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Today in Supreme Court History: June 29, 1992

2026-06-29T09:29:29.585-04:00

By Josh Blackman - June 29, 2026 at 07:00AM

6/29/1992: Planned Parenthood v. Casey is decided.

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Local Officials Vow To Shield the Public from Virginia's Authoritarian New Gun Laws

2026-06-29T06:29:43.720-04:00

By J.D. Tuccille - June 29, 2026 at 04:00AM

Everybody loves local control when they run towns and counties and their opponents hold federal or state offices. It works in reverse, too, with presidents and governors denouncing rebellious officials who won't follow dictates from the state or federal capital.

So it is in Virginia, where Democrats who dominate the state government are upset that local prosecutors and police decline to enforce new restrictive gun laws they justifiably view as unconstitutional and dangerous to their constituents' liberty.

Officials Refuse To Enforce 'Obviously Unconstitutional' Gun Ban

"The assault weapons ban and the public carry ban are obviously unconstitutional," Spotsylvania County Commonwealth's Attorney Ryan Mehaffey, a Republican, informed 7News earlier this month. "And it's incumbent upon constitutional officers in Virginia to come out and clearly state that they cannot be lawfully enforced, and to defend the people's rights to keep and bear arms."

Mehaffey has been joined by prosecutors from at least 15 other jurisdictions. On June 5, Hanover County Sheriff Gregory Six announced that he "shares many of the concerns that have been expressed regarding the constitutional implications of these laws" and that "the Hanover County Sheriff's Office will exercise its lawful discretion and will not pursue enforcement actions under these new laws while the courts consider the pending constitutional challenges."

These skeptics make a strong case. Last week, Lancaster County Circuit Judge John Martin issued a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the ban on so-called "assault weapons." He considers it likely the prohibition will be found in violation of state constitutional protections.

The list of new laws in question include the ban on the purchase, sale, manufacture, and transfer of "assault weapons"—popular semiautomatic firearms with certain largely cosmetic features that make them look scary to some people. They also include a ban on magazines capable of holding more than 15 rounds of ammunition (a problem when standard magazines for popular firearms like the Sig Sauer P365 Fuse hold 17 rounds or more). Other laws include impossible-to-enforce restrictions on home-built guns, increased liability for firearms makers, and enforcement-resistant background checks for private sales.

Basically, Democrats won the last election and immediately moved to implement their long-stymied gun control agenda in a state populated by people with widely divergent views and lifestyles. They're running up against a lack of cooperation from local officials who do most of the arresting and prosecuting.

Unsurprisingly, the politicians who pushed for the restrictive new laws that are set to take effect next month are unhappy that so many local officials disdain their legislative efforts.

"Commonwealth's Attorneys are elected to enforce our laws, which is what we expect them to do when these laws take effect on July 1," complained Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones.

Advocating Local Control or Centralized Power When They're Convenient

Ironically, as Gov. Abigail Spanberger pushed for the gun law package that's meeting resistance, she claimed that old cooperative agreements with the federal government "improperly cede accountability and discretion over Virginia law enforcement to the federal government by requiring that Virginia law enforcement agents work 'under the supervision or direction of' the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ('ICE')." She not only terminated those agreements but also advocated legislation that would limit federal immigration enforcement in the state.

Spanberger insists Virginia isn't becoming a "sanctuary state" that resists enforcement of federal immigration laws, but that's a distinction without a difference. Virginia's Democrat-dominated state government is unfriendly to the Republican Trump administration's migrant policies and plans to withhold assistance and place roadblocks in the way of enforcement. Localities within Virginia, such as Arlington, have already done the same.

Fundamentally, Virginia Democrats view federal immigration laws much the same way that Virginia Republicans see state gun laws: They're dangerous, illiberal, and should be resisted.

And yes, of course, the Trump administration has excoriated sanctuary jurisdictions.

"We are exposing these sanctuary politicians who harbor criminal illegal aliens and defy federal law," huffed Department of Homeland Security then-Secretary Kristi Noem last year in an expression of the sort of sentiment Virginia's Jones would undoubtedly endorse in a different context.

The Long History of Legal Local Resistance to Laws

Such confrontations have repeatedly played out across the country over guns, immigration, drugs, and more. During the 1920s, New York City and state officials withheld police cooperation in enforcing Prohibition. Later, many local prosecutors, including Norman Vroman, the onetime Libertarian district attorney of Mendocino County, California, refused to enforce marijuana laws. Sanctuary jurisdictions, as mentioned above, opt out of immigration enforcement. During the COVID-19 pandemic, county sheriffs in multiple states declined to arrest people for violating lockdowns and mask mandates. Second Amendment sanctuaries won't commit resources to enforcing gun laws they consider repugnant. The law is largely on the side of the rebels.

"Thanks to the Tenth Amendment, the federal government cannot force states to help them enforce federal law," George Mason University Law School's Ilya Somin wrote in 2016 about immigration.

Localities technically don't have the same constitutional protections against state mandates as states have against the whims of Washington, D.C. But as a practical matter, prosecutors, sheriffs, and police chiefs must prioritize the use of their personnel and resources and can drop the enforcement of laws they consider unconstitutional or immoral to the bottom of the list.

Importantly, local officials are likely to more closely represent local sentiment than their state and federal counterparts. They're elected to office by smaller, more cohesive communities and have a better handle on how constituents want to live and what laws and policies regarding guns or anything else they're willing to tolerate.

Ultimately, the most local authority is that which individuals exercise over their own lives. Just as sheriffs and prosecutors run interference against state officials who themselves intervene against the feds, so we all must decide how much meddling we're willing to tolerate from the various levels of government. Refusing to enforce or obey authoritarian laws isn't the only tool for defending liberty. But it is an effective and necessary check on power.

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Open Thread

2026-06-29T04:29:46.734-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - June 29, 2026 at 03:00AM

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The Gun That Won the Revolution

2026-06-28T10:29:49.308-04:00

By David Kopel - June 28, 2026 at 06:00AM

In a special America 250 issue, Reason takes a look back at our country's founding people and ideas. Read more here.

Joanna Andreasson

"No bigger than half a piece of soap" was how history remembered the diminutive James Madison, who weighed barely a hundred pounds. At 5 feet, 4 inches tall, he would later become the shortest American president ever. Yet firearms are the great equalizer, and in June 1775, two months after the American Revolution had begun, Madison had no doubt that he and his fellow Virginians could take out the British redcoats.

In a letter to Rhode Island patriot William Bradford, Madison wrote: "The strength of this Colony will lie chiefly in the rifle-men of the Upland Counties, of whom we shall have great numbers. You would be astonished at the perfection this art is brought to." The "most inexpert hands" could usually hit a man's head at 100 yards. Most Virginia riflemen could pick off enemy officers "before they get within 150 or 200 Yards," Madison noted. "Indeed I believe we have men that would very often hit such a mark 250 Yds. Our greatest apprehensions proceed from the scarcity of powder but a little will go a great way with such as use rifles."

Madison was right. Citizen expertise with the iconic American Long Rifle would change the course of the Revolution and secure a new nation stretching all the way to the Mississippi River. Later, when Madison was president, American marksmen with American Long Rifles would win America's smashing victory over the British at the 1815 Battle of New Orleans.

God and Guns

It is fitting that the First Amendment and the Second Amendment are adjacent: Both guarantee natural rights, and each amendment safeguards the other. So it is unsurprising that the story of America's greatest gun begins with religious freedom.

Founded in 1681 by the wealthy English Quaker William Penn, Pennsylvania was different from most other colonies: It had no government-established church supported by taxation and compulsory attendance. Instead, religious freedom was guaranteed for "all persons living in this province, who confess and acknowledge the one Almighty and eternal God." As long as persons would "live peaceably and justly in civil society," they would enjoy complete liberty "in matters of faith and worship," with no compulsion of any sort.

America was attracting skilled immigrant craftsmen, who could set up their own businesses and prosper, free of the extensive controls of guilds and government in their homelands. For Central Europeans—whose religious faiths were neither the established Church of England (most colonies) nor the Congregationalist offshoot of that church (most of New England)—Pennsylvania was especially attractive. When George Louis of Hanover, Germany, became King George I of Great Britain in 1714, many German-speaking gunsmiths decided the time was right to emigrate to America. These riflemakers from Germany and Switzerland usually settled around Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

There, they introduced a new type of firearm to British North America.

Ever since English immigration had begun in the early 17th century, almost all American guns had been smoothbores—that is, the interior of the barrel was smooth. Today, the most common smoothbores are shotguns. Smoothbores are well-suited for bird hunting but not for long-distance accuracy.

The German immigrants, however, were used to making rifles. In a rifle, spiral grooves (rifling) are cut in the bore. The grooves make the bullet spin on its horizontal axis, so the bullet's flight is more aerodynamically stable. Superior for long-range shooting, rifles had been well-established in the mountainous regions of southern Germany and northern Switzerland since the late 15th century. But rifles had not caught on in Great Britain or in the British colonies.

