08 Nov Opinio Juris Podcast on Arguments in Bond v. United States
08.11.13
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3 Comments
Peggy, Julian, Duncan and I took a stab at a podcast discussion of Tuesday’s Supreme Court arguments in Bond v. United States.
You can now find an audio of the argument itself here. Mentioned in the course of the discussion are related posts by David Golove and Michael Ramsey here and here. The Nick Rosencranz Harvard Law Review article that has been a key point of attack is found here (Eric Posner’s brutal critique here). The excellent symposium volume on Missouri v. Holland put together by Peggy McGuinness in 2008 is found here.
We’ll hope to do this again in the future (but only if we can find some good theme music).
Thanks, guys. That was very interesting . . . and revealing. For the reasons I explained in my OJ post, and that Peggy recounted, I don’t think this prosecution was nearly as objectionable or as absurd as the common wisdom would have it — these chemicals weren’t available “over the counter,” and the case is a far, far cry from giving a dog some chocolate. (Indeed, change one or two facts — the baby and the friend die; or it’s sarin; or it’s these chemicals but they’re placed on a few Boston doorhandles — and all of a sudden federalism concerns appear to fall away on almost everyone’s reading, including Paul Clement’s.) Peggy was right on the money in explaining why the SG could not offer a limiting construction of the CWC at oral argument, even when prompted by Breyer to do so: What, exactly, should he have offered? It’s not an accident that none of you was able to come up with a line that would be acceptable — nor is it surprising that Paul Clement abandoned the ones he had offered (local v. nat’l; “warlike” v. nonwarlike) as soon as Justice Kagan raised the sarin hypothetical.… Read more »
Thanks. I would also just like to note that Bond and CATO picked the wrong case to fight for the 10th Amendment, because there are dozens of federal laws against tampering with mailboxes to protect federal mail carrier employees (see, e.g., http://about.usps.com/publications/pub278/welcome.htm ). Didn’t the prosecution just pick the wrong charge?
[…] of the law school’s Center for International and Comparative Law, participated in a podcast on United States v. Bond, which is currently before the United States Supreme Court. The Court […]