A UNC School of Government Blog
I’ve blogged previously about the Britt and Whitaker cases. Britt held that a particular convicted felon retained his right to bear arms under the state constitution, and that G.S. 14-415.1 — which purports to prohibit all felons from possessing firearms — was unconstitutional as applied to him. Whitaker rejected a similar claim made by another … Read more
The Supreme Court just finished the Term that began in October 2009, and it went out with a bang. On Monday, it announced what was perhaps the most-anticipated opinion of the year, McDonald v. City of Chicago. The genesis for McDonald was District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. __ (2008), the case in which … Read more
A divided court of appeals decided another significant gun case this week. But before I talk about the opinion in State v. Whitaker, I’ll briefly summarize the legal backdrop for the case. In June 2008, the United States Supreme Court decided District of Columbia v. Heller, holding that the Second Amendment protects an individual right … Read more
We’ve seen several significant cases concerning gun laws in the past few years. The two biggest, of course, are District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. ___ (2008), in which the United States Supreme Court struck down the District of Columbia’s ban on handgun possession as inconsistent with the Second Amendment, and Britt v. North … Read more
Several recent news stories that may be of interest: 1. Governor Perdue just signed S 920, which makes substantial changes to the probation laws. For example, it requires all probationers to submit to warrantless searches by probation officers, and to a lesser degree, by law enforcement officers. It also clarifies the tolling provisions of the … Read more