The Pennsylvania gunmakers initially produced the Jaeger model, which they had made in Central Europe. But it was very heavy to carry, the bullets were large and slow, and it required adjusting the rear sight to shoot at different distances.

Americans wanted a firearm suitable for an activity that did not take place in Germany or Switzerland: long hunting. Some of the first long hunters in America were the 17th century Finnish settlers of New Sweden (centered on the Delaware River). They were later copied by Scotch-Irish and German immigrants. Either alone or in groups, long hunters would spend days, weeks, months, or longer in the densely wooded interior. Hunting for themselves and trading with Indians, they would return with animal pelts for transatlantic export. The long hunting expeditions also scouted new areas for future settlement.

While the American colonies had originally been narrow strips huddled along the Atlantic coast, long hunting was the vanguard of westward American expansion toward the Appalachian Mountains and beyond.

The Impossible Rifle

As historian Robert Held explained in his book The Age of Firearms, "what Americans demanded of their gunsmiths seemed impossible": a rifle weighing 10 pounds or less, for which a month's ammunition would weigh 1–3 pounds, "with proportionately small quantities of powder," that was "easy to load," and had "such velocity and flat trajectories that one fixed rear sight would serve as well at fifty yards as at three hundred, the necessary but slight difference in elevation being supplied by the user's experience."

"By about 1735," Held added, "the impossible had taken shape" with the creation of a new type of rifle.

Some called it the "Pennsylvania rifle" because Pennsylvania was where it was made. Some called it the "Kentucky rifle" because Kentuckians were the most prominent early users. ("Kentucky" originally referred to an area extending from what is now southern Ohio and Indiana all the way to northern Tennessee.)

During the 1700s, riflemaking knowledge spread nationally, as apprentices who trained in Pennsylvania moved south and west. Today, their guns are called the American Long Rifle.

The American Long Rifle's barrel was longer than the Central European Jaeger's. The extra length improved balance and helped the user obtain a more accurate sight of a distant target.

While European rifles generally had a caliber (the interior bore diameter) of .60 or .75 inches, Americans preferred a smaller caliber—usually somewhere from .40 to .46, sometimes as low as .32. A smaller caliber meant smaller bullets. One pound of lead will make just 16 bullets for a .70 caliber gun but 46 bullets for a .45 caliber. With the smaller caliber, a person on a hunting expedition that might last for months could carry more ammunition.

The most accurate firearm in the world until the early 19th century, and not surpassed until the 1840s, the American Long Rifle was ideal for hunting mammals and for the irregular tactics of Indian-fighting. Indians preferred the rifle for the same reasons—it fit the forest.

Whether on hunting expeditions or in frontier cabins, riflemen were careful to learn the exact quantity of powder their rifle needed so that none was wasted. They adjusted the quantity as appropriate, such as adding more powder for an especially long shot. Long-distance shooting contests were major events in rural communities. Everyone was expected to be a master of precision.

In America, accurate shooting was not just for prestige; it was for dinner. For example, a shot to the center of a squirrel's body would ruin much of the meat. So Americans could "bark" a squirrel: A shot just under the tail would knock the squirrel off a tree branch, and the squirrel would fall to the ground intact. The American Long Rifle helped create the American "cult of accuracy," as Alexander Rose described in his book American Rifle: A Biography.

Excellent as the American Long Rifle was, it was not the most common firearm on the eve of the Revolution. More numerous by far were smoothbore muskets, which were simpler and less expensive to make, faster to reload, and sturdier. American muskets were usually based on British or French military designs and modified for American conditions, such as lighter weight to improve utility for hunting.

While American Long Rifles had spread all over the Middle and Southern Colonies, they were rare in New England—until the Revolution.

Rifles of the Revolution

On April 19, 1775, the British military garrison in Boston attempted to confiscate American arms and ammunition at Lexington and Concord. On the march back to Boston, the redcoats barely escaped annihilation by swarms of armed Americans. Now the British were besieged in Boston, surrounded by New England militia.

The Second Continental Congress, assembled in Philadelphia, created the Continental Army on June 14, 1775, a date now celebrated as the birthday of the U.S. Army. The Continental Army began with the New Englanders surrounding Boston, to be augmented by 10 companies of "expert riflemen"—six from Pennsylvania and two each from Maryland and Virginia. These riflemen astonished their New England cousins by picking off British officers, sentries, and other soldiers at distances over 200 yards. This bolstered American morale and demoralized the British.

During the Revolution, rifles were less important than muskets. One reason was reloading speed. At the time, all guns were muzzleloaders. The user would insert a spherical bullet in the front opening of the gun (the muzzle) and use a ramrod to shove the bullet all the way down to the base (breech) of the barrel, on top of the gunpowder charge. Rifle bullets needed a tight fit so that they could engage with the spiral rifling grooves, and forcing the bullet into the barrel therefore took longer.

Also, battles usually ended with hand-to-hand combat. Soldiers would stab and slash each other with bayonets attached to the ends of their muskets or use their muskets as clubs. American Long Rifles were too delicate for such usage. While all riflemen carried a tomahawk, a hatchet, or some other edged weapon, opponents who had bayonets at the ends of their muskets had a much longer reach.

Yet rifles changed the course of the Revolutionary War. The most decisive shot in the entire conflict came from a rifleman on October 7, 1777, at the Second Battle of Saratoga—the turning point of the Revolution. British forces marching down from Canada were attempting to seize the Hudson River Valley and isolate New England from her sister states. Boldly astride a gray horse, Brig. Gen. Simon Fraser was rallying, stabilizing, and encouraging the British troops at a critical point amid heavy fighting.

From the amazing distance of at least 300 yards, an American rifle bullet felled Fraser. This threw the British into panic, broke their offensive momentum, and contributed to the American victory that day. The British commander, Lt. Gen. John Burgoyne, attempted to lead a retreat, but he could not escape. Ten days later, and for the first time in history, an entire British army surrendered in the field.

When the French government learned about Saratoga, it opened negotiations with Benjamin Franklin to create the Franco-American alliance and bring France into the war on the American side.

Later, the British shifted to a southern campaign, hoping that Loyalists in the region would rise in their support. Three years to the day after Saratoga, on October 7, 1780, patriot militia with American Long Rifles crushed a large Loyalist militia at the Battle of Kings Mountain, near the North Carolina–South Carolina border. On that woody, rocky mountain, the Loyalists' muskets could not reach the patriot backwoodsmen. The patriot rifle shots from 200 yards or more annihilated the Loyalists and thereby impaired Loyalist recruitment.

A few months later, in 1781, the path to the final American triumph at Yorktown, Virginia, was laid by victory at Cowpens, South Carolina. Brig. Gen. Daniel Morgan put 150 American riflemen on an exposed front line. As the British approached, the riflemen picked off British officers from more than 200 yards away, far beyond the range of British muskets. When the British came closer, the riflemen retreated, seeming to flee. The British rushed to give chase, only to find themselves led into a trap and enveloped by hidden American forces.

For several years, the British had been willing to concede American independence—but only for lands between the Atlantic and the Appalachians. The Americans insisted on more: everything up to the Mississippi River. Throughout the Revolution, in the deep interior, the patriots and their Indian allies used their American Long Rifles to defeat the British and their Indian allies. The realities on the ground forced the British to surrender their claims to America's interior in the 1783 Treaty of Paris.

The Battle of New Orleans

The War of 1812 was sometimes called the Second War of Independence. For the Americans, the climax of the war came on January 8, 1815, at the Battle of New Orleans. The British forces at New Orleans were the best in the world, fresh from defeating Napoleon's forces in the Peninsular Campaign in Spain.

Although the war had formally ended with the December 24, 1814, Treaty of Ghent (Belgium), nobody in the Western Hemisphere knew. Had the British captured New Orleans, they might have kept it to strangle Western American commerce—just as they had illegally squatted in various Western forts they were supposed to evacuate after the Treaty of Paris. British Gen. Edward Pakenham had promised his soldiers "beauty and booty," meaning that they could rape the women and pillage the city.

Led by Gen. Andrew Jackson, the American forces were a combination of professional soldiers, militia, irregulars, free black people, white people, Creoles, Cajuns, Spaniards, Frenchmen, Portuguese, Germans, Italians, Indians, lawyers, privateers, farmers, and shopkeepers. Confronted by the best units of the best army in the world, the Americans brought their own guns because the federal government lacked the resources to supply them with standardized military weapons.

Although outnumbered, the Americans were still experienced hunters and skilled marksmen. Firing their American Long Rifles from improvised fortifications, they demolished the British while suffering hardly any casualties themselves.

The victory in the Battle of New Orleans became central to American patriotism. Until the Civil War, it was celebrated nearly as much as the Fourth of July.

Although artillery and muskets had contributed substantially to the New Orleans triumph, the rifles got top billing. "The Hunters of Kentucky" became the most popular song in the nation, exulting: "For Jackson he was wide awake, he was not scared of trifles. Full well he knew what aim we'd take with our Kentucky rifles." Americans believed that they were free because they were excellent marksmen.

