Prof. Randy Barnett Archives -

Christmas Book Suggestions

Getting books for Christmas was a tradition in my family. It is not surprising when your Mom was first an English teacher and then a school librarian.

I have compiled a list of books for your perusal. I have read most of the books myself. Those that I haven’t are either too new or are new books from authors I trust and respect.

First up is a new book on handgun hunting by my fellow Polite Society Podcast co-host Kat Ainsworth. I have it on order and am anxious to start reading it. Kat’s work can be found in USCCA Concealed Carry Magazine, Concealed Carry Handguns, Range 365, Pew Pew Tactical, SHOT Business, and Shooting Illustrated.

Another new books worthy of consideration is by Nikki Goeser. Stalked And Defenseless: How Gun Control Helped My Stalker Murder My Husband in Front of Me details how Tennessee’s legislatively mandated gun free zones allowed a demented stalker to kill her husband. Because Nikki obeyed the law and locked her carry gun in her car, she was left defenseless when this evil person murdered her husband.

Jim Curtis aka Old NFO is a friend, blogger, and novelist. I just finished the finale of his The Grey Man series, The Grey Man – Sunset. It brings to a conclusion the exploits of John Cronin and his family and friends as they fight the drug cartels and other evil doers in west Texas. Cronin is a rancher, a (retired) captain with the Pecos County Sheriff’s Department, an ex-DEA agent, and a Vietnam vet who served on 5th Special Forces A-Teams. He is also known to be a stone-cold killer of those that deserved it. I suggest starting from the beginning of his series and working your way through all of them.

Moving on, my next suggestion is actually a text book by law professors Randy Barnett and Josh Blackman. That said, An Introduction to Constitutional Law: 100 Supreme Court Cases Everyone Should Know, is very readable. It starts with the early cases such as Marbury v Madison and works its way forward. Since our common law is built heavily on precedent, knowing how earlier decisions paved the way for later decisions is critical if you want to understand it. The book also comes with a code that allows access to the video series that goes along with the book. Fortunately, unlike most law books, the price of this book isn’t a killer.

Comment Of The Day, No. 2

Professor Randy Barnett of Georgetown University Law Center had an excellent op-ed in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. In the op-ed, he calls the seizure of private data by the NSA unconstitutional. Barnett goes on to say that the work of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in compiling a database of our private financial transactions including credit card payments, mortgage transactions, etc. should also be considered a violation of our Fourth Amendment rights to be “secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures”.

The comment of the day concerns what should be the proper role of government in relationship to the citizenry: the government is the servant and the people are the masters.

In a republican government based on popular sovereignty, the people are the principals or masters and those in government are merely their agents or servants. For the people to control their servants, however, they must know what their servants are doing.

The secrecy of these programs makes it impossible to hold elected officials and appointed bureaucrats accountable. Relying solely on internal governmental checks violates the fundamental constitutional principle that the sovereign people must be the ultimate external judge of their servants’ conduct in office. Yet such judgment and control is impossible without the information that such secret programs conceal. Had it not been for recent leaks, the American public would have no idea of the existence of these programs, and we still cannot be certain of their scope.

Even if these blanket data-seizure programs are perfectly proper now, the technical capability they create makes it far easier for government to violate the rights of the people in the future. Consider why gun rights advocates so vociferously oppose gun registration. By providing the government with information about the location of private arms, gun registries make it feasible for gun confiscation to take place in the future when the political and legal climate may have shifted. The only effective way to prevent the confiscation of firearms tomorrow is to deprive authorities of the means to do so today.