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University of Michigan Law School

Michigan Law Review Online

Constitutional interpretation

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Segregation In The Galleries: A Reconsideration, Richard Primus Feb 2020

Segregation In The Galleries: A Reconsideration, Richard Primus

Michigan Law Review Online

When constitutional lawyers talk about the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment as applied to questions of race, they often men-tion that the spectators’ galleries in Congress were racially segregated when Congress debated the Amendment.1 If the Thirty-Ninth Congress practiced racial segregation, the thinking goes, then it probably did not mean to prohibit racial segregation.2 As an argument about constitutional interpretation, this line of thinking has both strengths and weaknesses. But this brief Essay is not about the interpretive consequences, if any, of segregation in the congressional galleries during the 1860s. It is about the factual claim that the galleries …


Gun Safety In The Age Of Kavanaugh, Joseph S. Hartunian Apr 2019

Gun Safety In The Age Of Kavanaugh, Joseph S. Hartunian

Michigan Law Review Online

This Essay takes stock of the different approaches adopted and advocated for in evaluating constitutional challenges in Second Amendment opinions throughout the country. The author’s hope is that doing so will help highlight the contours for debate when the Supreme Court does finally start to define some of the limits purported to exist by Justice Scalia. Part I analyzes the paths explicitly rejected by Heller I by reviewing the limits considered allowable by Justice Scalia. Part II considers the ongoing debate between the courts on the application of “strict” or “intermediate” scrutiny for Second Amendment challenges. Part III examines then-Judge …