From Our Cold, Dead Hands

When the American frontier later crossed the Mississippi River, the American Long Rifle did not come along. On the open plains, Americans needed a shorter rifle for use on horseback, and they needed a bigger bullet for larger game, such as bison.

Yet the American Long Rifle has never vanished from daily manufacture and use in America. John G.W. Dillin's 1924 book The Kentucky Rifle detailed how Appalachian gunsmiths were still manufacturing Kentucky rifles by hand. They were keeping alive a long American tradition of home manufacture—what Robert Held described as a time when a man "could build a rifle out of a maple tree and two bars of pig iron, as was expected of any Pennsylvania riflesmith about the time of Bunker Hill."

In 1954, Dixie Gun Works began producing build-at-home kits for modern replicas of Kentucky rifles and other historic muzzleloaders. Other companies have followed suit. Because the 1968 federal Gun Control Act does not apply to muzzleloading guns, the flintlock builder is free to give his gun to a friend or to sell it. Those kits initiated a continuing revival of muzzleloading. Many states now have special early hunting seasons for muzzleloaders.

Photo: Battle of Long Island on August 27, 1776; Domenick D'Andrea/National Guard Bureau

In 1955, Ohio gunsmith Cecil Brooks began what would become a half-century tradition. Every year at the National Rifle Association (NRA) Annual Members Banquet, he would present the speaker with a custom American Long Rifle that he had spent hundreds of hours building. Recipients included President Ronald Reagan, Vice President Dick Cheney, Sen. Barry Goldwater (R–Ariz.)—and, most famously, actor and future NRA President Charlton Heston.

Pro-gun bumper stickers had long said, "You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands." When Heston was presented with the rifle after concluding his speech, he raised it overhead with both arms and declared: "I have only one more comment to make: from my cold, dead hands." The members rose for a thunderous and prolonged standing ovation.

Today, the "Pennsylvania Long Rifle" is honored as the commonwealth's official firearm, and the "Kentucky Long Rifle" is similarly honored in that commonwealth. For all Americans, the American Long Rifle is part of our common American heritage of inventive genius in the service of human rights.

Created by immigrants seeking religious freedom, the American Long Rifle helped win the Revolution and build the country. A feat of engineering once considered impossible, the American Long Rifle reigned for a century as the world's most accurate firearm. A hybrid that was suited for hunting, personal defense, and community defense, the rifle cultivated the gun culture that made Americans the most proficient weapon-using people on Earth. Thanks to modern replicas, the American Long Rifle has always remained in common use, an enduring icon of American self-sufficiency and freedom.

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Open Thread

2026-06-28T06:29:42.757-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - June 28, 2026 at 03:00AM

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L.A. Delays Its $30 Hotel 'Olympic Wage' Until After the Olympics

2026-06-27T09:29:41.692-04:00

By C. Jarrett Dieterle - June 27, 2026 at 07:00AM

In May of last year, the Los Angeles City Council voted to raise the minimum wage for hotel workers in the city to $30 an hour by 2028. This represented the culmination of over a decade of hotel-specific minimum wage rises in the city, which have hampered the hotel industry and reduced employment.

But last month, at the last minute, the city council voted to delay the enactment of the $30 wage by two years to 2030, buying a temporary reprieve for the hotel sector. While a delay is better than nothing, the City of Angels—and progressive politicians across the country—should use the experience of L.A.'s hotel wage to revisit their misguided wage policies entirely.

The drama over L.A.'s hotel minimum wage dates back to 2015, when the city enacted a $15.37 minimum wage for the lodging sector. The wage was indexed to inflation, meaning that it steadily increased over time, reaching just over $21 an hour by 2025. For comparison, L.A.'s regular minimum wage was $10.50 in 2016 and stands at $17.87 today, with an increase to $18.42 scheduled to take place on July 1.

The impact of L.A.'s heightened hotel wage has been palpable. Year-over-year employment growth in the hotel industry has declined since 2015, going from 6.2 percent growth in 2014 to 0.2 percent growth in 2024. It fell to -1.7 percent in December 2025, which made for the largest year-over-year decline in a decade. (The industry did experience rapid employment growth from 2021 through 2023, though this was driven by a rebound from the cataclysmic losses across the tourism industry in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.)

Despite this economic reality, L.A.'s city council decided to double down. Last May, the council enacted an even more supersized hotel minimum wage. Dubbed the "Olympic wage"—since it was set to correlate with L.A. hosting the 2028 Olympics—the council voted to increase hotel wages to $30 an hour by 2028.

Business owners in the industry quickly sounded the alarm about the potential effects of such a drastic wage hike, timed to hit hardest right when the city was expecting a massive influx of tourists. A 2023 analysis by Oxford Economics predicted that a $30 hotel wage would lead to job losses of almost 15,000 in Los Angeles' economy.

A January 2026 survey from the American Hotel and Lodging Association found that 88 percent of Los Angeles hotels had undergone layoffs or cut hours for staff during the prior year—which coincides with the city council officially approving the new wage hike in May 2025. This suggests that hotel owners were already taking steps to reduce labor costs ahead of the planned wage increases.

One prominent hotel owner, whose company began looking to exit the L.A. hotel scene, noted that it was difficult to find any willing buyers of hotel property due to the city's aggressive minimum wage stance. Another owner reported increasing the use of AI—via robotic cleaning and AI-based customer relations—to offset looming labor costs.

Given these impacts, the hotel and tourism industry decided to fight fire with fire. A broad array of trade associations and travel businesses—from the Asian American Hotel Owners Association to Delta Airlines—managed to qualify a ballot measure for the November 2026 election to repeal L.A.'s gross receipts tax. That would cost L.A. over $800 million annually, thereby triggering a fiscal crisis for the city.

"Thousands of layoffs would be required, said Matthew Szabo, L.A.'s city administrative officer, at a May city council meeting. "The city would be forced to implement austerity measures far worse than seen during the Great Recession or the COVID-19 pandemic." Szabo went on to predict the layoff of around 2,000 police officers, which would put L.A.'s preparation for the Olympic games "in severe jeopardy."

The backers of the ballot measure offered to withdraw it, however, if the city council agreed to delay the hotel wage hike. In the face of this potentially catastrophic threat, the city council stood down. Last month, it voted to delay the Olympic wage to 2030, sparing the hotel industry for a couple more years. (It will still operate as a phased-in increase with graduated annual hikes.)

But while the issue has been temporarily quelled in L.A., it's clear that the concept of high hotel-specific minimum wages is only spreading. A host of other California cities have followed L.A.'s lead, with Santa Monica, Long Beach, and San Diego enacting their own hotel wages. A similar proposal was considered but ultimately rejected in Anaheim.

And it isn't just California. New York City is currently considering a citywide $30 minimum wage, while UNITE HERE Local 11, a prominent local labor union that supported L.A.'s Olympic wage for hotels, has pushed to extend the $30 wage to all workers in the city.

Rather than continuing to double down on clearly harmful wage hikes, L.A.—and progressives writ large—should use the experience of the Olympic wage to reconsider their push for $30 altogether.

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The British Statesman Who Recognized America's 'Fierce Spirit of Liberty'

2026-06-27T08:29:27.170-04:00

By Damon Root - June 27, 2026 at 06:00AM

In a special America 250 issue, Reason takes a look back at our country's founding people and ideas. Read more here.

Joanna Andreasson

In 1790, the British statesman Edmund Burke published the work that made his name. Part diatribe and part manifesto, Reflections on the Revolution in France denounced that world-shaking upheaval not only for its "crude and violent schemes of liberty," but also for its "prattling about the rights of man." Aghast at what he called the "tyranny and cruelty employed to bring about and to uphold this revolution," Burke preached the virtues of "a monarchy directed by laws, controlled and balanced by the great hereditary wealth and hereditary dignity of a nation; and both again controlled by a judicious check from the reason and feeling of the people at large acting by a suitable and permanent organ." An immediate hit upon release, Burke's Reflections would seal its author's reputation as the great conservative defender of traditional values and the settled social order.

It also drew the fury of Burke's more radical contemporaries. His Reflections revealed him to be no "friend of liberty," declared Mary Wollstonecraft, the pioneering British feminist and liberal whose daughter, Mary Shelley, would achieve literary immortality as the author of Frankenstein. "If there is anything like argument, or first principles, in [Burke's] wild declamation," Wollstonecraft wrote in A Vindication of the Rights of Men, her book-length attack on the Reflections, it is "that we are to reverence the rust of antiquity, and term the unnatural customs, which ignorance and mistaken self-interest have consolidated, the sage fruit of experience."

The great American revolutionary Thomas Paine, who was by then a passionate supporter of the French Revolution, was also horrified by what Burke had wrought. "I am contending for the rights of the living, and against their being willed away, and controuled and contracted for, by the manuscript assumed authority of the dead," Paine wrote in The Rights of Man, his own book-length assault on the Reflections. "Mr. Burke is contending for the authority of the dead over the rights and freedom of the living."

