adoption of federalism can mean for citizens, the book discusses the evolution of governance in the European Union and South Africa's transition from apartheid to a multiracial democracy. Interdisciplinary in approach, the book brims with applicable policy ideas and comparative case studies of global significance.


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