Associate Dean Amar Comments on Appeals Court Ruling for NY Times
Associate Dean Vikram Amar commented on a recent federal appeals court decision regarding the Second Amendment for the New York Times.
The United States Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit last week ordered a rehearing of an earlier decision by a three-judge panel in Nordyke v. King, a California case involving a local ordinance banning firearms at a public fairground. In April, the panel upheld the ordinance but held that Second Amendment protections applied. Two other circuits, ruling on similar cases, declined to apply the amendment, and the conflict between circuit rulings has been widely seen as inviting Supreme Court review.
Associate Dean Amar commented that the decision suggests that the majority of judges of the circuit might believe the panel decision was wrong and noted that the Ninth Circuit is viewed as having the highest Supreme Court reversal rate among circuit courts. "They've got enough problems with the perception that they're out on a limb too frequently" without risking another case in which they are told they did wrong, he said.
Vikram Amar, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor of Law with the UC Davis School of Law, is a national authority in the fields of constitutional law, civil procedure, criminal procedure, and remedies. His biweekly column for FindLaw.com, the leading provider of online legal information, centers on his expertise in constitutional law.