Yet when it came to the cause of American liberty, Burke actually stood closer to Paine than to King George III. While the British monarch and his ministers were weighing increasingly severe reprisals against the wayward colonials, Burke used his perch in Parliament to advocate peace, accommodation, and a hands-off approach that would restore the "wise and salutary neglect" that had once characterized relations between the colonies and the Crown.

Why did the famously hardline foe of the French Revolution adopt a far softer line toward the rebellious Americans?

'The More You Tighten Your Grip'

In 1774, several months after the storied colonial uprising known as the Boston Tea Party, Burke rose in Parliament to call for repealing the offending tax on tea. He also took the opportunity to blame the British government for senselessly pushing the Americans to the brink.

"Leave America, if she has taxable matter in her, to tax herself," Burke urged. "When you drive him hard, the boar will surely turn upon the hunters. If [British] sovereignty and [American] freedom cannot be reconciled, which will they take? They will cast your sovereignty in your face. No-body will be argued into slavery."

A year later, Burke delivered what some scholars consider his greatest speech, a moving plea for Parliament to seek "conciliation" with the colonies before it became too late to patch the breach.

"This fierce spirit of Liberty is stronger in the English Colonies probably than in any other people of the earth," Burke observed. Like it or not, he told his colleagues, that overriding American spirit had left the British authorities with only one viable option going forward.

The British might attempt to alter the American spirit of liberty by "removing the causes" or even "prosecut[ing] that spirit in its overt acts, as criminal," he observed. But such repression would inevitably backfire: "Will it not teach them that the Government, against which a claim of Liberty is tantamount to high treason, is a Government to which submission is equivalent to slavery?" Burke demanded. "It may not always be convenient," he dryly added, "to impress dependent communities with such an idea."

A similar point was once made by a great fictional rebel leader, Leia Organa. "The more you tighten your grip," she told an imperial commander in a galaxy far, far away, "the more star systems will slip through your fingers."

'A Necessary Evil'

As far as Burke was concerned, the spirit of American liberty was an incontrovertible fact that the British government had to face. There was just no getting around it. In fact, every attempt to get around it only made matters worse. "To prove that the Americans ought not to be free," Burke noted, "we are obliged to depreciate the value of Freedom itself."

So if the Americans could not be talked out of their principles, and if they could never truly be stripped of them by force, what else was left to do but to "comply with the American Spirit as necessary; or, if you please, to submit to it as a necessary Evil"? The Americans had protested "that they are taxed in a Parliament, in which they are not represented," Burke noted. So be it. "If you mean to satisfy them at all," he declared, "you must satisfy them with regard to this complaint." Otherwise, the king would surely lose control over the colonies forever.

Surprisingly, it is here where the Burke of 1775 most nearly resembles the Burke of 1790. The latter Burke opposed the French Revolution because of its shattering effect on the established order. Now we find the earlier Burke opposing the British crackdown on American liberty for similar reasons. "We never seem to gain a paltry advantage over [the Americans] in debate," Burke noted, "without attacking some of those principles, or deriding some of those feelings, for which our ancestors have shed their blood."

In effect, Burke thought it far wiser for the British to back down and let the Americans enjoy much greater freedoms, lest any attempt to cure them of their rebellious ways prove more deadly than the disease. With the French Revolution, Burke thought that particular outbreak had already reached epidemic proportions, and he reacted accordingly.

What If?

What if the British government had followed Burke's advice in 1775? Might the American Revolution never have been fought? Might we be living today in a Burkean America that still retained some sort of official loyalty to the king?

Burke's own analysis suggests that the answer to such questions is probably no. As he had tried to warn Parliament, the American colonies were already well on their way to independent self-government by 1775. "Until very lately, all authority in America seemed to be nothing but an emanation from" British authority, Burke said. "We thought, Sir, that the utmost which the discontented Colonists could do, was to disturb authority; we never dreamt they could of themselves supply it."

Yet supply it themselves they did. In 1774, the first Continental Congress had begun meeting in Philadelphia, gathered, in the words of its members, to "obtain such establishment, as that their religion, laws, and liberties, may not be subverted."

Burke correctly saw that development as a momentous step toward independence. "The Colonists having once found the possibility of enjoying the advantages of order in the midst of a struggle for Liberty," he said, "such struggles will not henceforward seem so terrible to the settled and sober part of mankind as they had appeared before the trial."

In short, Burke's speech may have come too late even if its advice had been followed. For a growing number of Americans in the mid-1770s, there was already vanishingly little chance of turning back. The road to American independence would prove long, twisted, and bloody, but the journey had begun.

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Open Thread

2026-06-27T03:29:30.204-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - June 27, 2026 at 03:00AM

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Review: A Fresh-Eyed Tour Through Revolutionary America

2026-06-26T09:29:29.957-04:00

By Matt Welch - June 26, 2026 at 06:00AM

In his 2012 page-turner, My American Revolution: A Modern Expedition Through History's Forgotten Battlegrounds, Robert Sullivan embarks on a journey that will be familiar to the 50-something male of the species, noticing with fresh eyes the historical stuff in his immediate surroundings, steadily expanding the scope and intensity of his search, and ending up in a state so obsessive that he's sending mirrored sun signals to his blasé teenaged daughter in Brooklyn from George Washington's winter headquarters in Morristown, New Jersey.

Sullivan surfaces some of the flame keepers all around us: the historical reenactors, but also the motley crew that pays annual homage to the mostly forgotten 11,500-plus Americans killed by Brits on prison ships in the East River, a delightfully deranged artist recreating and illegally launching Benjamin Franklin's attempted revolutionary submarine, and some pals he dragoons for his own futile attempt to retrace Washington's inaugural flotilla.

Along the way there are low-key ruminations on the randomness of historical memory (why don't we universally recognize Washington's magical Battle of Brooklyn retreat as America's Dunkirk?), intriguing documentation of extreme weather (the Hard Winter of 1779–80, Sullivan persuasively argues, was the coldest in recorded North American history), and, above all, a constant motivational whisper that it's never too late, never too embarrassing, to begin seeing and asking naive questions about the inspiring American history surrounding us.

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Brickbat: A Shocking Abuse of Power

2026-06-26T06:29:18.258-04:00

By Charles Oliver - June 26, 2026 at 04:00AM

A federal judge sentenced former Hapeville, Georgia, police officer Shevoy Brown to three years and one month in federal prison, followed by two years of supervised release, after a jury found him guilty of using excessive force against a handcuffed detainee and trying to cover it up. In June 2024, officers arrested a man for trespassing and handcuffed him to a bench in the jail's holding cell. Even though the suspect posed no threat, prosecutors say Brown entered the holding cell and shocked him with a Taser at least six times, including in the genitals, causing injuries that required medical treatment, and only stopped when another officer got involved. Brown then falsely claimed in an incident report that the detainee was being disruptive, and that he used the Taser only twice.

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Open Thread

2026-06-26T05:29:16.799-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - June 26, 2026 at 03:00AM

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Second Amendment Roundup: Supreme Court Decides Wolford

2026-06-26T01:29:48.520-04:00

By Stephen Halbrook - June 25, 2026 at 10:01PM

On June 25, the Supreme Court decided Wolford v. Lopez, holding 6-3 that Hawaii may not "prohibit licensed concealed-carry permit holders from carrying handguns on private property open to the public unless the property owner gives express permission." Justice Alito delivered the opinion of the Court, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. Justice Kagan dissented, as did Justice Jackson, joined by Justice Sotomayor.

The Court calls out both lower courts and states that have resisted its Second Amendment jurisprudence. In the dozen years between McDonald and Bruen, "lower courts rejected nearly all Second Amendment claims based on reasoning that resembled that in Justice Breyer's Heller dissent." "After Bruen, Hawaii and four of the other five States called out by our decision adopted a new method of restricting law-abiding citizens from carrying firearms for self-defense by flipping the default rule on private property open to the public." They enacted what has become known as the "Vampire Rule," under which guns are banned on private property open to the public unless a "Guns Welcome" sign is posted or other affirmative consent is given. As to such signage: "Some proprietors who do not themselves object to entry by carry-permit holders may be reluctant to post a sign welcoming such individuals for fear of alienating other customers."

The same states also enacted "sensitive place" bans in public parks, assemblies, and certain establishments. As Wolford notes about Hawaii, "On a large portion of the land within the State's boundaries, possession of a firearm is now flatly prohibited." While these absolute bans have been challenged, the Court's comments do not bode well for them should they reach the Court. (On the Second Circuit's false historical narrative in Antonyuk upholding New York's place bans, see my exposé here.)

To consider the overwhelming impact of Hawaii's Vampire Rule, the Court lists places that people routinely visit on a daily basis where they cannot be armed, such as gas stations, convenience stores, restaurants, coffee shops, drug stores, grocery stores, "big box" stores, home improvement stores, barber shops or hair salons, dry cleaners, and laundromats. A day in the life of a hypothetical Ms. Caetano (based on Justice Alito's concurrence in Caetano) is traced to show the impossibility of asking for actual consent to enter one place after another when armed – the person is already in violation when in the parking lot and when looking for someone with authority to give consent.

