A UNC School of Government Blog
Jeff Welty 
Remember Britt v. State, 363 N.C. 546 (2009), in which the state supreme court ruled that a man with a single, non-violent felony conviction from 1979 had a state constitutional right to possess a firearm, making the felon-in-possession law, G.S. 14-415.1 unconstitutional as applied to him? I blogged about Britt here, but several years have … Read more
The lead story of the week – besides the beginning of the ACC tournament, naturally – is the introduction of S 306, a bill designed to break the logjam in the execution of death sentences by, among other things, addressing concerns about medical personnel participating in executions; allowing flexibility regarding the procedures for lethal injection; and … Read more
I’ve had several questions lately about driving slowly, so I took some time this weekend to add a section to my paper on traffic stops on the subject. The new section appears below as today’s blog post, and the complete updated paper is available here. Driving substantially under the posted speed limit is not itself … Read more
3-D printing is in the news this week. You know, 3-D printing, where a machine makes “a three-dimensional solid object of virtually any shape from a digital model . . . using an additive process, where successive layers of material [basically, melted plastic] are laid down in different shapes.” It is now possible to 3-D … Read more
Do law-abiding North Carolina residents have a right to carry a gun openly in public? Generally, yes. Federal constitutional right? The Supreme Court has recently ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms, including handguns, District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), and that it protects that right from … Read more
The federal government’s “sequester,” a package of across-the-board budget cuts, starts today. Federal criminal justice agencies like the Bureau of Prisons aren’t happy about it. As NPR summarizes, “[c]orrections officers in the federal prison system are bracing for possible staffing cuts and furloughs . . . at a time when . . . inmate crowding … Read more
Last week, a legislative committee at the General Assembly rejected a bill that would have permitted medicinal use of marijuana. The News and Observer covered the story here, and the bill itself is here. There doesn’t appear to be any chance that the legislature will follow Colorado and Washington and make recreational marijuana legal under … Read more
For the first time ever, the North Carolina Prosecutors’ Trial Manual is available to the general public for purchase from the School of Government bookstore. The brand-new Fifth Edition, completely revised by my colleague Bob Farb, is offered here in PDF format. It costs $175 and weighs in at over 950 pages, covering nearly every … Read more
Yesterday, the Supreme Court decided Florida v. Harris, holding that when a trained and certified drug dog alerts on a vehicle, that normally provides probable cause to search the car, even if there are no records proving that the dog has previously performed well at detecting drugs in the field. I mentioned Harris in my … Read more
In terms of having an impact on a large number of people, the biggest news of the week may be yesterday’s announcement by Transportation Secretary Tony Tata. He proclaimed that the DMV will follow the Attorney General’s advice and will issue driver’s licenses to young illegal immigrants who are protected from deportation under the Deferred … Read more