At the jurisprudential level, Wolford starkly clarifies the methodology of text first and history second, which are often flipped to uphold infringements. In determining whether a law clashes with the plain text, three questions arise:

First, does the law apply to "the people"—which is to say, to "all members of the political community"? …. Second, does it concern any form of "Arms," i.e., any weapon customarily used for offensive or defensive purposes? … Third, does the law place any restrictions on either the "keep[ing]" (i.e., possession) or the "bear[ing]" (i.e., carrying) of arms?

Regarding "the people," in the Court's recent decision in Hemani, the Court referred to "the right of 'all Americans' to keep and bear firearms for self-defense." Curiously, the summary of prior precedents in Wolford does not mention Hemani. Maybe that's of no significance, as Hemani tested purported historical analogues as applied to the ban on firearm possession by pot users (see my post here) without introducing any new doctrines. It has also been suggested that Wolford was finalized before Hemani but simply not handed down before it.

Arms "customarily used" for offense or defense, the Court elsewhere noted, "refers to implements used for offense or defense," such as handguns that are (quoting Heller) "overwhelmingly chosen by American society" for self-defense. Perhaps next Term the Court will grant cert in a case that will confirm how the American people customarily and overwhelmingly choose semiautomatic rifles for self-defense.

Given that Hawaii banned activity that is clearly within the text – "the people" are "bearing arms" – the burden is on the state to justify it by historical tradition. That entails consideration of the number of jurisdictions that adopted analogous laws, the extent to which they were well-accepted (such as being judicially upheld or being "open, widespread, and unchallenged"), and whether the analogues are "relevantly similar" to the modern law. That last factor entails "how" and "why" the analogue restricted the right.

For analogues, Hawaii "recounts its long history of antipathy to the private possession of firearms. It tells us that one of the very first written laws of the Kingdom of Hawaii, issued in 1833 by King Kamehameha III, prohibited the possession of all deadly weapons." That fell flat with the Court, as "the Second Amendment has the same meaning in all parts of the United States…. It cannot give way to 'the spirit of Aloha' in Hawaii [citing State v. Wilson (Haw. 2024)], any more than it can yield to the spirit of the Big Apple (Bruen) or the Windy City (McDonald)."

But most of Hawaii's analogues were colonial or founding laws that prohibited unauthorized hunting of deer or small game on someone else's private property, which flunked both the "how" and "why" tests. They are not "relevantly similar" to Hawaii's law because prohibiting unauthorized hunting on private land has no relation to banning the carrying of a handgun for self-defense at a gas station or other private property open to the public without express consent.

But "the State's most remarkable analogue" is the 1865 Louisiana statute that made it unlawful "for any person or persons to carry fire-arms on the premises or plantations of any citizen, without the consent of the owner or proprietor…." Not only was that law "neither widespread nor widely accepted," it was "part of Louisiana's Black Code" that "provided a tool for disarming blacks and thus leaving them defenseless against attacks." "Unless we put history entirely out of our minds, Hawaii's claim that this tainted artifact illuminates the original understanding of the right to keep and bear arms cannot be taken seriously." (For more details, see my amicus brief for the National African American Gun Ass'n.)

Justice Barrett, joined in part by Justice Thomas and Justice Gorsuch, doubled down on the discrepancy between the purported analogues and Hawaii's law, which "does not target any particular abuse of firearms at all. Rather than identifying a specific threat to public peace and safety, Hawaii admits that it enacted the rule because many of its citizens oppose the public carry of guns." However, "Mere disapproval of protected conduct is not a valid reason to severely restrict it."

Justice Kagan's brief dissent simply asserts that the historical laws cited by Hawaii sufficed as proper analogues, which "is enough for me to resolve this case, without addressing Bruen's step-one inquiry or the use at step two of Louisiana's Black Code." Good way to avoid two of the case's sticking points.

Finally, Justice Jackson, with whom Justice Sotomayor joins, dissenting, reminds us once again that, "For what it is worth, I think Bruen was wrongly decided." As to the analogues, Louisiana's 1865 law and the other Black Code provisions violated the antidiscrimination portion of the Fourteenth Amendment (although the words "equal protection" don't appear in her dissent), but did not violate the Second Amendment.

In so arguing, Justice Jackson quotes General Sickles' 1866 order rescinding South Carolia's Black Code where he stated, "The constitutional rights of all loyal and well-disposed inhabitants to bear arms will not be infringed." She adds that "in his view, no person (of any race) had the right to carry a firearm onto private land without consent." But Sickles actually said that the right to bear arms "did not "authorize any person to enter with arms on the premises of another against his consent." That expressed the traditional common-law rule that Wolford upholds, namely that private property open to the public implies a license to enter, absent notice otherwise.

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10 Big Supreme Court Cases To Go

2026-06-25T09:29:44.926-04:00

By Damon Root - June 25, 2026 at 07:00AM

Greetings and welcome to the latest edition of the Injustice System newsletter. The month of June is rapidly coming to a close, and the U.S. Supreme Court has officially begun its mad dash to the finish line, aiming to release all opinions in argued cases by either the end of the month or—judicial vacation plans permitting—by sometime in early July.

How are the justices doing in terms of the workload? Well, a little over a month ago, I wrote about the "11 big cases that I'll be watching out for in the weeks ahead." As of this writing, a whopping one of those 11 has been decided. I was a history major back in college, so I'll let you do the math.

We're expecting more opinions today. Which means that by the time you're reading this newsletter, we may already be dealing with momentous rulings on issues ranging from state bans on transgender student athletes to the reach of the Second Amendment's right to keep and bear arms to the constitutionality of mail-in ballots that were sent by election day but not received until after election day.

And then there is the none-too-small matter of executive power. If any single issue is going to define this rambunctious 2025–26 SCOTUS term, then the debate over the proper scope of presidential power is probably it. The showdown over birthright citizenship, for instance, all started with an executive order from President Donald Trump that purported to do what the text and history of the Birthright Citizenship Clause do not permit the president to do. So in addition to being a case about the original meaning of the 14th Amendment, Trump v. Barbara is also a case about executive authority.

Meanwhile, executive power is truly front and center in Trump v. Slaughter and Trump v. Cook, each of which deals with the scope of presidential control over the leadership of "independent" federal agencies. Trump seems likely to win at least one of these cases, with a majority of the Court seeming likely to allow him to fire a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission for purely political reasons, rather than "for cause," as the law, and perhaps soon-to-be-overruled Supreme Court precedent, currently require. That's Trump v. Slaughter.

Trump v. Cook is a horse of different color. In this case, Trump seeks to fire a member of the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors "for cause," yet whether or not his purported cause for firing her actually satisfies the "for cause" requirement in federal law is far from settled. I can imagine Trump losing this one. But you never know.

In Other Legal News

This week marks an unhappy anniversary in American legal history. On June 23, the case of Kelo v. City of New London (2005) turned 21 years old. That's the case in which a 5–4 Supreme Court let a local government bulldoze a thriving neighborhood so that private developers would have a blank slate on which to build, all in the hopes of increasing the local tax base.

The constitutional question at the heart of Kelo was whether this use of eminent domain was lawful under the Fifth Amendment, which says that private property may only be taken by the government for a "public use," a term that has traditionally been understood to cover things such as roads, bridges, tunnels, and parks.

Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens embraced a far more elastic concept that appears nowhere in the text of the Constitution. "The disposition of this case," Stevens asserted, "turns on the question whether the City's development plan serves a 'public purpose.' Without exception," he declared, "our cases have defined that concept broadly, reflecting our longstanding policy of deference to legislative judgments in this field."

How did that misguided judicial deference work out in the end? The homeowners got the boot, the neighborhood was razed, and then the entire redevelopment scheme fell apart. Nothing was ever built. In 2011, local officials urged residents to use the location as a dumpsite for storm debris from Hurricane Irene. And last I checked, the once-attractive neighborhood was still a barren lot.

Sometimes the Supreme Court gets it right. The Kelo debacle is a reminder that sometimes the Court gets it disastrously wrong.

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Prohibition Didn't Stop Marijuana Use. It Stopped Marijuana Research.

2026-06-25T07:29:22.415-04:00

By Adam Omary - June 25, 2026 at 06:30AM

On June 29, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) will convene a hearing to consider whether marijuana should finally be removed from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, the federal government's most restrictive drug classification, reserved for substances with a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use. Heroin and LSD are in the same category. This hearing will determine whether restrictions will be eased on marijuana as a whole.

It's a strikingly late debate to be having.

The proceedings, which must conclude by July 15, follow an April order from the Department of Justice that moved marijuana products approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and state-licensed medical marijuana into Schedule III, a less restrictive category that allows medical research to proceed. Tens of millions of Americans use marijuana today, and cannabis is sold legally in some form across most of the country. Yet we know far less about the drug than its ubiquity would suggest. For more than half a century, a classification that was never meant to be permanent has blocked the research needed to understand what marijuana actually does to the people who use it.

The origin of this problem is political, not scientific. When Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act in 1970, marijuana's placement in Schedule I was explicitly provisional, a placeholder pending review by a presidential commission. The Shafer Commission, chaired by a Republican governor and composed largely of President Richard Nixon's appointees, concluded in 1972 that marijuana did not meet the criteria for Schedule I and recommended decriminalizing personal possession. Nixon ignored the report and escalated the war on drugs. The provisional classification became permanent by default. Since 1965, an estimated 29 million Americans have been arrested on marijuana charges, roughly 90 percent of them for possession alone.

The most damaging consequence of Schedule I, however, has not been to cannabis users, who have gained access through state legalization, but to the research enterprise. Schedule I substances face the most restrictive regulatory barriers under federal law, including heightened DEA registration requirements, limited sourcing options, and protocol approvals that materially delay or deter research. Even DEA-registered researchers have been barred from using certain National Institutes of Health grants to purchase cannabis. The products available from government-approved suppliers have not represented the full range of what people actually consume at dispensaries. The classification, in effect, impedes research into drug safety, leaving the millions of cannabis users it claims to protect less informed than they would otherwise be.

And there is plenty we need to know. The strongest evidence of risk concerns psychosis, especially in young users. A multisite study published in The Lancet Psychiatry, drawing on data from 901 patients with first-episode psychosis across 11 European sites, found that daily cannabis use was associated with more than three times the odds of a psychotic disorder, rising to nearly five times for users of high-potency products containing over 10 percent THC, the primary psychoactive compound in marijuana. The authors estimated that one in five new psychosis cases across the study sites could be attributed to daily use. A 2022 systematic review of 20 studies covering nearly 120,000 cannabis users confirmed that higher-potency products are associated with elevated risk of both psychosis and cannabis use disorder.

The biological mechanism is plausible and concerning, particularly for young people. Adolescence is a critical window for brain development, marked by extensive synaptic pruning and the maturation of prefrontal circuits governing impulse control and decision making. The endocannabinoid system, the molecular network that THC activates, plays an essential role in these developmental processes. A 2025 review in the American Journal of Psychiatry concluded that translational research combining longitudinal neuroimaging with animal models provides compelling evidence that frequent cannabis use, particularly high-THC products, can disrupt adolescent brain development.

Meanwhile, the potency of commercially available cannabis has been rising steadily for decades, with average THC concentrations increasing by roughly 0.29 percent per year from 1970 to 2017. That trend aligns with what drug-policy analysts sometimes call the "iron law of prohibition": When enforcement intensifies, producers and traffickers have incentives to favor more concentrated and potent products that are easier to transport, conceal, and distribute while generating greater returns relative to the legal risks involved. Today's dispensary products bear little resemblance to the marijuana the Shafer Commission evaluated in 1972.

Prohibition may make youth cannabis access easier rather than harder. Illegal markets do not check identification, whereas licensed retailers risk losing their licenses for selling to minors. As long as recreational marijuana remains confined to illicit channels, teenagers will continue to obtain cannabis from suppliers who face no meaningful incentive to restrict underage access. It would be safer to have a legal market with age restrictions on marijuana sales, as with alcohol, nicotine, and other adult products.

Public opinion has moved faster than federal policy. According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in January 2026, roughly nine in 10 American adults say marijuana should be legal in some form: 55 percent support legalization for both medical and recreational use, 33 percent support it for medical use only, and just 11 percent say it should not be legal at all. A 2025 Gallup poll found that 64 percent of Americans support making marijuana legal outright, more than double the level of support recorded in 2000, with no age group opposing legalization. Forty states, the District of Columbia, and several U.S. territories have legalized medical cannabis, and 24 states have legalized recreational use. More than 6 million patients are registered in state medical programs. Yet the federal classification persists, and so does the debate over whether and how to reform it.

The debate is not entirely one-sided. While Americans overwhelmingly support medical access, views on the broader consequences are more divided. According to a 2024 Pew report, 34 percent of adults said recreational legalization makes communities less safe, compared to 21 percent who said it makes them safer. About 29 percent believed it increases the use of harder drugs. These concerns are not irrational. But the current federal framework is poorly suited to resolving them, because the same classification system that is supposed to protect public health has, for decades, prevented the research that would tell us how worried we should actually be.

The medical marijuana system itself reflects a broader American tendency to force adult behavioral choices through medical gatekeeping structures. Millions of adults who simply want legal access to cannabis are effectively required in many jurisdictions to obtain physician certification for conditions that may be only loosely medicalized. When legal access to products, services, accommodations, or reimbursement depends upon obtaining a medical diagnosis, the boundary between illness and ordinary human behavior can become increasingly blurred. The physician's role shrinks to that of regulatory intermediary, and with it collapses any meaningful distinction between medical treatment and adult lifestyle choice.

Schedule I classification has not stopped tens of millions of Americans from using marijuana, but it has made it extraordinarily difficult for scientists to study what happens when they do. The federal government has spent decades trying to suppress marijuana use while simultaneously obstructing the research needed to understand risks, benefits, dosing patterns, and long-term effects. Prohibition has not prevented widespread cannabis consumption. It has mainly ensured that policymakers, physicians, and consumers operate with less reliable evidence than they otherwise would.

Even so, the scientific case for medical cannabis has only strengthened. The FDA has approved one cannabis-derived drug (Epidiolex for severe pediatric epilepsy) and three cannabis-related synthetic compounds for chemotherapy-induced nausea and AIDS-associated wasting. A 2024 systematic evidence map reviewing 194 studies found that the majority of treatment effects across 71 distinct health outcomes were positive or potentially positive, with the strongest evidence for chronic pain, nausea, and spasticity. The Department of Health and Human Services recommended rescheduling in 2023, citing credible scientific support for medical use. In other words, the agency responsible for evaluating drug safety concluded that the government's own classification was wrong.

Rescheduling marijuana to Schedule III does not legalize recreational use. It does not make cannabis available over the counter. What it does is substantially reduce the regulatory barriers to the research that informed policy requires. It will allow scientists to study the products people actually use, at the doses they actually consume, without years of DEA paperwork. President Donald Trump's December 2025 executive order directing the attorney general to expedite rescheduling acknowledged as much, citing the need to remove barriers to medical research. If this summer's hearing ends with marijuana as a whole in Schedule III, the research pipeline severed in 1972 can finally begin to be rebuilt.

Adults in a free society should be able to make informed choices about what they put in their bodies. But informed choice depends on information, and for half a century, the federal government has made it nearly impossible to generate the information needed to make those choices genuinely informed.

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Open Thread

2026-06-25T04:29:40.826-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - June 25, 2026 at 03:00AM

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Open Thread

2026-06-24T05:29:22.825-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - June 24, 2026 at 03:00AM

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SCOTUS Unanimously Ruled That the Second Amendment Trumps Anti-Drug Sentiment

2026-06-24T03:29:45.272-04:00

By Jacob Sullum - June 24, 2026 at 12:01AM

The Supreme Court has a history of facilitating the war on drugs by whittling away at civil liberties, to the point that critics have long perceived a "drug exception" to the Bill of Rights. But last week, when the justices unanimously upheld the gun rights of cannabis consumers, they made it clear that there is no drug exception to the Second Amendment.

The Court's consensus reflects the blatant illogic of a federal law that makes it a felony, punishable by up to 15 years in prison, for an "unlawful user" of "any controlled substance" to possess a firearm. That policy is so clearly inconsistent with "this Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation," the lodestar of the Court's Second Amendment decisions, that jurists and organizations across the political spectrum united in condemning it.

The case involved Ali Hemani, a Texas man who admitted he owned a pistol and used marijuana a few times a week, which would have been enough to convict him of illegal gun possession. But a federal judge dismissed the charge on Second Amendment grounds, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld that decision.

The 5th Circuit, which is often described as the country's most conservative federal appeals court, said that result was consistent with its prior conclusion that the Second Amendment bars such prosecutions when they are based on nothing more than the statutory elements. The Trump administration, despite its avowed commitment to "protecting Second Amendment rights," asked the Supreme Court to reject the 5th Circuit's reasoning and reinstate the charge against Hemani.

The case featured strange bedfellows on both sides. Counterintuitively, the attorneys general of 18 blue states that have legalized recreational marijuana joined the Trump administration in urging the Supreme Court to allow Hemani's prosecution, apparently because they thought protecting gun control was more important than defending the principle that cannabis should be treated like alcohol.

The Trump administration's position provoked vigorous objections from the National Rifle Association, other leading Second Amendment groups, and several libertarian organizations (including Reason Foundation). They were allied with the Drug Policy Alliance, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Even more striking: The American Civil Liberties Union, which had long maintained that the Second Amendment does not guarantee an individual right to arms, joined Hemani's Supreme Court brief, which explicitly defended that right. The ideologically diverse coalition opposing Hemani's prosecution vividly illustrated the potential for transpartisan alliances at the intersection of gun control and the war on drugs.

The Trump administration's case hinged on a plainly inapt comparison between cannabis consumers and "habitual drunkards," who historically could be confined to jails, workhouses, or asylums under vagrancy and civil commitment laws. The justices had no trouble recognizing the fallaciousness of that analogy.

"The habitual drunkard laws on which the government relies here differ dramatically" from the law under which Hemani was charged "on every single metric the government invites us to consider," Justice Neil Gorsuch noted in the majority opinion. "They targeted different kinds of people, did so for different purposes, and operated in different ways."

The Court left open the possibility that gun-owning drug users could be prosecuted when there is additional evidence that they pose a threat to public safety. But it concluded that the government may not strip people of their Second Amendment rights or prosecute them for illegal gun possession simply because they are marijuana users.

The implications are broad, since survey data suggest that something like 20 million American cannabis consumers own guns. Although only a tiny percentage of potential defendants are prosecuted each year, that means bad luck can send people to prison for violating an arbitrary, widely flouted, and haphazardly enforced law.

That law criminalizes conduct that violates no one's rights, as gun and drug laws routinely do. The Supreme Court's decision is a modest but welcome step toward rectifying that injustice.

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Today in Supreme Court History: June 23, 1987

2026-06-23T10:29:15.235-04:00

By Josh Blackman - June 23, 2026 at 07:00AM

6/23/1987: South Dakota v. Dole is decided.

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Open Thread

2026-06-23T05:29:46.077-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - June 23, 2026 at 03:00AM

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Today in Supreme Court History: June 22, 1992

2026-06-22T09:29:14.779-04:00

By Josh Blackman - June 22, 2026 at 07:00AM

6/22/1992: R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul is decided.

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British Prime Minister Keir Starmer Has Resigned. His Replacement Will Likely Be More of the Same.

2026-06-22T07:29:22.658-04:00

By Reem Ibrahim - June 22, 2026 at 05:56AM

After less than two years in office, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has resigned. "The question my party is asking now is whether I am best placed to lead us into the next general election. I have heard the answer of my parliamentary party to that question, and I accept that answer with good grace," he said at a press conference this morning. "Every decision I've taken has been about putting the country I love first. That is why I will resign as leader of the Labour Party."

Starmer said he had spoken to the King to inform him of the decision, and would ask the National Executive Committee, the Labour Party's governing body, to set out a timetable for the leadership race to decide his successor. Nominations will open on July 9, and if there is a contest, his successor will be chosen by the summer recess. Keir Starmer will remain as prime minister until the leadership contest is complete.

The announcement follows more than half a dozen cabinet ministers privately telling him to leave No. 10 Downing Street, and a weekend of speculation that he was mulling over the decision with his wife at the Chequers country retreat. On Thursday, Andy Burnham, the former mayor of Greater Manchester and favourite to replace Starmer, was elected as the member of Parliament for Makerfield. Burnham, nicknamed the "King of the North," won 55 percent of the vote in the constituency and said that voters had issued a "call for change" in his victory speech. He is the public's preferred choice to replace Starmer, according to an IPSOS poll.

Starmer's resignation is not especially surprising. The last few months have been nothing short of tumultuous for the British government, but Starmer himself has never been overwhelmingly popular with the general public. The main reason the Labour Party were elected to power in 2024 was not because of their appeal, but "to get rid of the Conservatives," according to YouGov polling. Since becoming prime minister, Starmer has overseen an ever-worsening economic outlook in the U.K.: Youth unemployment is soaring, with the number of young people aged 16–24 who are NEETs (Not in employment, education or training) increasing to 13.5 percent—more than one million young people—in the first quarter of this year. 25 percent of working-age people are out of work, and those who do have a job are set to pay the highest tax burden in British history. If Britain joined the United States as the 51st state, it would be the poorest state.

As the economy tanked, the Starmer administration was embroiled in scandal. Peter Mandelson's appointment to the role of U.S. Ambassador and his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein were key. Perceptions of cash for access emerged in 2024 when Labour Party donor Lord Waheed Ali was issued a pass to Downing Street, and reports emerged that Starmer had received more gifts than any other member of Parliament. Concerns about immigration fuelled the popularity of the Reform U.K. party. Immigration is still the most important issue for Brits (despite net migration falling sharply), according to an Ipsos poll.

These incidents, coupled with the public's disapproval of Labour's immigration policies, led to a wave of wins for Nigel Farage's Reform U.K. in May's local elections. Farage's party grabbed 1,455 council seats across England, 17 seats in the Scottish Parliament, and 34 seats in the Welsh Parliament. The Labour Party suffered the worst local election result on record.

A series of resignations by Cabinet ministers followed, including Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Safeguarding Minister Jess Philips. Close to 100 Labour members of Parliament called for Starmer's resignation in May.

Any candidate hoping to become leader of the Labour Party, and by consequence, prime minister, will need the support of at least 20 percent of the ruling party's lawmakers to enter the contest. From there, a final decision will be made via a one-member-one-vote system in which Labour Party members, affiliated trade union supporters, and registered supporters all vote equally. There are a few Labour Party politicians with their eyes on the role of prime minister, all of whom are likely to make the size of the state even bigger.

Burnham, Starmer's likely successor, has made headlines for promoting "business-friendly socialism" and the nationalization of "basic things that people depend on." Reports suggest that one of the key influences on Burnham's economic thinking is Miatta Fahnbulleh, the former chief executive of the New Economics Foundation (NEF). A recent New Statesman profile described "Fahnbullehism" as a philosophy rooted in the co-operative movement that sees markets as incapable of delivering prosperity fairly without much greater state direction. During her time at NEF, the organization proposed a minimum income guarantee, higher taxes on wealth and investment income, tighter controls on consumer credit, and a larger role for public ownership and state-backed investment. More recently, Fahnbulleh has praised proposals associated with Burnham's emerging "Manchesterism" agenda, which argues for greater public control over housing, energy, water, and transport.

But Burnham is not the only Labour Party politician with his eyes on the keys to No. 10. Wes Streeting, the former health secretary, already launched his leadership bid at a press conference in May. He argued for "a proper contest with the best candidates on the field", and said that he would be standing. Streeting made headlines the day after the July 2024 general election for admitting that the U.K.'s socialized healthcare system, the National Health Service, was "broken" and promising radical "reform." However, his track record as health secretary has been much more of the same strategy his predecessors opted for: spending more taxpayer cash.

Angela Rayner, the former deputy prime minister, is also a potential contender. She helped introduce some of Britain's most stringent labor market regulations, and is often seen at a nightclub or with a vape in her hand (although she has recently quit). Rayner was forced to resign from the government over her tax affairs, and was later reappointed to a junior ministerial position.

Ed Miliband, the energy secretary who has championed net zero regulations and a ban on fracking in the North Sea, has increased his popularity within the Labour Party and could throw his hat in the ring. This wouldn't be the first time—Miliband led the Labour Party into the 2015 general election, and received a crushing defeat at the hands of David Cameron's Conservative Party.

With pressure mounting from the increasingly popular Green Party, whoever leads the Labour Party next will be pulled to the left. For voters hoping Keir Starmer's resignation might mark a turn away from higher taxes, heavier regulation, and a larger state, the likely field of successors offers little reason for optimism.

The post British Prime Minister Keir Starmer Has Resigned. His Replacement Will Likely Be More of the Same. appeared first on Reason.com.

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Brickbat: Taking a Bite

2026-06-22T06:29:12.874-04:00

By Charles Oliver - June 22, 2026 at 04:00AM

The owners of Big Back's Cajun Kitchen say the officials in College Park, Georgia, have unfairly targeted their restaurant with repeated inspections, citations, and accusations that it is operating an illegal nightclub, even though they say they have the proper permits and licenses. Restaurant owner Shawn Perkins and her business partners believe the actions were prompted by Mayor Pro Tem Joe Carn, a claim the city attorney denies. However, College Park Mayor Bianca Motley Broom publicly supported Perkins, calling the city's actions harassment and saying elected officials should not use their power to target businesses. Carn did not respond to requests from a local TV station for comment.

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Open Thread

2026-06-22T04:29:25.201-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - June 22, 2026 at 03:00AM

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America's Founders Blended Liberalism and Religion

2026-06-21T09:29:08.669-04:00

By Stephanie Slade - June 21, 2026 at 06:00AM

In a special America 250 issue, Reason takes a look back at our country's founding people and ideas. Read more here.

Joanna Andreasson

In "Why I Am Not a Conservative," the economist F.A. Hayek averred that "what in Europe was called 'liberalism' was here the common tradition on which the American polity had been built." He was neither the first nor the last to see America primarily as a nation rooted in individual liberty.

Yet to think the United States is purely a liberal country is to take a truth too far. The Founders drew on a panoply of sources, from classical philosophy to biblical theology, from the natural and common law traditions to the ideas of the Enlightenment. They took from each the insights that seemed best-suited to their project, and in doing so they created something at once revolutionary—a novus ordo seclorum—and rooted in the wisdom of the past.

'All Americans Are…Liberals of One Sort  or Another'

To safeguard their freedom, the Founders divided power among the various branches and levels of government while establishing that core rights could not easily be put to the vote. Americans ever since have taken pride in having overthrown a despotic king and established a regime fit for a free people, where citizens are in control of their own destinies instead of being trapped by the circumstances of their births.

In spring 1906, the English sci-fi author H.G. Wells reflected on a visit to the United States in a travelogue titled The Future in America. America, he reported, lacked a social hierarchy with servile and patrician classes. "There is no lower stratum," he wrote, and "no aristocracy at all." Virtually all Americans were the equivalent of Europe's "middle masses," who engaged in "trading and manufacturing" and occupied positions somewhere between "the magnate and the clerk and skilled artisan."

That situation had repercussions for American politics. "The two great political parties in America represent only one English party, the middle-class Liberal party, the party of industrialism and freedom," Wells wrote. "There are no Tories to represent the feudal system, and no Labor party….All Americans are, from the English point of view, Liberals of one sort or another."

As a member of the socialist Fabian Society, Wells did not view the American desire "not only to liberate men but property from State control" as an altogether favorable development. But he recognized it as an essential aspect of the American character.

In the middle of the 20th century, a school of thought that came to be known as "consensus history" echoed that observation. It held, in rough summary, that American culture was distinguished by an underlying "moral unity" of belief in such institutions as free enterprise and the Lockean social contract—that "the American community is a liberal community," as the political scientist Louis Hartz put it.

That paradigm may have fallen out of scholarly favor, but it has endured in the popular consciousness. Think of President Ronald Reagan's insistence that the United States was a "shining city…teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony…with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity." That this image became something of a national mythos suggests that the American people see themselves in it. Our cultural self-conception is forward-looking, pluralistic, and entrepreneurial.

Note that the kind of liberalism we're talking about here has not been limited to one end of the political spectrum. Not only does it occupy the broad center, but until a decade ago it was arguably more dominant on the American right (which championed free markets and small government, at least at a rhetorical level) than on the American left.

Even those conservatives who have viewed liberalism as a scourge on society—figures such as National Review's L. Brent Bozell Jr. in the 1960s and Notre Dame's Patrick Deneen today—admit its centrality to American history. It's for that reason that certain right-wing anti-liberals deplore the Founding as a philosophical mistake.

'Only a Virtuous People Are Capable of Freedom'

But if the American Founding was liberal, that shouldn't lead us to think it was irreligious. Unlike the French Revolutionaries, who would topple their own regime a few years later, America's Founders felt no rancor toward Christianity as a doctrine or the lowercase-c church as an institution.

It's true that some prominent Founding Fathers were not themselves orthodox believers. But many were, and virtually all thought that religion helped create and sustain the conditions necessary for a free society to endure. Limited government was not possible, they believed, unless the people were morally well-formed and responsible.

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom," Benjamin Franklin said. Or as John Adams more famously put it, "We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion….Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

"Examples of founders insisting that religion is necessary for morality, and that both religion and morality are necessary for republican government, could be multiplied almost indefinitely," writes the political scientist Mark David Hall in his 2019 book Did America Have a Christian Founding? His answer to that titular question is yes, inasmuch as it's clear the Founding generation was profoundly influenced by Christian ideas.

Patrick Henry—yes, the supposed coiner of "Give me liberty or give me death!"—was so convinced of the importance of widespread religiosity that he introduced a bill in Virginia that would have levied taxes on the people to support teachers of Christianity. James Madison rejected that policy in his eloquent Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments—not out of hostility toward religion, but because entanglement between church and state was apt to weaken or corrupt Christian belief and practice.

"It is known that this Religion both existed and flourished, not only without the support of human laws, but in spite of every opposition from them," Madison wrote, alluding to Rome's attempts to suppress the early church. "Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation," producing "pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."

Henry's proposal failed in Virginia, and by the 1830s the states had all ceased collecting taxes to fund houses of worship. Nonetheless, in the two and a half centuries since the signing of the Declaration, American culture has retained a higher degree of piety and religious observance than one finds in most other Western countries—including several with official state churches. Although there's been slippage in some of these numbers, Americans have long been more likely than Europeans to attend worship services, to pray, to believe in God and the afterlife, and so on.

As the neoconservative writer Irving Kristol once put it, we should be able to acknowledge "the correct proposition that legally and constitutionally we are not a Christian nation" without proceeding "to the absurd proposition that we are in no sense at all a Christian society."

'These Two Have Been Successfully Blended'

It would probably not be going too far to say that liberalism and traditional religion have managed to coexist in the United States in a way that's almost unique in history.

Seven decades before Wells' transit of the United States, a young Frenchman named Alexis de Tocqueville cataloged his own visit to this continent in Democracy in America. Chief among his observations was that "Americans mix Christianity and liberty so completely in their mind that it is nearly impossible to make them conceive one without the other."

"Anglo-American civilization," Tocqueville wrote, "is the product (and this point of departure must always be kept in mind) of two perfectly distinct elements that elsewhere are often at odds. But in America, these two have been successfully blended, in a way, and marvelously combined. I mean the spirit of religion and the spirit of liberty." Later in the book, he explained that Europeans were accustomed to seeing those two ideals "march almost always in opposite directions," whereas here "they reigned together over the same soil."

Tocqueville went on to report that American clergymen took "a kind of professional pride" in standing aloof from politics. Like Madison before them, they realized that calling upon the coercive power of the state for spiritual purposes would jeopardize the church's credibility in the long run. "We have seen religions, intimately united with the governments of the earth, dominate souls by terror and by faith at the same time," Tocqueville wrote. "But when a religion contracts such an alliance…it sacrifices the future with the present in mind, and by obtaining a power that is not its due, it puts its legitimate power at risk."

It wasn't just prudence or pragmatism, though, that led people of faith to resist the allure of imposing their religious views on society through the force of law. The Judeo-Christian tradition had introduced the idea of moral equality, viewing every human person, regardless of social status, as created in the image of God and possessing an inestimable moral worth. Since we're blessed with free will, we have both the duty to strive toward excellence and the right not to be coercively interfered with in that pursuit.

The unfolding of these ideas over time called into question the whole notion of rulers and subjects. When Thomas Jefferson declared that "all men are created equal" and "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights," he was drawing a causal link between the teachings of the Bible and political liberalism. The Founders established a constitutional order with robust protections for individual freedom and a foundational commitment to consent of the governed—incarnating to the best of their ability the spirit of liberty—because they were steeped in the spirit of religion.

'The Sanctity of the Person and His Freedom'

In the years after World War II, an idea associated with the conservative magazine National Review emerged holding that the Judeo-Christian moral tradition and the classically liberal political tradition came together in the American Founding, and that the marriage of those two traditions is no small part of what makes this country exceptional.

The primary expositor of what came to be called "fusionism," the writer and editor Frank Meyer, pointed to a "synthesis of belief" in liberty and virtue that "the Founders of the Republic embodied in their lives and actions, discursively expressed in their writings and their debates, and bequeathed to us in the body politic they constituted." The job of contemporary American conservatism, he thought, was to keep that synthesis alive.

During the last 10 years or so, broad swaths of the conservative movement have abandoned the fusionist idea, seeing it as ill-suited to the challenges of the 21st century. They argue that free markets and free trade have been bad for Americans, that separation of powers is an obstacle to the ability of a strong leader to shape society in accordance with Christian values, and that a "muscular" state must be used to destroy the left before the left destroys them.

Yet if the fusionist account of history is correct, the anti-fusionists are engaged in a far more radical project than most of them are willing to admit. They're digging out the philosophical foundations that Ben Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison laid down to secure what they saw as indispensable preconditions for human flourishing.

"In the open lands of this continent," Meyer once wrote, America's Founding Fathers "established a constitution that for the first time in human history was constructed to guarantee the sanctity of the person and his freedom. But they brought with them also the human condition," which is ever tempted to trample others' freedom in order to bring about a utopia. That temptation is still alive and well. Fortunately, so is the belief in human dignity that can, if we're faithful to our national patrimony, help us resist it.

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Open Thread

2026-06-21T06:29:07.001-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - June 21, 2026 at 03:00AM

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Generic Blog News and Commentary

Today in Supreme Court History: June 29, 1992

Local Officials Vow To Shield the Public from Virginia's Authoritarian New Gun Laws

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Today in Supreme Court History: June 22, 1992

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer Has Resigned. His Replacement Will Likely Be More of the Same.

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America's Founders Blended Liberalism and Religion

'All Americans Are…Liberals of One Sort or Another'

'Only a Virtuous People Are Capable of Freedom'

'These Two Have Been Successfully Blended'

'The Sanctity of the Person and His Freedom'

Open Thread

'All Americans Are…Liberals of One Sort  or Another'